The Worst of Netflix: Jeff Dunham’s Very Special Christmas Special

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Just in time for Christmas, I set aside my usual all-in-fun tone and bring you 917 words of pure hate for what I’m writing about:

Dunham, of course–the man who was referred to as “THE ABSOLUTE F***ING WORST DUDE IN THE WORLD” in a Videogum review of his self-titled TV show–is the target of Comedy Central’s latest attempt to recapture the glory of Chapelle’s Show by cranking out another sketch comedy vehicle starring a successful comedian, and the nicest thing you can say about him is that he’s not Carlos Mencia. His act is based almost entirely on racism and homophobia delivered through a set of puppets, each of which is more pandering to his cracker-ass audience than the last, and whose lines are delivered by a ventriloquist who can’t even be bothered to stop his lips from moving all the time.

In other words, Jeff Dunham stands on a stage every night and murders comedy, and this is no different. Except that this time he’s doing it in a Santa hat.

The Worst of Netflix. Catch it!

114 thoughts on “The Worst of Netflix: Jeff Dunham’s Very Special Christmas Special”

  1. Amazingly, given his apparent status as like, the highest grossing comedian in the country, I’ve never heard of this guy.

    But that was one helluva takedown. Cheers!

  2. Seven Hells Yes. This is the point I’m trying to make to my brother who sadly finds Mencia and Dunham to be the height of comedy.

    Dunham sucks on radioactive toast.

  3. Wow.

    I think a tiny piece of my love for humanity died.

    And suddenly I’m really glad I don’t watch Comedy Central anymore.

  4. My dad spent a great deal of Thanksgiving weekend trying to get me to watch this guy, specifically some “Achmed” bit on YouTube. I managed to successfully avoid it. Thanks for confirming my instinct to do so. Sigh.

  5. The guys I work with are all about Jeff Dunham and quote his stupid act all the time. This past summer, a friend of mine asked if I wanted to go the state fair to go see Jeff Dunham with him. I politely declined.

    What the hell happened to Comedy Central and comedy in general? I remember as a kid watching comedians I was too young to fully understand, like George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy. Now it’s all borderline bigots like Larry the Cable Guy and Jeff Dunham.

  7. Thanks for this. You do an amusing and forthright job of taking on what supposedly makes Dunham funny, which is saying awful racist things that people laugh at and pretend is “just comedy.” I thought about him when the whole #ifsantawasblack crap was on Twitter; that’s pretty much his type of comedy.

  8. What the hell happened to Comedy Central and comedy in general?

    To be fair to Comedy Central–and you know how I loathe being fair–Dunham’s a wildly popular stand-up, and from a purely monetary standpoint, you can’t fault them for wanting to capitalize on the popularity he’s earned with his incredible racism and homophobia. This, apparently, is what quite a few people want, which is why I had no qualms about writing down my utter disgust with his audience.

    As for the state of comedy in general, there’s a lot of good stuff coming out. Aziz Ansari, hands down the best thing going in stand-up today, has a DVD/CD dropping in the very near future, and the new Paul F. Tompkins album is fantastic.

    It’s also five bucks on Amazon right now and worth every cent.

  10. Did you actually watch Chapelle’s Show? Sure, it was funny, but comparing Dunham’s show unfavorably to it and then slamming Dunham for racism is asinine. Chapelle’s show was ridiculously racist, which was why it was funny, and the only reason Chapelle got away with it was because he was black, and black people can’t possibly be racist. It was shocking, made you think a little and made you uncomfortable. All in all, good comedy.

    Dunham’s show fails most of those things, but it’s not because of the racism, it’s the writing.

    Expecting anything resembling human decency from stand up comics’ acts is like expecting a running cold shower in the Sahara.

    And really? Random political potshots in a humor article?

    “mouth-breathing, inbred, redneck, Fox News teabagger audience”

    I come here to read about Batman kicking people in the head, but I guess it’s your blog, write what you want?

  11. I come here to read about Batman kicking people in the head, but I guess it’s your blog, write what you want?

    That’s generally the idea behind me paying the hosting fees, yes.

