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Dec. 19, 2021 - The Matt Walsh Show
16:22
Try to Laugh Chelsea Handler vs Hannah Gadsby

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You know, my last video, I declared that Samantha Bee is the worst feminist comedian of all time in the matchup between her and feminist comedian Lilly Singh.
But I think, as I've spent more time reflecting on it, and I realized that we have to give Chelsea Handler and Hannah Gadsby the chance to You know, really fight it out.
I think it's not fair.
I'm all about equity and inclusion.
And so I think we have to include them in this, especially Hannah Gadsby.
She needs to be in it.
So today we're going to go watch a couple of clips from Chelsea Handler and Hannah Gadsby to see if they have what it takes to unseat Samantha Bee from her throne as the worst feminist.
So first, let's let's go back again, if we must, and watch Chelsea Handler.
This is so aggressively unfunny.
It's almost impressive.
So a few months ago, I embarked on a mission that I knew from the beginning would be difficult, but has proven far more challenging than I ever anticipated.
It's a sort of mission that tries your soul, shows you who you are, what you're made of, tests your mettle.
The mission is to laugh at a joke told by a feminist comedian.
Are you serious?
Now to be clear here, just to be, just to be, just so we can get all the technicalities clear,
the goal is, is, is not to laugh at a feminist comedian because we can all do that.
That's very easy to do.
You can easily laugh at them.
The goal is to laugh with them.
To laugh at their material.
To laugh when it seems like they want you to laugh.
And in a way, they want you to laugh.
So far, I've tried to laugh at jokes from Samantha Bee and Hannah Gadsby.
If you watch those videos, you know that I tried my hardest.
I did.
I dedicated myself to the task and just came up empty.
I found myself not only not laughing, but in fact, nearly weeping as I stared into the bleak abyss where laughter and joy and humor dies.
It was a deeply chilling and unsettling experience.
Uh, but now we're gonna try it again.
I'm gonna give this one more try, this time with Chelsea Handler.
Now, Chelsea Handler is an interesting case, because she reminds me a little bit of, like, your eccentric, childless aunt, who always smells vaguely of cat litter and Chardonnay.
I'm a little burnt out.
So, sometimes, don't shoot me.
I have a glass of wine with Buster here.
And she has a boyfriend with a ponytail who she invites to Thanksgiving, and he tells you about his weird hobby, like collecting gerbils or something.
This analogy is maybe getting a little bit too specific.
I don't know.
The point is, Chelsea Handler is weird and sort of sad, but not often funny.
At least that's how she comes across.
And, you know, I say this admittedly as someone who watched Chelsea Handler one time for four minutes 15 years ago when she was on the, what was it, the E!
Entertainment channel.
And I had her on TV because I was looking under the couch for the remote so I could change it.
And in that time, that's like the only time I've ever really been exposed to her comedy.
So I made a lot of judgments based on that experience.
Maybe they were unfair judgments.
And so now we're going to give this a try.
Let's let's try to laugh.
Let's go and we'll start here with, I think this is one of her more recent routines, and let's just, let's see if we can get a chuckle out of this.
And then he wanted to know about my family history.
I was like, that's not what this is about.
Nothing to see there.
I was like, my brother died when I was a little girl.
My mom died like eight or ten years ago.
"My dad's a huge pain in the ass, "so hopefully he'll wrap things up this year."
(audience laughing)
And I said, "And quite frankly, "I'm ready to wrap it up too."
I said, Dan, I'm not suicidal.
You don't have to worry about it, but people say life is too short.
I think it's too long.
Like, there's so many annoying people out here and I just can't deal with it.
I said, I'm losing my patience.
Okay, so this isn't comedy so much as it's a suicide note.
There's literally no joke here.
She's just talking about how much she hates her family and her own life and wants to die.
And the cackling audience is laughing.
Yeah, life is horrible.
I'm in despair.
Good one, horrible life.
This is great stuff.
I hope the people in the audience never volunteer at a suicide hotline.
That's all I'm saying.
It's a very troubling reaction, but maybe it gets funnier.
Let's keep going.
I need you to help me with my lack of patience.
And he said, OK, give me some examples of your lack of patience.
And I said, OK, fine.
I was at a table like this, probably a little bigger, with three of my girlfriends before my session that day with Dan.
My girlfriend orders a turkey burger, no onion, no bun, no cheese.
That's fine.
We live in LA.
So the server comes over with his hands full, with four plates.
