Dave Rubin and Trae Crowder examine American exceptionalism, NAFTA's devastation of Tennessee's working class, and liberalism's shift toward extremism. They analyze how rural desperation fueled Trump's election, the risks of judging historical comedy by modern standards, and the necessity of satire against bigotry. Ultimately, the dialogue suggests that effective humor requires navigating deep cultural fractures without losing its edge, while highlighting the enduring value of diverse voices in challenging societal norms. [Automatically generated summary]
It may sound strange, but as a liberal, I really do believe in American exceptionalism.
Due to our democratic ideals and personal freedoms, America is a unique and special country in the world.
You may remember back in 2009 when President Obama said he didn't really believe in American exceptionalism, saying quote, I believe in American exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.
In and of itself, there's nothing wrong with Obama's general idea here in which each individual country is filled with proud people who believe that their country is unique and special in the world.
Actually, if this idea fuels people to build a better society that they can be genuinely proud of, then fantastic.
Of course, by the same token, this nationalism could also push otherwise good people to believe that they should have inordinate sway over the world or influence other nations because they're morally superior.
Over the eight years of Obama's presidency, he walked back this statement and did actually say that America's exceptionalism was unique.
For me, there's an additional reason for American exceptionalism which goes beyond just our democratic ideals and our personal freedoms.
Obviously, we aren't the only country in the world to share in those ideas.
It's also the additional piece that America is a country of immigrants, a country of people from all over the world who came here to make a better life for themselves.
We are a nation built by people whose ancestors often came here with nothing and who worked hard to build a better country and life for their children and their children's children.
While we certainly aren't the only country to welcome immigrants or to build a solid middle class, there's no other nation on earth that more people from more countries have come to live and prosper because of the pursuit of happiness.
This doesn't mean that everyone can come here and we can have open borders, but it does mean that if you come here legally, you'll be given the same chance as a natural born citizen.
Even today, as we live in a politically fractured society, and many people will tell you that things have never been worse, the truth is that things have never been better.
Of course, I don't mean that for every specific person, or every specific job, or every specific industry.
Times change, and so do people and economies.
But as a whole, America has done an incredible job of welcoming so many diverse people, having us all share in the American Dream while at the same time All being able to keep traditions and practices from our unique cultures.
As our economy changes over the next few years, we the people have a massive job of changing along with it.
In an age where supermarkets will be automated and driverless cars will replace truck drivers, it will be more important than ever for us to change along with the technology.
The world doesn't stop for anyone or owe you anything.
You have to adapt to a changing world.
And in these moments of change, that's usually where America has been at its best.
Our system, built on the idea that it's your job to pursue your happiness, is the reason that more people still want to come to America right now than any other country on Earth.
I always find it ironic that so many people who rant and rave about how evil America is are the same people who demand that we let anyone in here.
Why would anyone want to come to such an evil, unfair and oppressive society?
Of course this is nonsense, and these people know it.
There's a reason that people don't leave America in droves.
Even the celebrities who said they would leave if Trump was elected have somehow managed to stay here.
For the record, I'm pretty sure that Canada is happy that they didn't have to take in most of those people.
I mention all this because for all the goodness here in America, we obviously still have some work to do.
Every society has work to do, which is why people peddling utopia are always frauds and liars.
In America though, almost every generation has fought to expand rights to other people, not to limit them.
That's how we got women the right to vote, that's how we freed the slaves, that's how gay people were allowed to marry, and that's how whatever will come next will arrive.
As for that work that we have to do, I think a lot of it has to do with how we can come together instead of just ripping each other apart.
I'm a firm believer that most of us want the same things in life.
We want to work a decent job, eat some good food, have some sex, and go on vacation now and again.
Most of us aren't racist, homophobes, secretly plotting against each other and trying to push our way of life on everyone else.
This is somewhere which, no matter where your political leanings are, we can all come together.
Yes, some of us are from big cities, some of us are from small towns, some of us had ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower, and some of us just arrived yesterday.