  12. I tried watching the weekly Dunham show, but it’s truly awful (there’s a reason why only one ventriloquist ever had a hit series–and how awesome was Bergen? He was a ventriloquist who had a hit radio show. Think about that).

    As for the racist stuff, forget Achmed– he’s got this black puppet that, were you to send him back in time to the early 1900’s, he wouldn’t be able to use it in a ministrel show because the manager would say it’s too offensive. To be fair, though, Dunham is an equal opportunity offender (he has a white redneck character that relies on even more cliched stereotypes than the black puppet).

    Actually, that raises a question: if he offends everyone, is he a racist or just a ventriloquist knockoff of Don Rickles?

    For what it’s worth, Slate did an interesting piece earlier this year on Dunham’s success:

    http://www.slate.com/id/2211491/

    Oh, and Chris? You do understand the irony of complaining about how Dunham resorts to stereotypes while characterizing his audience (incorrectly, as the Slate article suggests) as “mouth-breathing, inbred, redneck, Fox News teabagger[s],” right?

  13. Oh, and Chris? You do understand the irony of complaining about how Dunham resorts to stereotypes while characterizing his audience (incorrectly, as the Slate article suggests) as “mouth-breathing, inbred, redneck, Fox News teabagger[s],” right?

    Should I have just stuck with “racist scum,” then?

  14. Not that trash-talking Jeff Dunham isn’t God’s work, but every time somebody makes fun of him for using puppets in his comedy I want to hit them over the head with Kermit the Frog.

  16. Dude, if you seriously can’t tell the difference between Richard Pryor humor and Jeff Dunham humor, then there’s nothing that can be done for you.

  18. Your opinion is different from mine, Chris, therefore you are wrong and a bad person.

    Also, even though your opinion is the same as mine, you phrased it in a less than 100% polite and deferential way, so you are still wrong and a bad person.

  19. I watched a fair bit of Dunham as my ex loved him and yeah, he’s racist, insensitive and foul mouthed but believe it or not; I can laugh at Achmed the dead terrorist and still not hate muslims or arabs. It’s not all black and white.

    I also agree with Scott – stereotyping Dunhams audience is not a lot better than what he does as you’re getting your laughs from the same sort of bigotry that he employs, although you target white trash instead of muslims.

    I don’t watch Dunham anymore as there are tons of stuff more funny than him but there are also things that are eternally worse than him (Married with children is a prime example).

    So no, this one wasn’t at all funny (and the previous WoN haven’t exactly been stellar either) and just left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

    And as a final note – when trying to comment on Heavy all I can do is “Connect with facebook”. It’s almost as if Heavy assumes that everyone has an account on facebook, which of course isn’t true (thank god).

  20. I first saw Dunham years ago when he was just making the rounds. It might have been on Just for Laughs or something like that, but not anything too huge. I was a teenager at the time and I remember his act consisted of Peanut, the jalepeno, a worm in a bottle of tequila, and a smaller dummy that looked like him that peanut “controlled.”

    By the end of the act he was going at lghtning speed through the different voices, operating a couple of the puppets, and it was pretty entertaining. Looking back I can see the the stereotyping that has become such a part of his act but well I’m going to go out on a limb and say there’s a big difference between a jalepeno with a stereotypical mexican accent and Achmed.

    I didn’t hear anything about him until many years later when he started getting a name for himself and then I was surprised at the vitriol people I knew seemed to have for him. But I’ve seen the Achmed act now and I’ve seen the Pimp Daddy (or whatever) puppet and I gotta say I’m rather dismayed at the path he’s taken. That early show I saw he had a definite timing and showmanship. It’s kind of sad to see how he’s decided to lose it.

    And also, there’s a vast difference between to great comedians enjoying a high point in their careers tackling with humour a political and human issue and someone with a skeleton puppet claiming to be a suicide bomber preying on prejudice.

