It’s tough to imagine comedic filmmaker Mel Brooks making his irreverent comedies today without getting serious backlash.

How would social justice warriors and college campus crybabies handle films like “Blazing Saddles” today? 

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His films have far more to say about the world than many modern comedies do, but almost certainly they wouldn’t be financed today. Why? Because there’s a growing disease known as political correctness.

Brooks himself has recognized the issue — and sees it as incredibly harmful to comedy and human interaction.

“I’ve never been a fan of political correctness. I’ve been a fan of decent behavior, which is different from political correctness,” the filmmaker told The Daily Beast in a recent interview. “Political correctness demands too much respect for being good. And comics are not good. We are bad. We whisper into the king’s ear. We tell him the truth. And that’s our job. It’s our job to say it like it is. And sometimes [to] use the words that we use in the street. You can’t always play ball with the system — you have to strike out and tell the truth.”

He added later, “I think that people enjoy — that people love the comics that break the rules. That’s what I think. I think it’s only a sliver that really love political correctness. Everybody else likes the truth, which is different.”

Brooks has lamented the state of comedy before and talked about the negative impact of political correctness.

Warnings from such a comedy legend should be taken seriously — especially when that person has had to ring the alarm bell multiple times.

PopZette editor Zachary Leeman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.

(photo credit, homepage and article images: Mel Brooks [1], [2], CC BY-ND 2.0, by Greg2600)