But the only way this all works is if we all bend to fit the American ideals of freedom and of liberty, not if we demand that the system bend to us.
My guest this week is comedian Trey Crowder.
Trey is known as the liberal redneck.
His comedy is a blend of showing liberal elites that rednecks aren't all backwards hicks and showing rednecks that liberals aren't all evil socialists.
It's almost as if we should judge people as individuals, not as groups.
You know, the middle of this country for a long time has been the brunt of jokes and the easy way to make fun of anyone who thinks differently than the people in New York or Los Angeles.
As someone who has only lived in New York or Los Angeles, I've never subscribed to this way of thinking and I've tried not to mock people just because they talk differently or haven't evolved on some social views the second that I have.
Whether you're Democrat or Republican, straight or gay, black or white, Native American or new immigrant, this country belongs to all of us and it needs all of us to continue to make it better.
So what has become my favorite way to define that was actually said to me at one of my comedy shows in Austin, Texas, a guy from Mississippi, Who now lives in Austin.
A fan came up to me and was talking to me and he was like, And he seemed so genuinely frustrated, too, about how he's been stereotyped or whatever for being a redneck or whatever else.
unidentified
He's like, man, I like to blow shit up, but I ain't fucking racist, man.
Well, a lot of people For some reason assume that I'm opposed to this guy for whatever reason, but I actually have a lot of respect for him, but I think Jeff Foxworthy defined it the best.
Obviously he made a whole career out of defining it, but he got asked that question a lot and the way he ultimately defined it was he said, it's the glorious absence of sophistication, which I pretty well agree with.
And in our book that I wrote with my tour mates, Corey and Drew, we sort of added an addendum to that, which was not giving a damn, generally speaking, about how people feel about you and the way you live your life and whatever, you know what I mean?
I do what I do, and I like what I like, and I don't give a damn what you think about it or not.
That, coupled with the aforementioned lack of sophistication, is what makes a redneck to me.
Yeah, and want to be left alone, and want to have a good time, and all that kind of stuff.
Honestly, and I feel so, I guess, naive or ignorant or whatever saying this now, but I genuinely didn't realize that to so many people it had those like political connotations or whatever.
Don't get me wrong, I knew rednecks were stereotyped as being, you know, dumb or, you know, inbred or, I mean, racist or whatever.
I knew those things existed but I didn't know that to so many people like Part of the definition of the word redneck is
A regressive, racist, homophobe who hates books and loves Jesus.
You know what I mean?
That's what it means to people and nothing else.
I didn't realize that that existed at the level that it does until very recently.
Yeah, and you've done a bunch of videos on YouTube, I think, untangling some of that stuff and showing people, actually, no, that's not really all there is to this stuff, but how poor did you grow up?
Because you're white, so I assume you get white privilege.
I've actually had to get used to being white as I've gotten into the middle class and stuff in the past few years.
That's a recent phenomenon for me.
I tell people that sometimes.
It's true and I know it sounds weird to people.
I never felt white growing up.
I don't mean to imply that I felt black, or it's like, oh, you know what I mean?
That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is, my whole life, when I've heard about white people,
and what white people do, I've thought of like, you know, Connecticut, like very yuppie-ish,
like, you know, the landed gentry, you know what I mean?
Like, that's what I thought of when I heard of white people, and I never,
we were white trash, which is completely different, you know what I mean?
I point out all the time, like a good example that I like to use is cops, right?
And now, don't get me wrong, they're not shooting rednecks in the streets,
but it's a well-established thing, culturally, that like,
Cops and rednecks don't get along.
You know what I mean?
Every episode of Cops they ever made either took place in the ghetto or the trailer park.
You know what I mean?
So like, there was definitely that feeling of like, and I don't know, no I never felt privileged at all to answer your question.
I mean, That's not the same as saying that I don't think white privilege exists in a lot of arenas or whatever it does, but I think if you're poor, it doesn't really matter very much.
The good thing is though, or the good thing, but...
If you manage to become not poor and you're a white man, then hey, it's just aces.