  21. To see if I was just ignorant in my youth I went and found his early appearance on youtube, and well, youtube comments sum it up it seems:

    “man peanut has changed thoughout then and now. personally i like the new peanut because he swears more and and he just sounds better”

    Yup. More swearing makes better show. :|

  22. At a basic level, Pryor and Dunham are getting laughs by saying taboo things. A lot of comedy is based on breaching the walls of the taboo (the Seven Dirty Words for example). They might do it with varying degrees of skill and sophistication (fart jokes are breaches of taboos as well) and you might not mind the taboos Pryor breaches while being bothered by Dunham’s transgressions (but not all of them– I haven’t heard anyone complain about Bubba), but at a fundamental level, they’re not different.

  23. There is a profound difference between challenging the prejudices of society and embracing them. There is an even bigger difference between exposing stereotypes to make a creative or artistic statement and exploiting them in a soulless attempt to cash in on hatred and racism.

    I’m tempted to go off on a rant, but everything I would want to say has already been well stated by Iliam.

    Keep up the good work, Chris.

  25. I am glad I am not the only one who noticed how much of a racist prick Dunham is. I noticed it the first time I ever saw him perform (I don’t even think the Achmed character was around when i saw him at first) and generally I took it with a grain of salt, thinking the humor was meant to be facetious but then the more I saw of it, the more I realized he was just saying blatantly racist things, with cartoon punchlines and smiling to make himself look wholesome.

    I will be the first to admit, I laugh at racist humor, constantly, all the time. The reason I laugh at it though is because it’s ridiculous. For me, it’s a way to throw out something blatantly outrageous that most right minded people could easily distinguish as sheer stupidity. I won’t say Dave Chapelle was one of the greatest comedians ever, but he was generally funny and even he had seemingly pointless racially inclined bits (of course his were much funnier). I think though, that contributed to him going off the way he did. He realized he was becoming kind of a characacher because his comedy could be misconstrued to mean the wrong things, so he said fuck it. left. Dunham is just spewing bullshit to a choir of coprophiliacs and making a buck off of kiddie humor wrapped in “edgy” (and I definitely want to make note of the quotation marks) topics that have no pertaining to anything. On top of that, he is a terrible ventriloquist! His friggan mouth moves constantly! Again I thought that was the joke when I first saw him, I was sadly mistaken… I’ll stop before this becomes a much bigger rant.

  26. “I don’t watch Dunham anymore as there are tons things that are eternally worse than him (Married with children is a prime example”

    Fuck. You.

    Seriously.

    Get out of my country.

  28. Jeff Dunham is basically “What If Dane Cook tried to be a ventriloquist?”

    And the sad thing about the”guitar guy” (Brian Haner), is that on his own, he’s pretty funny.

  30. But at this point the racism is nothing new, nor is the fact that his mouth-breathing, inbred, redneck,, Fox News teabagger audience eats it up like Andy Capp’s Hot Fries and buys the merchandise.

    Chris, this is not the first time that you’ve equated “teabagger” with “drooling Fox zombie.” Even though there is a fair amount of overlap (more than I like), they’re not synonymous any more than “anti-war protester” is interchangeable with “level 5 vegan hippie freegan.”

    Just, you know, in case you wanted to stop pissing on your deficit-hawk readers.

  33. I’ve said many of the same things as Chris (never all at once, though; that was an awesome post) about Dunham, and been told that I “just don’t get it”. I think the problem here is more that I do get it, pretty clearly, and just don’t like it. I’m bookmarking that review to send to friends.

  34. First, I have to agree with Ilion. I remember seeing Jeff Dunham on late night comedy shows back in the early to mid ’90’s, and I thought he was hilarious. He was able to move between figures so quickly, and have multiple ones going on stage at once, I thought it was great.
    By the time I started hearing his name more frequently over the past couple of years, I had forgotten about him. Then I saw a picture of him with Peanut and I thought, “Oh yeah, THAT guy! He’s funny!” so I watched one of his specials. He was not, in fact, funny. Even though I am a “mouth-breathing, inbred, redneck, Fox News teabagger” (except I’m not really a mouth-breather, nor inbred), I just don’t find him funny.
    The funny thing is, my dad is a ventriloquist. Because of this, I’ve had a soft spot for ventriloquists all my life. From a technical standpoint, Dunham is weak. His lips move way too much, he’s too rigid and stiff in his delivery, and he just doesn’t seem to be able to mesh well with his figures. Yet, when I was discussing Dunham with dad, dad said he thought he was great.
    I pointed out the flaws in his act (I remember as a kid having to give dad a rundown of his act, and any weak spots I noticed), and dad said, “He’s a good ventriloquist. His lips may move, but he keeps you entertained so you don’t notice. If you’re watching his lips, he’s not doing his job right.”

