Report: Comedy Central Cancels ‘The Office’ ‘Diversity Day’ Episode

Though Comedy Central has been airing reruns of NBC’s beloved, long-running sitcom, ‘The Office,’ for years, there’s one episode you may not be able to find on the network going forward — “Diversity Day.”

The episode is famous for its politically incorrect storyline which features boss Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) forcing the paper company staff to participate in a racial diversity seminar where he speaks in an exaggerated Indian accent and reprises Chris Rock’s notorious standup routine about different kinds of black people.

According to Barstool Sports, the cable channel has “quietly omitted [the episode] from the rotation.”

Barstool sportswriter and host of the podcast “Spittin’ Chiclets,” Rear Admiral, noticed the second episode of season one was missing from a recent marathon of the show. He asked Comedy Central about its absence and said he received no reply, not even the ”standard corporate boilerplate reply about potentially offending people.”

Said Rear Admiral:

It’s really just treating folks like children, telling them that they’re not equipped to handle…[checks notes twice]…Michael Scott imitating Chris Rock. As if people voluntarily tuning into a TV comedy was going to suddenly send them out into the streets. Ch***t, all they had to do is leave the episode up and quietly throw in one of those [Disclaimers] that airs before even goddamn BEVERLY HILLS COP II nowadays (I watched the entirely of BHC2 after seeing the trigger warning beforehand and still have no idea what warranted it). This isn’t hard but I don’t [know]why they make it so hard on themselves …

A simple, appeasing ‘Times have changed and we’ve reflected and blah blah blah and this art has not been calibrated to modern day sensibilities for your convenience but no other generation needed these because people already knew that shit coming in” would have sufficed. But instead of just slapping up a trigger warning for an episode of ‘The Office,’ Comedy Central quietly omitted it from the rotation thus sending OCD-riddled completists into delirium and prompting me blog about it, drawing even more attention to this, dare I say, canceling of a modern day icon. Fret not as this doesn’t mean that you can only watch ‘Diversity Day’ on some shady site that gives your PC cybercrabs; you just need to pony up to enjoy it on Peacock or buy it for $3 from any number of streaming outlets. It also means that Comedy Central doesn’t get the first part of its name.

Ricky Gervais, who created “The Office” and starred in the original British version of the series joked in July that the show would be immediately banned if it were airing for the first time today. “I mean now it would be canceled,” he said. “I’m looking forward to when they pick out one thing and try to cancel it. Someone said they might try to cancel it one day, and I say, ‘Good, let them cancel it. I’ve been paid!’”

In 2018, Carrell, too, said that networks would likely shy away from the series now.  “It might be impossible to do that show today and have people accept it the way it was accepted 10 years ago. The climate’s different,” he told Esquire, “I mean, the whole idea of that character, Michael Scott, so much of it was predicated on inappropriate behavior.”

The Daily Wire reached out to Comedy Central to confirm Barstool’s claim but did not receive a timely response.

The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases