Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes

 I'm ashamed to admit it, but I thought that Ricky Gervais had lost his teeth. After The Invention of Lying, I thought that Gervais went soft to get rich in America. All of the dense awkward moments and offensive humor from The Office was gone and replaced with a Hollywood rom-com, trite and translucent.

I'm not a big fan of awards ceremonies anyway, so I figured this year's Golden Globes would be the same old celebrity masturbation with Gervais hosting. But, no. He brutalized them.  He bashed the celebrities for their swept-under-the-rug foibles. He mocked the entire supercilious proceeding. He criticized the American people for their disinterest in anything beyond their borders.

Relax, everyone. Ricky Gervais is still a badass.

The media coverage is all over the place. Comedy writer Laurence Marks cautiously praised Gervais in the Telegraph for his "rare talent." I liked the neutrality of the Nigerian Tribune article called "A Night of Unprecedented Satire". (It must be easy to be neutral from over there.) The Washington Post squeezed out a turd about how Regis Philbin is the world's best host, and why can't Ricky be more like Regis?

All of the articles about the Golden Globes (except the ubiquitous best/worst dressed) asked and tried to answer the same question. Was Gervais's performance comedic genius or career-suicide?

It was comedic genius. Controversy over.

David Knowles from Aol.com covered it perfectly: four million youtube views can't be wrong. Gervais's career has been invigorated. Win-win-win. Everybody wins.

All of the publications were so concerned with whether or not Robert Downey Jr. was mad (he was!), that an important piece of the satire was largely overlooked.  In the last thirty seconds of the video, his closing remarks to the 2011 Golden Globes are "...and thank you to God for making me an atheist."

I thought this was appropriate and cutting in so many ways. Firstly, it illustrates how much more acceptable expressions of Christian beliefs are in the public forum than expressions of skepticism, but I thought the irony went further than that.

It seems like every celebrity touts a belief in an ill-defined "God" immediately after an award-win. Not only does it sound humble, but it endears them to the middle and lower-class conservative American, who is always cautious about the liberal cesspool of Hollywood.

I'm sure that for many of the God-thankers there is a genuine belief in some higher power. It is taken for granted that the higher power is the traditional view of God: a cosmic Santa Clause who waits in the wings to take our requests.

And what does God do with those requests? He makes movie stars so successful and rich they don't know what to do with themselves. While poverty, pollution, and oppression are the cornerstones of the modern world, God has given everything and more to a few hundred people in a hotel in Hollywood.

The least they can do is learn how to laugh at themselves.