    One thing I’ve noticed with Dunham is that he seems to be like the stereotypical “sitcom character who gets a dummy”. That is, he’s too timid to say what he’s thinking himself, but he’s fine with letting his figure say it. I heard him on a radio interview the other day, and there were several times where he’d suddenly drop into one of his characters, just to say something about the show, that if a guest were to say, would’ve gotten him lambasted or dropped from the show. However, since it was just a ‘character’ saying it, it was okay. The thing is, there was something in his voice that made it noticeable that that was really what he was thinking, but just too cowardly to say.

  35. i’ve been reading your so called “worst of netflix” and so far it’s just an excuse to make fun of crap, but not terrible crap..

    you want bad?

    try vegas vampires or ax’em or something legit bad…not this random bs you’ve been putting up

    then again, you’re right, this show and special is the worst of comedy central…oh man, you win…nevermind

  38. I saw him live in Reno about 20 years ago.

    Yes, I was somewhere around 10 years old, my parents liked to take us kids to Nevada and to comic performances (I’ve seen Red Skelton live, he was freakin’ AWESOME).

    But anyway, he wasn’t funny 20 years ago. And he’s still using the same damn jokes.

  39. If you think that is racism, you are an idiot. This article was so offensive I dropped you from my blogreader. I sincerely hope that someday you are forced to stop whining about completely inoffensive comedy routines and experience REAL prejudice.

    What the hell is wrong with having a mostly white audience? What have those innocent people done to deserve being accused of belonging to the KKK? If you saw a mostly black audience, would you accuse them of belonging to the Black Panthers? If you saw a mostly Arab audience, would you accuse them of being in Al-Qeda?

    Your picture is posted right there. Why do you hate your own people so much? Why are you so terrified of the phrase “Merry Christmas”? Have you done any research on the fake holiday Kwanzaa? Are you even peripherally aware of the Muslim jihad against your own people?

    “the oldest, racist, most played-out jokes”
    You don’t even grasp basic English grammar. This phrase of yours means that the jokes are more old, more race, and more played-out than the ones about airline food. How can something be “more race”? It can’t, but you are a moron.

    ~A Jew who has experienced the real thing

  40. I remember as a kid watching comedians I was too young to fully understand, like George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy.

    Well, Eddie Murphy’s early act (around “Delirious”) did use a few stereotypes, and pretty crude ones at that — the Chinese restaurant bit, for instance, plus a heaping helping of gay jokes. Two things in Eddie’s favor, though: first, he was doing this 25 years ago; and second, he was actually funny. Being funny compensates for a lot of sins — heck, it even made Andrew “Dice” Clay bearable in his better moments.

    Jeff Dunham goes for the easy, offensive stereotypes while still managing to be sperm-killingly unfunny, and that’s a failure combo no matter what decade you’re in.

  42. Holy crap. Comment #39 is juuuust on the verge of coming from one of those extremely racist corners of the internet where people talk about the “fake holiday Kwanzaa” and how poor white Christians are the true victims of prejudice in today’s world via the “ban” on the word Christmas.

    (Yes, I realize commenter #39 claims to be Jewish, I used the term “on the verge” for a reason.)

  44. who has experienced the real thing

    So once drank a can of Coke and that makes him an expert on these matters? (If he had done the deed with Nicolette Sheridan, he would have experienced THE SURE THING.)

  45. “I also agree with Scott – stereotyping Dunhams audience is not a lot better than what he does as you’re getting your laughs from the same sort of bigotry that he employs, although you target white trash instead of muslims.”

