‘SNL’ alum Jon Lovitz compares cancel culture to McCarthyism

“Cancel culture” is definitely not the ticket.

Comedian Jon Lovitz is blasting modern online witch hunts, comparing them to the Red Scare that led to the famed Hollywood blacklist in the late 1940s.

“I’ll just say it, It’s no different than McCarthyism,” the 63-year-old told Page Six on Monday.

The “SNL” alum, best known for his “Yea, that’s the ticket!” catchphrase, said that it’s his “job to satirize what’s going on in society and point out the hypocrisies” and that “cancel culture” gets in the way of that.

“As soon as you say to a comedian like me, ‘You can’t say that,’ the first thing in my head is, ‘Oh, and now I have to.’” he continued, adding that there is “a difference between making jokes and being outright mean.”

“If you don’t have the ability to laugh at yourself don’t go to a comedy club. I’m not changing my act. If you’re watching TV and you don’t like the show, change the channel. It’s very simple.”

Lovitz also blasted a July 2020 Los Angeles Times article in which four women accused “The Goldbergs” actor Bryan Callen of rape and sexual misconduct.

“He should not be canceled. It’s horrible,” Lovitz told us. “I remember reading the article and thought it was ridiculous. One girl said she was 24 and he was 42. She was his girlfriend for three years and she says, ‘I’m 32 now, he should have known better.’ Known what better? You’re 24 to 27, you’re not a kid. What did he do? He had a girlfriend who was younger? So? I like women that are younger, not illegal, most guys do.”

Lovitz added, “When someone does something really horrible, raping someone, of course, you should be in prison obviously, but stuff like a girl is on a bad date or the relationship ends and she’s mad that it ended because she got dumped, come on!”

Callen, 54, has vehemently denied the sex accusations against him, which included one woman who said the comic raped her after dinner at his home, another who said he assaulted her in an American Apparel, a third who said he tried to get her to perform a sex act in exchange for cash and stage time and a fourth who said she felt “devalued” while she dated him.

“Let me be very clear: I have never raped, forced myself upon any woman nor offered to trade stage time for sex. EVER,” Callen told Page Six at the time.

As for Lovitz, he also recalled his struggling younger days. Before rising to fame on “SNL” in in the late ’80s, he was an actor with the Groundlings comedy troupe surviving on $600 a month for seven years.

He explained that after college, his father refused to help him out.

“When I finally got to ‘SNL,’ I thanked him for not giving me money because it really motivated me to do something. I was eating 19 cent chicken pot pies. I didn’t go to a movie in seven years. I didn’t go out for dinner,” he said.

Lovitz, who’s never been married, also admitted once he gained notoriety, it was easy to get a date, and he didn’t even mind if he was being used by a woman.

“If you’re a guy…if someone says, ‘Well do you care if someone sleeps with you because you’re famous?’ You go, ‘No I don’t care.’ Any guy would say that if he’s honest,” he explained.

Lovitz will be appearing at The Laugh Factory in Las Vegas from July 12 – 21.

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