Adam Carolla Is Funny Enough for a Guy

Adam Carolla has been fawning over cars and bandsaws and the wisdom of football coaches for years, and the first thing that makes some people roll their eyes is a tired old comment about women not being as funny as men.

Image from www.adamcarolla.com

If you look at my Twitter feed, you'll see that I've made a few jokes about his comments, and I seem to be jumping on the backlash bandwagon. Hell, I'm even writing a post about it. But in my defense, I'm just an attention whore, trying to get a few RTs and the approval of a few female comics with 100X the followers I have.

I'll admit that's a big part of why I'm picking this moment to talk about Carolla and his ideas.

Because he's not dangerous all of a sudden. He's not nudging America towards misogyny and insensitivity. He did take a dig at a few comedians, but he did it only a few seconds after he said he thinks Kathy Griffin is a "super-funny chick". If anything he said could make me mad, that would be it.

Why does this recent interview matter? Why do we care that he said "The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks"?

It's a banal and shortsighted argument, even when the dude making it tries to sound smart, like Christopher Hitchens tried. So my reaction to Carolla's statement is really the same as my reaction when listening to him say that anyone who drives a Honda C-RV has given up on life. Or when he gets moist talking about how great sports are because "toughness and tenacity is something that you should hope your child has, versus, o— you know, a— a gift for music or math equations. You want a kid that's fucking tough. You want a kid that's not a pussy."* I roll my eyes and recognize the holes in the argument pretty much immediately.

I disagree with anyone who says that he shouldn't have a show, or he should lose his audience, or that he should apologize. I'm not even sure that he really believes the claim he's making. He's been performing for a long time now. And he's been trying all sorts of things to be funny. This might be ironic. It might not be. He might be doing his own version of the World Inter-Gender Championship. Or he might be as dumb about this as the interview suggests. He's clearly not dumb about getting attention just as his book is coming out.

The sticker price is the same whether you love him or hate him or don't care but decide to buy it anyway.

Whatever he really thinks, these statements are ready-made straw man arguments. I like seeing them out there, because all I have to do is quote them, and a lot of people will immediately recognize their stupidity.

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*This quote is taken from the May 9, 2012 episode of Pete Holmes' You Made It Weird Podcast.

Today, We Are All Eaten

No one thought that cannibalism was going to become a problem. At least not a problem that we were going to have to deal with ideologically. I was probably being naïve, but I always figured that eating humans was clearly enough discouraged and recognized as not reflecting American values. So when you come across three stories in one week about cannibalism, maybe it's time to step back and remind folks that, 'Hey— we don't do that here.' Because if we don't stop this now, it could get out of hand.

What? That's not necessary? No one thinks it's OK? It'll never be OK? And you think it's ridiculous to get serious making sure people know cannibalism is wrong?

But what if denying cannibalism is the new cannibalism?

I wonder if it would be funny to make a satirical public service announcement against cannibalism. Andy Samberg made one (watch it here), but I think we can do better. First, it can be better by being funnier. I don't want to be critical, because Samberg's was pretty funny. That explains some of the laughs it got. But it wasn't funny enough. Offensive jokes have to be super funny, or else they're offensive. Trust me.

Also, we have to make sure that we know what our point is. Dylan Gadino reminds us that in addition to being funny, "cringe acts" need a "purpose". It also helps if the performer offers "valuable commentary" like George Carlin always did. You know how all jokes work better with commentary.

Just to be safe, let's make sure the commentary is explicitly stated. In these cannibalistic times it's not enough to let commentary remain merely implicit in the comedic material. So just to be clear, our humorous PSA should probably have a disclaimer either at the bottom of the screen, or it should provide a link to a sensitively worded treatise on how our willingness to make a joke about cannibalism is in no way an endorsement of cannibalism, and is in no way an argument for greater acceptance of cannibalism nor should it be taken as agreement with cannibalist acts or statements.

The direct and non-ironic commentary must accompany the Escheresque irony of a situation in which an argument might be misunderstood as an endorsement of cannibalist ideas, even tho the argument ostensibly condemns cannibalism. That confusion is understandable, because making light of a serious situation can too easily be seen as indifference to someone's suffering. And now that cannibals are on the loose, sensitivity to the suffering of others is more important than ever.

Maybe we can explain that unlike Samberg's obviously ignorant PSA, our fake PSA about cannibalism is carefully satirizing the ease and self-assurance of a lot of celebrities when they take obvious sides in ridiculous debates. We should come up with some statement about how PSAs are sometimes just lame PR strategies, with celebrities even cheaply promoting their latest PSA on late-night talk shows. Let's make it clear that we're also satirizing how PSAs so often clumsily combine heartfelt messages about important and somber issues with schlocky jokes, bad writing, stiff acting, and rough editing.

But most importantly, we need the commentary to explain just how much we're against cannibalism. We need to remind people that we still think cannibalism is very bad. Because bad writing is just kinda bad for comedy. But no good joke has ever worked by being insensitive and insincere.