    I think if you’re criticizing the specific members of an audience for doing a specific thing it isn’t stereotyping. There is a segment of our society who are racist scumbags, and calling them, specifically, out for what they are actively doing is completely different than making clumsy and generalized statements about an entire ethnic group.

    “…and the only reason Chapelle got away with it was because he was black, and black people can’t possibly be racist.”

    I have never heard a non-racist person complain about this before. The only people I’ve ever heard this from, before you mentioned it here, were people who in no way suffered from racism, save the stigma that expressing their own racism sometimes brings.

  46. How can something be “more race”? It can’t, but you are a moron.

    Now, this? This is how you do comedy.

  47. Deficit Hawk? Who publishes that character?

    DC. It’s a teamup with Surplus Dove.

    Wow, I’m glad I’ve never seen this mouth-breather (being Dunham, that is).

  48. If given the choice between drinking a bottle of urine and watching a Jeff Dunham DVD, I’d probably have to sit down and mull that one over for a bit.

  50. I love this line at the end of the Slate article, which Scott referenced above:

    “The Obama presidency, he says, represents a great opportunity to bring back Sweet Daddy D, the black puppet that’s been on the shelf since his first comedy special.”

    Gee, Slate, did you bother to ask Jeff the simple follow-up question of “Why?” The next sentence in the article is some half-assed non-sequitur about facial nuance, and reads like Slate skipped an entire paragraph. The real answer was, “You see, Slate, the Obama presidency made bigots mad. REAL mad, and, boy, those suckers came out of the woodwork like f*ckin’ termites when a Black man in the White House shattered their myopic world view, didn’t they? My formerly moth-balled pimp puppet provided a great opportunity to feed that racist beast.”

    – JEP

  52. Whoaaaa. I like all the people getting offended at you calling fans of racist materials racists and then they say racist things to you. This is like some sort of amazing mobius strip of stupid. I’m waiting for the birthers to arrive. I guess you didn’t realize who you were messing with, blog-man!

    kids: some jokes only work if you’re a racist or think gay people are weird. So yes, finding those things funny does make you a racist or a homophobe. Calling you a racist isn’t really stereotyping you because you have just evidenced your racism. I gives me headaches when people use this argument to keep from being called out on their bullshit. How about you actually stop being babies about it and recognize that “hey, I wouldn’t think this was funny unless there some something wrong with my views on other ethnicities.”

    And just because you’re a certain minority doesn’t mean you’re somehow immune to being a racist, “A Jew” person. So says the latina who had a racist korean-jewish girlfriend. that’s right, a gay, biracial racist. You just think about that for a bit because I fucking had to. Just because you experience prejudice doesn’t mean 1) you get to judge what is and isn’t prejudice and 2) you get to be racist. That is dumb.

  53. ya know, i was pretty offended by that article, too. I expected it to be funny, but because your anger wasn’t represented by a puppet of any sort, I’m pretty upset. People owning up to their opinions – weak! Puppets spewing hatred? Comic gold!

  55. Luckily, this Dunham guy hasn’t really taken off properly in the UK, despite evil Crazy Frog-pushing monsters ‘Jamster’ and their attempts to sell his catchphrases as ringtones.

    I bet he makes it big in 2010, though. I can completely imagine my family finding his act hilarious.

    Oh man, I bet one of my idiot cosuins quotes him at the Christmas dinner.

  56. Though I’m assuming my ‘idiot’ cousin can at least spell ‘cousin’, unlike me. Except for when I did there, twice.

  57. Okay, I officially un-double-dog-dare people to defend Dunham.

    I still think the best comments are the ones that threaten to never come back. Y’know, the ones who were reading this blog for free, and stopped coming back because of a piece you wrote for heavy which you were paid money for.

    Yessir, it’s a difficult decision sometimes.

  58. Just to interrupt a moment: adriana, I checked out your site. It’s all good, but batmanrobinii was my fave :) I’d have said it on your site, but I didn’t see a comments section.