But you know what's funny about that is my whole life I've had this thing where You mentioned, like, the Hamptons.
I've never been, but, like, I promise you, if I, if me and you went to the Hamptons right now and we, like, pull in, we first get in there, whatever, I would immediately become very uncomfortable.
And it's, and it's an uncom, it's a, the discomfort is in a, like, a...
I don't belong here kind of way.
But then there's also the element of like, they know.
Like they're going to be able to tell, like look at me and tell, like who let the, you know, trailer trash in here or whatever.
And I know that that's irrational, but I really do like feel that and always have.
The music, I think the South, as far as regions go, I think the South has the best music or produces the best music in the country and maybe the world.
And just the way I mentioned earlier, you know, people like to have a good time.
You know what I mean?
Like people are not Very tightly wound there.
You know what I mean?
It's a lot more like laid back and just like relaxed atmosphere and none of that whole like stereotypical rat race stuff that happens.
You don't have any of that.
It's weird because sometimes I like, there's a part of me that needs that or wants that obviously or I wouldn't be doing any of this.
But there's also a part of me that appreciates that more like Pastoral type thing in my hometown.
And I've talked to like people from places like I'm from about this a lot and they pretty well agree with it like as a kid growing up People were mostly apolitical.
You know, and I mean, and that was pretty much it.
And obviously that has changed, but I've been gone from the town I grew up in for 12 years now and obviously a lot has changed since I left because it's not like that didn't exist but I was never aware of it being this big like cultural dividing factor or whatever most people just didn't just didn't really talk about it or whatever as I was growing up but then
My hometown's a good example.
The factory left and went to Mexico after NAFTA and all that, you know, and the ripple effects of that were sort of, it took a while for it to get as bad as it is now, and I mean it's bad and has been bad for years, like over 13-14% unemployment or whatever.
for over a decade now and that's just made a lot of people, you know, angry and
frustrated and upset and whatever else and that wasn't really the case when I
was a kid. Not on the level that it is now and I think that's really what
it's about. They've gotten pissed, you know, because their like way of life has been
has been altered very negatively to a lot of them.
And so I think that's where they've gotten so riled up and mad like they are now.
'Cause I'm not trying to act like they were this enlightened group, 'cause they weren't.
But when I was living there and growing up there, they didn't have this like rage.
Yeah, because obviously you're not unique to Salina, my hometown.
This is the story in most places like that, but so the jobs leave and then the pills come in or the meth or whatever, drug use, substance abuse, goes through the roof.
So does crime, theft, whatever, things like that.
The businesses start shuttering the downtown areas, totally dilapidated and whatever else, and it just brings everybody way down.
It's just this cycle of horrible shit.
And it really pisses people off or gets them going or both or whatever.
Yeah, all right, so before we go any further, I feel like I have to get your liberal cred, too, because I know we're gonna talk a little bit about what we both feel like is happening on the left, and I always say, like, guys, I'm still a liberal.
I'm for gay marriage, I'm for legalizing marijuana, I'm pro-choice, I believe in state education, and the list goes on and on.
I'm against the death penalty, I'm for a reforming prison system, all of that stuff.
These are liberal things.
So can you just lay out some liberal cred so that 10 minutes from now when we get on to some other stuff, people go, wait a minute, is he really a liberal?
And I found that out when I was like eight or nine, which is when I found out what gay even was.
You know what I mean?
I didn't even know anything about it before that.
And as soon as I learned what gay meant, I learned, hey, your uncle, he's gay.
Oh, okay, whatever.
But I started picking up on things that before just went over my head that like, you know, these like rednecks or whatever that I was growing up around that they were saying or that the church was saying about gay people and I immediately didn't like it.
You know what I mean?
And that sort of pushed me in that direction, I think.
And so that's always been a big thing for me because I take it a little personally because of my uncle, whom I love dearly.
But everything else you named, you know, prison reform, very, very against the war on drugs.
That's another thing that I feel very strongly about because it's also personal because my mom is a recovering drug addict who also was a drug dealer who went to prison.
