Artie Lange, 'SNL' writer booted from 'This Week at the Comedy Cellar'
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Nimesh Patel — the comic who was booted off the stage last weekend at an event at Columbia University — was also booted from "This Week at the Comedy Cellar."
Patel did a stand-up set at the club on Wednesday night, telling the same joke that got him in trouble and discussing the controversy, but the bit was left on the cutting-room floor when the show aired Friday night on Comedy Central.
The show, hosted by Ray Ellin, is filmed over three nights each week, giving producers 12 to 14 hours of footage to cut into a half-hour show.
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"Sometimes material doesn't hit," said an insider. "We want laughs. We don't want a discourse on the issue of censorship on college campuses."
Patel got in trouble with the Columbia students for a riff on a gay black man in his diverse neighborhood, and how that man convinced him that sexual orientation isn't a choice.
"No one looks in the mirror and thinks, 'This black thing is too easy; let me just add another thing to it.' Nobody is doubling down on hardship."
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The unamused students of Columbia’s Asian American Alliance, who had booked him to perform, cut his act short, later stating, "We acknowledge that discomfort and safety can coexist, however, the discomfort Patel caused was unproductive in this space."
Also at the Cellar — and left on the cutting-room floor — was Artie Lange, who came directly to a taping from drug rehab in Pennsylvania.
The troubled former Howard Stern sidekick tweeted, "My nose is f–ked but I'm alive . . . I killed but I offended too many [people]. Times have changed."
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This story originally appeared on Page Six.