Guess what: Adam Carolla pissed off lady-folks by calling us unfunny. Several times in a row.
Here are the New York Post quotes:
Interview guy (Larry Getlen) says:
The lesson you learned from a sexual harassment seminar was “Don’t hire chicks.” Do you hate working with women?
Carolla says:
No. But they make you hire a certain number of chicks, and they’re always the least funny on the writing staff. The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor, I’m just gonna tell her, “Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they’ll have to hire you, they can’t really fire you, and you don’t have to produce that much. It’ll be awesome.”
Interview guy:
The “are women funny” debate has grown very contentious. You’re not worried about reactions to this?
Carolla says:
I don’t care. When you’re picking a basketball team, you’ll take the brother over the guy with the yarmulke. Why? Because you’re playing the odds. When it comes to comedy, of course there’s Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Kathy Griffin — super-funny chicks. But if you’re playing the odds? No.
If Joy Behar or Sherri Shepherd was a dude, they’d be off TV. They’re not funny enough for dudes. What if Roseanne Barr was a dude? Think we’d know who she was? Honestly.
There ya have it.
So, I'm a girl.
Actually, apparently, I do have a little, anemic bit of "funny" in me. Every spring I teach some seminars at a national conference, and, because it's (exceptionally, incredibly, unbearably) fairly dry material, I like to jazz things up with as much "witty" banter as I can manage. Just off-the-cuff, whatever-comes-to-mind sort of self-deprecating stuff that's usually reasonably sarcastic, and -- if the giggles in the audience are any indication -- funny. Funny enough that the conference people (accountant types) have themselves a drink or four on the company and get up the nerve to tell me that I should be in stand-up, that I've missed my calling, that I crack 'em up.
Is this clearly the uncomfortable-chair-fueled delusion of someone high on diet coke and lukewarm buffet food? Absolutely. Does it mean that I'm qualified to evaluate his comments from the funny girl platform, just the same?
Ehhhhhh.
Let's pretend.
Right -- so, I'm a girl.
And this inflammatory, aging, rich, white guy tells me that I'm (statistically) not funny. And that he'd only hire me because he has to, and that I'll probably underwhelm the rest of the Man-Writers. And if his daughter had a lame sense of humor like mine, he'd affirmative action the ever livin daylights out of her unfunny self, no looking back, and that if I were as obnoxious as Joy Behar AND had a set of balls, that I'd be super-unemployed.
What would I say to that?
Well, first of all, I'd say, "dude -- there's nothing funny about Joy Behar, men and women alike know this -- so, lame example."
And then I'd say, "As long as we're dividing ourselves down gender lines, let's WAIT a second, because you have another BOOK coming out, right? And you need to pimp that book as hard as you can, right? And so you're going to say inflammatory stuff and sound like a bigot, because it will get people TALKING about you, and then, somehow, that will translate into either 'I hate that guy so I better one-click that straight to my Kindle,' or it will translate into 'Women are so unfunny, I'm totally gonna find his book on iTunes......' right?"
And after THAT, I'd say, "and I've read the first two chapters of your Not Taco Bell Material book, and I KNOW that you had a weird relationship with your weird mother and that relationship can't help but color how you feel about women in general, because -- face it, jackass -- you're mostly human."
And he'd say, "you're not making a very good case for your 'I'm funny' bit, sweetheart."
And I'd say, "Totally -- but you're still the one who published that you grew up in a joyless, dead-eyed household with a mother who's message was:
And he'd say, "Lady, if you're protesting my generally misogynistic view of humor, why did you just link back to my book on Amazon -- that's like, a sales pitch, and you're totally backing me up on the 'shock em til they buy it' campaign. WTF?"
And I'd sort of blink, and probably crack my knuckles, and maybe, like, flip my hair or something, and say, "yeah, but I get it. You're pulling a Howard Stern or a Rush Limbaugh and trying to whip people into a 'women are TOTALLY funny' frenzy that's completely UN-funny, figuring all publicity is good publicity."
And he'd say, "Thanks for doing the work for me."
Anyway -- that's all. If he had a hilarious mom, he'd be more open to the idea of funny chicks.
Also, also: uh, there are still PLENTY of gender role stereotypes in the media that have prohibited women from being the same sort of "raunchy-funny" in public that's made stars of out of plenty of dudes, because it's still not terribly acceptable for ladies to be crass (if that's even funny, in the first place), and we're only just NOW coming anywhere near a place where women can appear on camera, or in writing, or on stage in a less-than-ladylike way, using the same sorts of language that men have been using for decades, so, give us a break -- we're not only expected to be funny, we're expected to still seem pretty, and dainty, and feminine, and not not scare men away from wanting to take us home to mom -- SO -- there's an entire Double Standard Stream up which we're swimming, fighting the notion that we have to be vulgar to be funny, but not too vulgar, because that wouldn't be sexy, and we're definitely still supposed to be sexy....so.....
Heh. That's quite a sentence.
Anyway -- you get it: we're gettin there, but, from where I stand, we're coming from a generation with a gross-out handicap (Jackass, anyone?) -- a handicap that presupposes Gross = funny.
Because any girl could stand in front of a blue screen and (poorly) recite the crap that Daniel Tosh recites, and it wouldn't be any more or less funny: just equally teleprompted.
So there. THAT is why I'm not particularly offended by one rich white guy behaving like a product of his upbringing (in a self-promoting bid to sell books).
It's just up to us ladies to prove him wrong.
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