All that's very personal to me too and I completely agree with it.
I'm a believer, obviously it needs to be done the right way, but I'm a believer in universal health care.
I also am very pro food stamps and welfare and things like that.
I've always felt like it would be baldly hypocritical of me if I wasn't because, like, I survived on food stamps as a kid.
If it wasn't for food stamps, I don't know what would have happened to me.
I feel like I'm living proof that those systems can work.
That sounded pretty good in the scheme of economics as I understand it, you know?
It's weird to be alive at the time when we know robots are going to replace us, you know?
Like where it's not science fiction anymore, now it's like, Oh yeah, 20 years from now, when they start talk show hosts, comedians, we're all gonna be replaced by robots.
Yeah, and in 20 years, or maybe less, people in San Francisco will be getting super pissed at Alabama for having anti-robot laws or something like that.
Well, so when I was a kid, my uncle lived in Nashville.
Another thing a lot of people don't realize is that for the most part, in a lot of ways, cities are cities.
Whether, you know, Birmingham, Alabama.
is still a city which means there's still plenty of like liberal ideals or whatever else there and so like he lived in Nashville which is totally different totally different than Salina but he came back a lot and then when I was in high school from then on he did live in Salina and now I thought before, now that I'm an adult,
that maybe there's a good possibility that he did go through a lot of shitty things,
shitty treatment or whatever else, but he didn't tell me about it 'cause I was a kid.
Right. - You know what I mean?
And I had enough bad shit going on that he didn't wanna burden me with it or whatever.
And that's a very good possibility.
But so far as I'm aware, he never faced any, he definitely never got beat up.
He never got like, he had a deli there in town for a while or whatever else, and he never got like a brick
thrown through the window or nothing like that.
And then he's not the only gay guy in the town either.
In fact, there's a local businessman who is a gay guy.
When I was in high school, he had a lot of money, especially for that area.
When we were in high school, he'd come to high school ball games in Salina, Tennessee, with two little...
And then he got two Ukrainian boy toys or whatever.
I don't know.
Again, at the time, I didn't realize how insane that would probably be to a lot of people to know that that had happened there and that they didn't get tarred and feathered or whatever.
That it was just a thing that people were definitely like, here he goes again.
You know what I mean?
But that was like the extent of it And that's still not okay to be disgusted by gay people, obviously, but it never translated to any kind of violence or get the hell out of our town type.
I remember once when I was a kid at some practice or something, some older kid was giving me shit because my uncle was gay or whatever, which wasn't a rare thing.
And after it was over, this guy, he's one of the most outwardly stereotypically redneck people you can imagine.
He's openly redneck.
He's a swamp people type guy.
as red as it gets, especially in this place.
And like, he came up to me afterwards, you know, and was like, he was like,
hey, your uncle's a good man, Trey.
You know, don't let him get, whatever, like that kind of thing.
And that, so I'm saying, there was a lot of that too.
Like, I don't know.
It's way, way more complicated than people realize.
But then I meet people.
I meet people on the road.
I've got a lot of gay fans.
I meet gay people in Portland or wherever who grew up in Alabama.
Because I think a lot of the sort of, the coast, you know, the New York, LA sort of hatred or mocking of rednecks and Southern culture, A couple years ago I would have told you just about every single bit of it.
because it's the easiest thing to attack all the time.
How much of that stuff is associated with religion, do you think?
A couple years ago, I would have told you just about every single bit of it.
I used to, when people asked me how I became a liberal redneck or whatever,
I would talk about my uncle like I already did, but the effect that that had was I stopped going to church
because of all the homophobic shit they were spouting or whatever.
And I was like, "What the hell with that?"
Why would I take Jesus's side over my uncle?
I ain't never even emailed Jesus.
I'm not gonna take his side.
So I left the church, and that's what I always attributed a lot of that to, and I blame the church for a lot of these attitudes.
I've really been enlightened a lot myself in the past couple years, especially the past year, being on tour and talking to so many people in so many places.