    Ok, we can all resume being offended over straightforward issues now. I’ll offer this: the phrase ‘stand up for what you believe in, even if it means standing alone’ might sound punk rock and cool, but it’s also an excuse to pass off bigotry as something rebellious. Discuss! (by which I mean, of course, call me a moron, which is what passes for debate on teh internets)

  59. Why oh why does some guy have to anonymously identify himself as a Jew and then make an insanely ignorant, prejudiced comment? Why?

    Anyone wants to know my problems with my own people, it’s that guy.

    Also, I used to love Jeff Dunham. I WAS 10.

  60. Just to interrupt a moment: adriana, I checked out your site. It’s all good, but batmanrobinii was my fave :) I’d have said it on your site, but I didn’t see a comments section.

    As long as we’re turning this comments section into talking about Adriana’s art, I especially like her Legion of Super-Heroes stuff.

  61. To be fair, I’m sure Chris would stop stereotyping Dunham’s audience if they would stop being cracker-ass rednecks!

  62. “First, I have to agree with Ilion. I remember seeing Jeff Dunham on late night comedy shows back in the early to mid ’90’s, and I thought he was hilarious.”

    Ditto. Dude was awesome, so this comes completely out of the blue for me. I haven’t seen this guy in over a decade though.

    Anyway, thanks for another angry rant, internet. There aren’t nearly enough of them this time of year.

  63. Chris, this is the first time I’ve ever commented on one of your posts, and I just needed to let you know how much this article warms my heart. I’ve found Dunham awful for years, and while I’ve been marginally aware of his growing popularity (via advertisements on Comedy Central), I didn’t know that there was such a passionate anti-Dunham community, of which I can count myself a member. His “humor” is facile, offensive, and simply not funny. The past 50 years have seen no shortage of comedians who really made people think (Pryor, Carlin, Bruce, Chappelle, Rock, Hicks, etc.), so I can take some solace in knowing that Dunham will be forgotten relatively quickly.

  64. Deficit Hawk is like those Golden Age public domain revivals Dynamite is doing, except Deficit Hawk is only ever published when there is a Democrat in the White House. When the President is a Republican who runs a massive deficit, like Bush, or Reagan, or Nixon, or really any Republican president in modern memory, Deficit Hawk is strangely silent. His superpower is the ability to reconcile these two positions without admitting that he is just a hypocrite.

    I suspect a lot of the people whose asses are so badly sunburned in this thread are the kind who pride themselves on not being “politically correct.” In my experience, those types love to have some proxy dish it out for them, but they sure can’t take it themselves. Their superpower is very similar to Deficit Hawk’s.

  65. Yeah, I’m a racist. I like some racist humor. Wouldn’t be able to watch black comedians otherwise. And I loved Jeff Dunham 20 years ago. I liked his Santa Ana show as well, though I thought the pimp daddy jokes were sorta flat.

    The problem isn’t that he makes racist jokes, its that he’s not funny anymore.

  66. I love your blog, Chris, but this article was just not funny. It was mean-spirited. You can do better.

  68. Wow. Intolerent lefties. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

    I especially love how, when someone challenges your knee-jerk reactions with an explanation, the best you can come up with is “fuck off”!

    And Chris, you’re review was dull. You let your anger get away from you, and you turned to the dark side of the humor force. Vermic’s comment that Jeff was “sperm-killingly unfunny” got a bigger laugh out of me.

  69. I suspect a lot of the people whose asses are so badly sunburned in this thread are the kind who pride themselves on not being “politically correct.”

    I suspect that this is true. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t understand the difference between a funny comedian who isn’t “politically correct” (say a George Carlin, Lewis Black, or a Richard Pryor) and an unfunny comedian who isn’t “politically correct” (like a Jeff Dunham, Carlos Mencia, or a Dane Cook). The guys on the first list are artists who care a lot about their craft and work damn hard at it. They often tell their audiences things that make them uncomfortable because that’s what a good comedian does. That’s what makes the “not being politically correct” thing work – they’re making the AUDIENCE uncomfortable by CHALLENGING the beliefs that the audience holds. The guys on the second list are punks who ape what good comedians do but crack jokes that fit right in the comfort zone of their audience – they don’t make their audiences feel uncomfortable, they reinforce the things their audiences already believe. The humor tends to derive from the same portion of the brain that makes 10 year olds think that fart sounds at inappropriate moments are cool, or that making fun of the mentally disabled kid in class is really freaking funny.

