J.P. Sears joins Dave Rubin to discuss his censored stand-up special, Please Censor This, released exclusively on Locals after major distributors rejected it. Sears details how posting on YouTube would have deleted his channel, contrasting this with his shift from liberalism to libertarianism against "woke" political correctness. They analyze the decline of traditional venues like The Tonight Show in favor of independent platforms that bypass Hollywood gatekeepers. Finally, Sears advocates for politicians to perform "inner child work," arguing true fulfillment stems from service rather than control amidst a polarized election landscape. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, thank you for having me, Dave, and it's been a pleasure to meet you in person a couple of times, and I'm glad to be invited to the sacred garden of The Rubin Report.
I honestly don't know how this hasn't happened before.
We've bumped into each other many times over the years at a lot of libertarian events, a lot of places where people are carrying American flags, like right behind you back there.
Obviously I want to get into the special and talk comedy and all that stuff, but I guess first, People don't associate comedians with freedom anymore, which is a very bizarre thing.
Were you always kind of libertarian-ish, freedom-focused, blah blah blah, or was it a bit of a pushback against all the woke insanity over the last couple years?
Yeah, well, we played a little bit of the stand-up special as the cold open for the show, and I'm sure most of my audience knows you from YouTube and Rumble and elsewhere.
Are you surprised that so many comics went woke?
I mean, there are a ton of guys I talk about on the show all the time who I used to love and admire, who were my comic influences, some of them my friends, who then just went off the deep end with this woke politically correct.
I mean, that's the danger really, not just woke but politically correct and language freezing stuff
So, you know, as you see a lot of people in the country go woke, I would have expected a lesser percentage of comedians to do that.
I can understand why they might.
I mean, I think if someone outsources their power and success to other people, whether it's a You know, the audience network or trying to get picked up by some kind of agency.
I can see that's my only hypothesis why someone would.
Abandon the truth principle and cater to political correctness when they're comedians.
So I'm not totally sure, but that's my hypothesis on why some haven't.
By the way, you know, and the ones who haven't, man, they're like, it's a great time for business for comedians who just want to represent the truth, no matter who's speaking the hypocrisies.
And, you know, I watch Ryan Long, Tyler Fisher, these guys who just Shoot straight arrows and it's great and I think it's, I love seeing a lot of people discover them because there's not a lot of competition for unwoke comedians.
I opened for Jim Brewer at Caroline's in New York City probably 2002, another lifetime ago.
He was taking bong hits in the green room before the show and he hands me the bong and I'm like, dude, this is like my, it was like my first like big break or something.
So, okay, so the title of the special is Please Censor This, and I thought that that was particularly apropos, because you launched on Locals, which obviously everyone knows I started Locals as a wall, in essence, against big tech censorship.
Did you think about releasing, you know, exclusively on YouTube, or just there's a litany of places where you could have done it, but you did it with us, so I'm pretty happy about that.
Yeah, you know, I thought about all the possibilities.
And to be honest with you, Dave, for a while, I thought it was defeated.
You know, there was a lot of adversity to bring this special to the world and the times of censorship we live in.
And I remember one of my best friends on the planet, he directed this special.
His name's Brent Pella.
He and I were in San Diego doing shows for a weekend late last year.
And I said, bro, I don't, I'm ready to do a special.
I want to, I don't think I can.
Obviously the typical places, Netflix's and Amazon's, given the nature of the content I'm doing on stage, they're not going to have it.
It's just way removed from the mainstream narrative.
I couldn't even release it on YouTube for free if I wanted to.
That would get my channel deleted like that.
My friend, like a wise sage, he said, JP, do you know how much of an idiot you are?
I said, kind of, but tell me more.
And he said, you don't need a distributor.
Like you've got a six million person audience.
Quit thinking in the old paradigm.
You are the distributor.
So that really helped me open my eyes.
And then along the way, the idea of like, well, let's reach out to locals and rumble, see if we can do some kind of Partnership to just get this thing out to the world and that value alignment about what I stand for what the comedy in this special represents and what locals represents.