And comes over and we're all sitting at the table.
We're not even talking.
And he says, turkey burger.
Who ordered the turkey burger?
No onion, no bun, no cheese.
He's-- my friend is just sitting there like Stevie Wonder playing the piano.
[laughter]
And he says it to get louder.
Turkey burger.
No onion, no bun, no cheese.
And this is her.
I go, hey you f***ing c**t!
Wake up!
Is that your doggy burger?
You can't order that?
And then I forgot that you ordered that.
I thought my jokes were bad.
All right, so again, I'm not sure where the joke is supposed to be located here.
And I let that play for a little while because I was just, I was sort of waiting for the joke.
There isn't, this isn't even try to laugh anymore.
This is find the joke.
It's like, where's Waldo?
The challenge is just to figure out where the joke is.
I mean, forget about actually laughing.
I don't even know where I'm supposed to laugh.
The audience, on the other hand, they just laugh at everything.
I mean, this woman busts out a Stevie Wonder joke in the year 2020, and the audience acts like it's the funniest thing they've ever heard.
Maybe next she can make a joke about telemarketers, something really topical.
Hey, what's the deal with telemarketers, huh?
You ever heard of these people telemarketers?
So annoying!
The audience would love that.
That would kill this audience.
And then, of course, at the end of the bit, the punchline, I guess, is that Chelsea Handler is a horrible person, which I'm perfectly willing to believe.
She's screaming at her friend in a restaurant.
So what we've learned is that Handler is depressed, miserable, suicidal, and on top of it, a terrible friend.
These are all excellent things to say to your therapist.
It's just not fit for a comedy stage.
That's my only point.
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Yeah, the one thing you remember as you watch Chelsea Handler again is just how depressing she is to listen to.
This is someone who's living an utterly empty life and existence and living it in front of everybody for our amusement.
And somehow it doesn't even manage to be funny somehow.
I'm not even sure if we should have included her in this matchup.
She isn't trying to make a joke, really.
She's just trying to make us all depressed.
So I don't think she has what it takes to unseat Samantha Bee.
Let's go to Hannah Gatsby and see if she has what it takes.
A few weeks ago, we began a journey together.
I want to laugh at a feminist comedian.
Not at them.
I mean, I can laugh at them.
That's very easy to do.
But with them.
I want to find a funny joke told by a feminist comedian and laugh at it.
You will fail.
That's my goal in life.
That's the only thing I want to achieve before I die.
I've done everything else.
that I want to do, sadly enough.
This is the last thing.
So first we tried Samantha Bee.
That was a miserable failure.
It didn't work out.
So today we're gonna bring out the big guns, Hannah Gadsby.
Okay, Hannah Gadsby's the acclaimed, beloved, critical darling, the best feminist comedian currently on the scene, I'm told.
So we're gonna watch some of her clips and see if we can do this.
You know, can I laugh at a Hannah Gadsby joke?
Can we laugh?
Let's find out together.
Come along, friends.
Forget I did that, sorry.
Now I want to tell you a story about a terrible conversation I had at the dog park once.
This bloke just walks up to me.
I mean he had a dog.
He wasn't just being creepy.
He had context.
And I want to tell you this.
It's not pertinent to the story but I want you to know his dog had shoes on.
And his dog did not want to have shoes on.
Like he's just doing that like...
And it was a whip it situation and they're shaky at the best of times.
We don't know why.
Are they cold?
Are they nervous?
We don't know.
But it was like just... It was a lot.
Now it's not important to the story but it was a lot in my periphery.
So I just want you to know.
Okay.
Well, you know, a dog with shoes.
See, that's kind of funny.
Not a laugh thing.
I'm not laughing level.
But, I mean, actually seeing the dog with shoes, that would get a laugh at me.
If she had a picture she could have showed us, the visual probably would have helped.
But simply mentioning the dog with shoes isn't enough.
But I'm on the verge of laughing, okay?
The dog with shoes.
Okay, she's loosened me up a little bit.
I'm ready to laugh.
I want to laugh.
I'm in a laughing mood now.
I'm thinking about dogs with shoes.
And now she just has to go in for the kill.
So let's see what she's got.
Now this was my friend's icebreaker.
We'd never met.
This was his icebreaker.
He said, did you know It takes less muscles to smile than frown.
Now the men in the audience are sitting there going, oh you've experienced an isolated incident.
And the women are sitting there going, oh f**k's sake.
