Believe it or not, it's been nearly a year since Ricky Gervais hosted the Golden Globes-- though at the rate he's been talking about it, you'd think it would be last month. Despite spending an entire year defensively going over his performance and at one point threatening to have a snarky live-blog of the event on his own site, Gervais has in fact agreed to host the Globes again. And I guess before having to step up to the stage once again, he's airing out his grievances about the previous year once last time. It started with an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show, in which he admitted "I tried too hard with the schtick," but then still felt the need to defend the "controversial" jokes that everyone has since gotten over. You can see the full interview here:

Not yet finished, he then moved on to Entertainment Weekly, where he pulled off the impressive trick of saying that people shouldn't have been offended and also that he wasn't being offensive to begin with. Here are two choice quotes:

The simple fact is, offense is taken, not given. It’s up to you if you’re offended or not. And remember, just because you’re offended, it doesn’t mean you’re right.

“Who says we can’t challenge or joke about religion? You have the right to believe what you want; I have the right to believe it’s ridiculous.”

The thing is, it's hard not to agree with Gervais-- he's entitled to make fun of whatever he likes, people need to be more thick-skinned, and there was way too much brouhaha over his first hosting gig. But Gervais himself has continued that same brouhaha to a ridiculous degree over the last year, to the point that it's easy to forget he was ever famous for anything else. It's entirely possible he'll step back up to the Globes next Sunday and do a dynamite job, erasing all memory of his obnoxious behavior this past year and being funny again. But seriously, a media tour entirely dedicated to making us remember it is not helping a damn thing.