It's just that that was perfect value alignment and it's just been such a joy to get this special out to the world.
I think in a beautiful way.
You know, if I did it completely independently, you know, had some sort of weird servers in my garage to house the special and I'm screwing stuff up, I would have been proud to do that.
But it's just great to get it out within a very established, beautiful platform that actually brings the community together.
Yeah, I would say I'm very much removed from the Hollywood world in the sense of,
I have nothing on my bucket list that involves Hollywood whatsoever.
Occasionally I'll get people reaching out.
They're doing an independent film and like me to consider a part in that and it and I'm willing to consider it because it's independent.
There's not some big woke China backed BS ESG.
Entity behind it.
So I love creativity and I love what I stand for.
So when there's value alignment, I'm willing to consider, oh, an independent film, things like that.
But the beautiful thing is life is so great.
You know, I get so much fulfillment connecting with people, releasing weekly videos, doing my standup, having my family.
So there's nothing else that I need.
And man, I'll tell you, it's so great to be completely unenslaved to the Hollywood system and those kind of powerhouses where you see what happens, what people do to themselves to stay in line.
They sell their soul, they abandon their principles, and that's no way to live.
They gained admiration because of their balls and wittiness for standing up against the establishment.
I'm not like, stand up against the establishment just to do it, but like corruption in the establishment, taking advantage of people, that kind of thing.
But now you see these guys, they're like, oh, dude, these checks are pretty large.
Maybe we'll become the establishment.
It's just a weird mutation to see in front of our eyes.
Like they went for, it's not just like, oh, I was kind of like out there a little.
I'm talking like the fringe case edgy comedians who then became the most politically correct.
I could do all day on that.
Do you ever long for the old days of comedy?
Like if you were to open up my, uh, My YouTube, on my TV, I'm watching old Johnny Carson.
I'm watching all the legends of years long gone by.
But the idea that you could do stand-up for a couple of years, you get that five minutes, you sit down with Carson, you get the sick, I'm like, there was something really nice to the machine, as beautiful as all this freedom is, where in our day, it's like, there is nobody to go to.
There's nobody's that, I don't care to be on Kimmel or Colbert or anything else, which is exactly what you're saying.
But I love the idea of, like, now, You take destiny in your own hands.
If you work hard, you're consistent, you put stuff out online.
If you're consistent with it and you have some level of DNA to actually do comedy, you will build an audience.
You will, whether it's big, small, fast, slow, that's a variable, but nobody needs to wait around being discovered by the industry anymore, so I just love the empowerment aspect of how it is today.
Censorship's a bit of a dragon in that, but aside from that, we have a lot of power in our hands, and I love it.
And it's like, if you work harder and you get better at your craft, some good things will probably happen.
Not always, but I'd rather it be on me than on an agent or on a machinery that I can't control.
Let's jump off comedy for just a sec, because you are in Texas, but you are in the Austin area of Texas.
The weird area.
And when I talk to other people from Texas, let's say my friends at the Blaze over in Dallas, they often wonder what the high hell's going on in Austin.
So what is it like to be in a sort of blue-ish area in a state that hopefully is about to go even redder?
I'd suck to be born in Ukraine with incompatible flag colors.
I love Austin.
Austin has some of the best people who are purpose-driven, soulful, and really going after their dreams and contributing to a better world.
Now, there's certainly some leftist stuff about how the city of Austin is run that I don't agree with, and you certainly get some, you know, plenty of eyes glazed over mass formation, psychosis addicts.
But, you know, I actually kind of like that, Dave, because nobody I think maybe we all want to live in an echo chamber, but one of the worst things for us would be to just live in an echo chamber.
So true diversity, in my opinion, is having a diversity of perspectives.
And I like that.
But at the same time, because Austin is in Texas, there's plenty of like-minded people.
You know, I've talked to people all over the country, and one of the biggest pains that folks report is, I feel like I'm the only one.
We're living in San Francisco, Portland.