And my two tour mates and co-authors, Corey and Drew, they grew up heavily in the church and ultimately left it, which checks out.
But after talking to them and talking to so many other people at shows and stuff, I don't think it's that simple.
I think that that has a lot to do with it, a whole lot to do with it.
But I used to blame, I used to be like, if there was no, if we weren't the Bible Belt, if you took all the Jesus out of the South, it'd be totally fine.
That's not true.
It's just not.
Because of the economic factors and you still have the whole historical factors and racial factors and all that kind of stuff that wouldn't go away just because you got rid of Jesus.
So, I mean, it definitely has a lot to do with it, though, for sure.
Particularly when it comes to Gay, right.
Gay people and Muslims.
And the way they feel about those two groups, I still think is mostly Jesus' fault.
Well, again, I mentioned briefly earlier that like, I never, I never realized it was weird until probably like, I mean, probably, Either late high school or college was when I realized, like, how different it was.
Like, I never thought much about the fact that I disagreed with certain people about certain things, but the biggest factor was, again, like I said, people just didn't really talk about that stuff, so it never really got, you know...
tossed around for me to realize, oh man, we're on completely different pages.
The first time that I can remember really thinking that, outside of just the gay rights thing, which I just chalked up as a religious thing, not a political thing, was in high school, in our English class, we would have like debates, because we didn't have a debate team or debate class or nothing.
We'd have debates like once every other week, and one time in debate class, the English teacher was like, So it's like 2002 or 3.
Everybody thinks we should not go to war.
Everybody thinks we should go to war with Iraq.
Raise your hand.
And it's about half the students or whatever.
And she was like, OK, everybody thinks that we shouldn't go to war with Iraq.
Raise your hand.
And it was literally just me.
Like I was yelling.
And again, I threw my hand up without even thinking.
I was like, yeah, of course.
But I looked around and I was the only one.
And then that other half of the crowd where, you know, she said, OK, now if you just don't know or don't care, raise your hand.
And that was the other half of the class.
And she was like, OK, everybody that doesn't care, you're with Trey.
Yeah, well, you know, it ended up just being me against all of them, which I was fine with.
But that was probably the first time that I sort of had that, as you said, come-to-Jesus moment where I realized that I wasn't like most of the people that I was surrounded by.
Thank God you're a success, because if you were the first family member to go to college and business school, and then you became a failed comedian, that would be the worst possible.
It's funny, my dad was always cool with it, because my dad was mostly cool with everything, you know what I mean?
When I'd tell him I wanted to be a comedian or be in show business or whatever, he'd be like, that sounds kick-ass.
But, outside of him though, every other authority figure in my life, from my grandfathers to guidance counselors, teachers, whatever, because I always made really good grades, and they would tell me, You have an opportunity to get out of here and you can do whatever you want.
You can be a lawyer, you can be a doctor, all this stuff.
And if I told them, I think I want to be a comedian, they'd be like, no, what?
No, not that.
Don't do that.
You're going to waste all this potential you have.
You've got to do this.
That was the universal response to that.
Wow, he's gonna waste it all trying to be a comedian or whatever is what I got a lot of.
I think it's, to me, in a lot of ways, liberalism has jumped the shark.
Like it's just, they've just went too far with so many things.
And me and you were talking off air earlier about the fact that like, Where I'm from, and we've already kind of touched on it, but where I'm from and where I've spent most of my life, I'm Karl Marx, man.
I'm as far left as it gets there.
Out here in California, I'm a You know, a centrist or whatever, probably, because that's just how much further... And it's true on both sides, though, is the thing.
It's like with the Tea Party and whatever else and how it... Politically, we've been pushed to the polls, you know, the opposite extremes.
And it's absolutely true on the left, too.
And...
I don't really know what has happened to cause that.
I think it's just, like, maybe the cultural divide between the two and just the, like, you know, going back and forth and sort of pushing each other.
The distaste that each side has for the other side just pushes them as far, you know, as much further away from the opposition as they can go or something.