And non-binary folk are like, is that a hard day for you, is it?
Damn it.
She squandered it.
You squandered it, Hannah.
I was ready to laugh.
I was.
You had me.
You had me.
Why, Hannah?
Why?
I mean, now she's going into the absolutely insufferable feminist harangue about being told to smile.
And, of course, she throws in the thing about non-binary folks because, you know, she can't make a man-versus-woman joke without acknowledging the invented non-binary category.
And that's good, obviously, because diversity, inclusion, political correctness, all the stuff that makes comedy great.
Okay, dare I even continue playing this?
I have a bad feeling now.
I just, before I was filled with hope, dog with shoes, now she's going into the feminist thing.
I should have been prepared for this.
It is a feminist comedian after all.
I wasn't ready, it turns out.
I'll play a little bit more, let's see how much more we can stomach.
Now as far as icebreakers go, it's a f***ing s*** one.
Basically what he's saying is, your face is wrong, can you change it?
Like honestly, and even if I was giving the benefit of the doubt, right, and truly believe that energy consumption was his chief concern, that he was just looking at me going, if only she knew!
She could live her best life.
She could get so much more out of a day.
If only she knew.
Like, even if I believed that, the thing is, I was neither smiling nor frowning.
My face was neutral, which takes f*** all muscles.
Like, and now I am aware that my neutral face is not particularly chipper.
Like, I do look like someone stabbed a potato with a spoon upside down.
Honestly, like... No muscles.
I'm neutral.
Now, I have resting bitch face.
That's what it's called.
That's what it's colloquially known as.
Resting bitch face.
Only women have resting bitch face.
Men simply have very important thoughts you best not interrupt them having.
Like, honestly, no one has ever gone up to a man while he's a stranger and gone, cheer up, love may never happen.
No!
Okay.
Just stop.
I can't.
This... I mean, I'm waiting for the joke here.
The potato... What is that?
Potato with a fork in it upside down.
I don't know.
She is a comedian, right?
So there's supposed to be some humor, but it's not really happening.
Instead, she's just venting about a perceived personal slight.
I feel like this is 2003 and I'm listening to somebody read their LiveJournal entry to me out loud.
And can I just say, for the record, for all you women out there, just so you know, a little bit of mansplaining, okay?
Actually, you are not being specially targeted when people tell you to smile.
You really aren't.
Men do get the same thing all the time.
So Hannah says, no one would ever say this to a man.
Yes, they would!
Actually, they do.
People say it to me all the time.
If you can imagine, I don't like it, it's annoying, but then again, I don't like it when anyone says anything to me about anything, ever, so I'm not the best judge.
But the only reason why you ladies think that the smile thing is sexist and that you're being specially targeted is that you ladies are the only ones whining about it.
Now I'm gonna go off on my own harangue.
There are many things that feminists complain about, where they think that women are the only ones that deal with it.
No, it's not that women are the only ones that deal with it.
It's just that women are the only ones who complain about it all the time.
Everybody else, we just keep it to ourselves.
So, you know, when someone says that to a man, we just shrug it off and go about our day.
Meanwhile, someone says it to Hannah Gadsby and she does a Netflix special about it.
My God, this is pettiness on steroids.
And I say that as someone who has written multiple thousand plus word articles complaining about people who don't put their shopping carts away in grocery store parking lots.
There is no greater evidence of the disintegration of human society than shopping carts that people just leave all over a parking lot.
So I know something about petty whining, and this outdoes even me.
All right, let's try another one.
Make them put a stand in because I won't hold things this shape anymore.
I know who I am.
I know my strengths.
Cause she's a, she's a lesbian.
I don't know.
Did you get it?
Did you get the joke there?
It's the, no, no, no, no, no.
Hold on.
Listen, listen, just to stop.
Did you get it?
I don't think you got it.
It's, she's a lesbian.
So she only mentions it 19 times per minute when she's on stage.
So you might, you might not have picked up on it.
Lesbians.
Lesbians.
But yeah, she is a lesbian.
That's the joke there.
Yeah, that was a, that, that one is, Especially painful.
I don't know why I keep torturing myself.
I went through this once and now we're going back again.
This is how I like to spend.
This is how I'm bringing in the new year.
Not exactly on a good foot.
So would I say that Hannah Gadsby deserves the crown for worst feminist comedian?
Over Samantha Bee?
Tough call, but I think at the end of the day, you gotta give it to Hannah Gadsby.
So congratulations, Hannah.
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