So there's a lot of community here.
And a few months ago, we moved to a ranch about an hour outside of Austin.
So now it's, I mean, we're in real Texas.
It's just, you know, if someone drives by, we're just in downtown, the town where we live.
In a coffee shop and someone drove by with a vote for Beto bumper sticker.
And it's just so cool how like, dude, that's shocking.
We saw that out here that someone driving by with a big Trump bumper sticker in downtown Portland.
It's funny because, you know, I'm here in Florida, which is obviously, you know, it's DeSantis country, DeSantis-tan, depending on who you talk to.
And there's one guy in my neighborhood with a Charlie Criss sign.
And it's like it actually, of course, it's kind of seems funny to me, but I keep thinking one day I'm going to be walking my dog and I want to meet this person because what could possibly be going on in their head to live in the freest place and not want that freedom?
However, I respect their desire, of course, to vote however they wish.
Him along with apparently 81 million other people.
I think a lot of the, I don't know if all 81, but you know, you know.
In terms of doing comedy for, let's say a more conservative or libertarian minded crowd, do you find that there are rails that you can't touch on that side that maybe you wish you could touch, but you can't quite get to because of maybe more religious issues, that kind of thing?
You know, I'm sure there's rails, but I haven't, Hit them yet.
You know, just just recently, I've really noticed, especially in my stand up, I'm shifting the material, you know, release a special and got now generate a lot of new material.
And I'm shifting the material from doing sometimes bashing the left as a butt of jokes to now it's much more self deprecating of a conservative libertarian minded person, which is Great.
I mean, I love to honor what I love by making fun of it.
And also, it's like, if you can't laugh at yourself, you've got problems.
So as I'm doing that, I haven't found the rails yet.
Though in the past, I can say when Before I got into politics, I'm doing stand up and I would do some level of Jesus kind of joke there.
You can tell like alright there.
There's some folks who that was a hot button for them and maybe it came across disrespectfully.
Maybe it was just a good joke and they didn't like it.
I don't know, but the past experiences.
I think the religious piece probably is the biggest.
a challenge when it comes to the conservative crowd to, you know, dance well with as opposed to just offend.
Yeah, it's super interesting because obviously my credentials and biography are not fully in line with, say, what a conservative audience would be showing up to, and yet I get nothing but love from these people.
And even when I get close to whatever that line might be, or say something that makes them a little bit uncomfortable that they haven't thought about before, it's like, it's all good.
There really is a sense of like, it's all good.
Yeah, we get that we can all be a little bit different and it's okay.
The route I took, I so don't recommend, but here's the route I took.
You know, I got known on YouTube and just online videos first.
So the audience was built up, and then I got into stand-up.
And I had already sort of been doing a bit of stand-up before I knew it, because once I started getting known, different conferences would come and hire me to come in and speak, and they're like, ah, why don't you do some comedy?
I'm like, oh, cool, that makes sense.
So I was practicing it for a while without having it in the frame of my mind as stand-up.
And so as I was starting stand-up, I already had an audience.
And here's what I don't recommend.
I just jumped into the deep end because I didn't know any better.
It's like, all right, let's start headlining shows now.
And I'm doing five shows in this city rather than just starting slow.
So it was very stressful.
And also like looking back at my beginning stand up, I'd say like, I'm pretty embarrassed about it.
So it was good enough to give people a value and they had love.
It was great.
But the stand up sucked.
So it.
Luckily, though, it was probably just barely good enough that it wasn't a complete train wreck, because jumping into the deep end, starting the headline pretty much right away, It's not the recommended course of action.
If that gets derailed, it's sort of like, well, project failed.
So I had a bit of a unique route, which again, I don't recommend.
And honestly, I didn't even I didn't know how normal comedians started.
I wasn't listening to Joe Rogan's podcast, how he talks about it.
I was just ignorance is bliss and here's the way it's suggested to be by some team members.