There again, I'm just a comedian.
I'm pulling that out of my ass.
But, like, that's, you know, something like that, I guess.
Now, don't get me wrong, a lot of bloat, and it's way out of hand and does need to be reined in some, I know that's also a little personal to me because I said I went to business school, so I wasn't waiting tables doing moonlighting as a comedian.
I worked for the U.S.
Department of Energy.
That was my day job when I was getting into comedy.
And so, I mean, I know firsthand about, like, the bloat of the federal government and the inefficiencies of our bureaucracy and all that, and it needs to be cleaned up.
But I think it's necessary, though, that you have a government that sort of regulates and polices some of these other systems.
Basically, man, I just don't trust rich people to do what's right for everybody else.
I never have, and I don't think I ever will.
Because that's just human nature, I think.
They're going to do what's right for them and the people in their own self-interest.
Not across the board, but by and large.
And so I think we need systems in place to sort of keep that from happening if possible.
That's the thing is I'm a big believer in that, you know, that we live in a plutocracy and that's a, Big problem for me, because of everything I just said.
But that is the reality of it.
I do think, yes, the rich people run the government or whatever, and that's a damn shame.
But like I'm saying, philosophically, I do think there's a definite need for government.
I think you have to have it.
But socially though, and in a lot of other ways, libertarians, I'm absolutely more in line with them.
I mean, I'm pro-legalization of really just about any drug, to be honest with you.
But I'm also pro-gun.
Growing up, that's the least liberal thing about me, but to me it's a freedom thing.
Yeah, I gotta get my show to Tennessee then because that's what I've been trying to do is show people the difference between real liberalism and what has happened here.
Oh, they definitely need that in the South because that's the, I mean, right, if they Well, that's a big thing in the South for a long time, is people ask, well, why do they vote against their self-interest?
And it's like, well, because they don't think that you reflect their self-interest.
You know what I mean?
And I think, arguably, a lot of liberal policies do, but all they know about liberals is this, like, you know, elitist, frou-frou, overly PC, like, you know, That whole thing is all that they're aware of when it comes to liberals and it's like a total non-starter for most of them.
Is that the funny thing about Trump and people in the South?
It's like they took really a New York, really a New York Democrat, he's a big government, it's very clear he's a big government guy, he's happy to do all these executive orders, right?
A rich guy, an elitist, all of those things.
Now I get it, he was out of the system, he was out of the political system, so he's thought of as an outsider.
But he's not religious, there's no reason to believe that he believes in Christianity.
The one time he sweat during the whole campaign was when he went to Liberty University and had to repeat the Corinthians or whatever.
I've actually, I've thought and I've talked a lot about this exact thing because I, and this, I feel so naive about this now, but like I was genuinely stunned when Donald Trump actually won.
I knew that there was, and I shouldn't have been because I'm from, I'm from where he won.
If anybody, I should have been.
Now, I was like cautioning people the whole time, like, look, there's something real here.
But at the end of the day, I didn't think it would happen.
And I was shocked.
And maybe the biggest reason is And I felt this way throughout his whole campaign.
I was looking around like, what is going on?
Because this is not an assumption or a theory.
I promise you, I know this to be true.
If we could go back In time, like five, six years ago, whenever it was before he first went after Obama for being an African Muslim or whatever.
If we could go back to pre-that and you polled rednecks, rural working class Americans, what do you think about Donald Trump?
Because Donald Trump's been famous for decades.
What do you think about Donald Trump, the dude?
It would have been almost universally negative, I promise you.
They would have hated everything, and they did hate everything about him, until he got in all this political shit and started pandering to him.
They were like, he's an elitist, silver spoon up his ass Yankee who thinks he's better than everybody, and thinks he's better than me, and thinks he knows everything, and he's a big city Democrat, whatever.
They would have hated everything about him.
And so the whole time, throughout his entire rise, I was looking around like, really?
This dude?
Really?
And what that says to me, or what I've told myself anyway, to make sense of it is, That just goes to show how desperate they were for a champion of any kind.
