Ching Chong: Adam Might Be a Bigot

The staff editorial in the current AsianWeek (not my usual read, but who could resist that explaination-begging cover?) demands the firing of Adam Carolla from his radio show. His offense: a sketch that might be a little insensitive to a couple billion people.

On Jan. 24, Carolla went on the air and introduced a recorded bit spoofing the Asian Excellence Awards.

“I know it sounds like a joke,” said Carolla. “But these are real. They hand them out for movies, for acting.”

Then he said he had an advanced clip of the show to be seen on AZN TV. “Play the best male actor of a TV show ... ”

The audio played with some Asian-sounding music, but with a slight big-production echo sound. You can imagine, that next would come, just like any awards show, a big booming announcer reading off nominees, and then announcing the winner.

But because these were the Asian awards, we hear a sonorous announcer in his most fake show biz voice speak: “Ching chong, ching chong, ching chong ... ”

Look, I think Carolla can be funny, especially when he's doing his schtick on radio. (Loveline was just about the best thing on during his run.)

But comedy in general has taken a bit of an ugly turn in recent years. Sure, it was cathartic a few years ago to see a shift towards smart, politically incorrect humor that acknowledged that races, genders, and orientations are different from each other, while also mocking the racism of the past and present by ironically invoking it. South Park, TV Funhouse, Da Ali G Show, and Will Ferrell-era SNL all made racial comedy edgy but still goodhearted, because they distinguished between laughing at racism and celebrating it.

This form of comedy peaked with Season 2 of Chappelle's Show, but its star felt compelled to bail out from his big payday when he recognized that a generation of racist white frat boys were interpreting the show as permission to look down on black people.

Indeed, comedy has taken a turn for the racist over the past few years, much of it from Carolla's television properties. The stinking ruins of SNL has also taken ten steps back, in recent years weighing itself down with dull recurring sketches about lazy, stupid, and incompetent black men. (Kenan Thompson and Finesse Mitchell have been making a good living doing a minstrel show for SNL's fading audience.) And then they have those gay men prancing through outer space.

And this new racism is infecting stand-up, too. Good comics like Loius C.K. a few years ago could do great racial jokes that weren't actually racist, but you can barely make it through an evening at the Improv these days without some "edgy" hack yukking it up about filthy Mexicans. (And by the way, Sarah Silverman teeters along this line. The "chinks" jokes from Conan was an example of ironic, non-racist comedy that was misinterpreted because it had a slur in it, but watch 30 minutes of Silverman performing live, and see how close she gets to telling jokes that Larry the Cable Guy's audience might dig.)

Why does the tone of popular comedy matter? AsianWeek's columnist Emil Guerrero gets it:

Carolla feeds the minds of a new era of racism, where ignorance feeds ignorance, and no one cares about the lessons of the past.

The modern racists only know about now. And if Carolla is “Ching chonging,” you can bet the green light just went on for all his listeners in nine major western markets that, “Hey, I can Ching chong, too.”

True. This shit is pervasive. How bad is it? On AsianWeek's editorial page, next to the staff column about how to get Carolla fired, and below various letters to the editor about other things that aren't funny, is this "Secret Asian Man" cartoon. (Click on it to see it bigger.)

Not bad, but I'd like to direct your attention to that character in the last panel.

Now I guess all the Asians who read AsianWeek are going to say, "Hey I can mock stupid cripples, too."

Comments

[Jon]

What are you doing reading "AsianWeek"? I thought I was the only person who read it...

[seamus]

Even the most jaded whitey can't resist that cover.

[M]

Really appreciated and learned a lot from this post.

Your observations and AsianWeek's can't be more "on point" with what is happening in comedy today. THere is a definite fine line, and you and the article have done well to bring it out.

[clairelight]

Hyphen magazine's blog has been following a number of racist broadcast incidents. http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/index.php

I've also listed some of them here: http://www.othermag.org/blog.php?p=195&c=1#comments

[Ron Gonzales]

That was funny shit , Tell your wife if you can have your balls back from the glass case labled "Break in case of Emergency" Whats with the Sheriff Pirate ,Is he promoting the Jonny Depp Movie?

[Stephen Malkmus]

Holy crap, I love Pavement!