You know it's so funny how everyone's story is a little bit different because so when I started Carson had retired already so Leno took over but Leno wasn't putting comics on the way Carson was and I saw all of these guys that I was coming up with that all wanted to get on The Tonight Show and I was like but he's not really putting anybody on The Tonight Show he's not making stars the way Carson is And then because of that, after a couple of years, I heard about this thing called the podcast.
I didn't even know what it was.
I kid you not, did not know how to download.
I didn't even know what it was that was on the phone.
I wasn't even sure, but I had a guy who knew something about audio and I started doing a little podcast early on.
And I think I just followed that path.
So everyone, either you become the YouTube star first and then you figure it out after, or you just do it any which way.
I guess that gets to your freedom point of doing something for yourself.
Yeah, you know, it's with great freedom comes great responsibility.
And it's liberating.
And it's also scary.
You know, the scary part is, there's no definitive structure that you need to walk on.
So there's less security, there's less predictability, there's probably a fair bit more Having to figure it out and therefore probably make a lot of errors and mistakes.
But I just think back to the time before the 2020 election and then that space between the election and the inauguration.
Good lord, that was a tense time.
Now, I know this is not a presidential election, so that's part of it, but when you look at all the polling, and it's like, alright, something weird really has to happen for there not to be a huge red wave.
But one thing I will say, if I wanted to be pessimistic, is I would be worried about what the media will do.
You know, if things don't go their way, and it's looking like it's not going to go the way the mainstream media tries to sway things, you just never know what they'll do to try to manipulate people who are no longer being manipulated by them.
I mean, what kind of fear-mongering, smears, lies?
I mean, we've seen it all, so how much worse could it get?
Yeah, well, it's interesting, because, you know, before you were saying how, you know, comedy, it's so connected to truth, or it should be so connected to truth, and it's like, man, the media, I always say, it's like, you guys don't have to be great, but just don't be completely horrible, but they seem unable, I mean, almost completely, without exception, there's a couple exceptions, unable to stop themselves and stop the lying, and they're, like, they're just so in on it.
They're in on, they're in on the big lie, so to speak.
And I think given their jobs, now we know the narrative of what their job is, journalists.
That's not the reality.
Their jobs are giving polarized opinions.
And we know the polarized opinions are always heavily leaning left.
So, you know, a golden retriever wants to retrieve, period.
And the media wants to propagandize.
That's what they do.
So, you know, I honestly, I pray for those people.
I certainly, because they're all good people at heart, I think.
Their behavior isn't, but I pray for those people that they connect to a greater sense of purpose that get, I mean, one of the greatest gifts we can have is the fulfillment we get by contributing to the betterment of another person or people.
Now they do the opposite of that.
But I just pray for them that they make some choices that allow themselves to get fulfilled.
Like Carrie Lake's story is so inspiring for me.
She was so successful in the media, but she couldn't, she just couldn't take the idea of lies, lies, lies.
She couldn't take the feeling of unfulfillment.
So she made a different choice and now she's really doing a great job of working on contributing to the betterment of A lot of people.
Yeah, I think we need, I think before any politician goes into office, they need to do some deep inner child work.
Quit compensating for how unloved you felt as a kid or abuse you might have went through.
If you can quit compensating for that, you're probably going to be doing a lot better job, be a lot less corrupt, a lot less control and power hungry, and more service oriented.
It's funny that, you know, even hearing you say that, you know, obviously I'm here in Florida, I love DeSantis, but it's not, I always say, it's not because of like, that I worship politicians.
It's like, he's a guy who happened to step into this thing and then has fought for our freedoms.
He's not out there like, you owe me this, this is the power I want over you.
I think whether he knew it or not, he did some of that, that child work.
JP, I give you my word that locals will never censor you.
That's number one.
Number two, we're gonna link to the special right down below, and this will either go down as a great interview or a completely haywire interview, depending on what happens during the election, since we're taping it before and releasing it after, but we ain't editing it either way, so we'll see what happens.
If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about comedy instead of the nonstop yelling you get everywhere else, check out our comedy playlist.
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