They were so desperate for that, that even Donald Trump was good enough for them to fill that bill.
So what I was talking about is a little bit different when you talk about like people in like my hometown where, you know, they blame NAFTA and they blame the Clintons and whatever else for the factory leaving and all this.
It's more than just, oh, he's shaking the system up.
He was making promises directly to them.
I'm gonna bring your job back and restore your livelihood and all this stuff and that connected with people and I don't think they thought he was a snake oil salesman or even if deep down maybe they did a little bit.
I think they lied to themselves and said and you know deluded themselves into believing he wasn't.
But I've also encountered a lot of people who are like you just said they're like you know what?
Shake things up, that's what we need.
This guy's something different, whatever we need.
The system's broken, let's mix it up a little bit.
Yeah, do you think we just sort of forget that all of us, forgetting what our political allegiance is, that we all kind of just forget how actually good it is here?
Yeah, I'm not sure either because anytime, I'm gonna be honest, anytime that I've tried to like touch on some of that, because I have in some of my videos, I've tried to say things that are in line with what we're talking about right now and They never get the kind of response that my other videos just railing on Trump or the right or whatever dude.
Everything I've ever said in any of my videos, I believe and that's my genuine thoughts.
But anything that's ever been like kind of challenging in that way, they're always like, you know, it's almost like I can feel the internet being like, no.
I've been very aware of the hypocrisy of liberals who abhor any kind of intolerance or discrimination being so openly prejudiced towards people like me.
It's always been that way.
My whole life it's been that way.
I've always thought that was bullshit.
Do you not realize that that's still intolerant?
And it's always been that way about, you know, poor white trash, rednecks, whatever else.
But now it's like spreading into this like, they're intolerant of anybody who doesn't agree with them on every single thing.
You're now, you're a, you know, you're a Nazi or whatever.
And, you know, stoking the fires of the patriarchy and all this shit.
That guy getting punched is fine with me, but I wish it would have just happened in a bar somewhere and somebody just whipped his ass or whatever, because he probably needs his ass whipped.
Do I think that we need to make it a thing where we just go around punching people that say things we disagree with?
No, absolutely not, even if they're Nazis.
It's like when the ACLU defended the Ku Klux Klan or whatever in a court case once over a freedom of speech issue, and like, that's the way it should be.
And I was telling you before how I gotta start doing it again now.
And I've been speaking to colleges and stuff and sort of working some standup in
because I see there's such a need for people to say some uncomfortable things.
But I'm curious, in your six and a half years, Have you seen the way language has changed?
Was there something that you might have said six years ago that you think now just because everyone's on Twitter and snapchatting your whole set and all that shit that you'd be afraid of saying?
It's hard as a comedian to sit here and say that I'm afraid of saying anything, but yes, like one thing that bothers me is like if I'm doing, and I still do a lot of this, and I can feel people pull back sometimes, but usually it's okay, but if I'm doing a bit about something that shitty people do or believe, right, and so like in the bit I'm talking about this hypothetical racist or bigot or whatever, and like You say, you know, like if it's a homophobic thing, and you, in the bit, I say queer, or faggot, or whatever, but it's not me saying it, I'm talking about this guy saying it, and then I tear that dude apart right after that for being shitty, but it doesn't matter to a lot of people.
Just having said the word, they're like, oh god, no.
And this has gotten better for me for sure because most people at my shows in particular, they sort of know what I'm about, know what they're getting into, but like, man, with this accent, you literally can't even say black people.
You know what I mean?
You just say black people.
Oh, Jesus.
This is about to be terrible.
You know what I mean?
Like people immediately recoil because of just the way it sounds.
So I mean, yes, I've definitely dealt with that kind of thing.
And one of my first, one of my earliest videos, I remember I was acting out my great great grandmother, you know, who's dead.
And I said, you know, she's dead if she was still alive.
She wouldn't be comfortable eating cornbread next to a colored boy, right?
Because she wouldn't even... colored boy is cleaning it up!
You know what I mean?
That's not what she would say, but it's like closer to it and I still got so many messages from people that were like, I don't know if you know this or maybe it's different in Tennessee, but we don't really say colored anymore or that kind of thing.
It's like, of fucking course I know that!
That's the point of the joke is that it's this antiquated, out-of-date ideal that she would have and I'm making fun of it.
But just the word, just referring to a black person as colored, no matter the context,
sets some people off.
And it's that whole attitude that's like, that is the reason that so many people hate
liberals.
unidentified
It's that kind of thing, because it's just ridiculous.
What about the idea that, so you make that joke about your great-great-grandma, and that people now look at historical figures and try to give them the morality of 2017, like, I would guess, I don't know, but I would guess your great-great-grandma probably was a pretty decent woman.
Right. - Raised some kids and blah, blah, blah.
Yes, maybe she had, there was some racial stuff there too, which is a sign of that.
But that we suddenly give our morality of today to everyone else, that's a really dangerous thing to do,
And like people just shouldn't, but they were from, they're from a different time, you know what I mean?
Like they weren't bad people, but like both of them man, the n-word, oh god, you know what I mean?
All the time, but like That was just, it was like, that's just how people talked when they were growing up or over their lives or whatever.
I remember one time, this is a true story, and this is in my book too, but there was a fight between a white kid and a black kid in the town square of Salina, my hometown, when I was in high school.
Small town, everybody's talking about it because the white kid got the shit beat out of him.
And everybody was talking about it.
And so I was at my grandpa's car lot the next day and he asked me, What was that about?
What happened?
I was like, well, I think Jimmy called Kyle the N-word or something like that.
My grandpa goes, what the hell do you want him to call him, Chinese?
I'm curious, do you ever get it the other way, where you'll say something about regnet culture, and people that are still part of that culture will be like, hey, you're making us all look like idiots, or you're making us all look backwards, or whatever?
Not in the way that they're offended by the redneck jokes, they're offended by my ideas.
You know what I mean?
That's about it.
I don't really get a lot of like, oh, you're making us all look bad because they genuinely, for the most part, don't give a shit how they look to other groups of people or whatever.
Yeah, I completely agree and totally think that comedy is more important now than it's been in a long time.
Weirdly enough, and I didn't check this, this was in the middle of another interview for a UK magazine, and so I'm talking to this British reporter and she was talking about, she asked me a question Apparently Armando Iannucci, you know who that is?
And he made In the Loop, the movie, and before that In the UK, The Thick of It.
I'm a huge fan of that guy.
Colossal fan.
He's one of my favorite comedy writers on planet Earth.
And she was like, did you hear what he said the other day?
And I didn't.
I was like, no.
I guess it was news over there or whatever.
And she said that According to her, he said that he thinks that it's time to step away from joking about a lot of these things because we need to take it seriously and not joke about it.
And I told her, I was like, well, I still love his work and I'm a huge fan, but I could not possibly disagree more strongly with that.
Especially if you're talking about, I'm a comedian.
He's a comedy writer, you know?
That's my whole job is to make fun of shit and I think you need comedy in times like this because otherwise it's just darkness.
You know what I mean?
It makes it easier to deal with.
People do need to talk about it seriously.
Politicians and people who are actually in the field or whatever, they do need to take this shit seriously.
They absolutely do because it's very serious.
But I'm a comedian.
I don't need to take it.
That's not my role.
My role is to take the piss out of it.
To use his vernacular.
I don't know why we would stop now.
To me, it's more important now than it ever is.
And again, if he didn't actually say that, then, you know, whatever.
I've seen a lot of that, though, where comics, I mean, people that I generally respect and like, where they've gone off the deep end, where it's like, no, they're not being funny anymore.
They're just preaching all the time, and it's like, if George Carlin was around, and I say this on the show almost every week, like every morning I wake up and I'm like, fuck, where the hell's George Carlin when we need him more than ever?
He would still be being funny about this.
And that goes to prove your point, that that's what we need.