    Just because someone isn’t PC that doesn’t make them funny – it may give your inner ten year old a thrill to hear someone make “forbidden” commentary but that doesn’t mean it’s funny – it just means that your inner 10 year old might be a bit of a d-bag and perhaps you should let him grow up a bit.

  70. Oh Chris. Truly a big ups to all your haters. The comment section for this should almost be mandatory requirement for reading that review. Both are equally hilarious.

  73. @68:”And Chris, you’re review was dull. You let your anger get away from you, and you turned to the dark side of the humor force”

    Uh, did you not read the introduction where Chris specifically said “I set aside my usual all-in-fun tone and bring you 917 words of pure hate for what I’m writing about”.

    And I have no problem with intolerance of racism and homophobia. Tolerance has limits – I’m also intolerant of murder and theft.

  76. I am surprised that no one has yet mentioned the recent new episode of 30 Rock (“Stone Mountain”), in which Jack Donaghy is scouring the nation for a new TGS cast member, particularly someone with whom “real Americans” and not uppity, elite, Northeastern liberals could relate. Who does he pick? Jeff Dunham and his puppets. Donaghy repeatedly criticizes Liz Lemon’s comedic colleagues as being disconnected and terrible, insulting crones, until Donaghy finally sees Dunham’s act, complete with its racism and misogyny out in the open. Dunham’s audience laughs, but Donaghy is mortified by Dunham’s jokes, leading Lemon to the conclusion she’s been driving at all episode: There is no “real” America, and that people are terrible everywhere.

    At first, I thought Dunham had made a strange choice for allowing himself to be the punchline in this storyline, but the easier answer is the simplest: Dunham has found a way to make a buck. I sincerely doubt that Dunham considers himself among the stand-up comedy elite. He knows, as a savvy performer, that if he taps into racist and misogynist humor he can make (drumroll please) lots of money.

    Someone in an earlier comment mentioned Chappelle, who unwittingly opened the floodgates for Comedy Central’s new focus on racial humor. The difference between Chappelle and a Dunham or a Mencia is that Chappelle had the underlying idea of using his humor to bridge race relations. This failed. During the filming of Chappelle’s third season, he witnessed white crew members laughing in unintended places, and he backed away from the program, realizing that his intentions had gone horribly awry. Dunham has no such intentions going in, he simply wants to make a buck. There’s no social commentary in his work.

    This is a question I often confront my students with when we discuss the inherent value or lack thereof in cultural and racial diversity in life. We watch the performances of Russell Peters, Dave Chappelle, and The Axis of Evil and discuss: Does so-called “race” comedy help or hurt? Can anything be solved by using (and perhaps propagating ) stereotypes, or are the comedians who use them doing us all a disservice, by suggesting that the best solution to dealing with our differences is the most basic and unproductive: laughing about it.

    When it comes to Dunham, I don’t think we can expect him to consider these questions. Dunham has found his meal ticket, and if he has to keep up the dead terrorist bits to do it, or make a holiday special, or have his own TV show, he’s going to.

    As for Comedy Central… Someone is watching this. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be on the air. But also consider that CC’s most popular programming (Daily Show & Colbert Report) is by far the most liberal on all of television besides the Rachel Maddow show. So maybe we’re looking at some true “fair and balanced” scheduling.

  77. I especially love how, when someone challenges your knee-jerk reactions with an explanation, the best you can come up with is “fuck off”!

    Fuck off.

  79. I’m a Jew who’s really not fond of that A Jew.

    Also Chris is easily the leat-afraid-of-Christmas shaygetz I have ever had the pleasure to read the posts of.

    G-d bless us, everyone!

  81. A Jew Named David Wolkin Says:
    Why oh why does some guy have to anonymously identify himself as a Jew and then make an insanely ignorant, prejudiced comment? Why?

    That’s the same way I feel when someone’s being a Jackass for Jesus.

  85. To put on the serious hat, the difference between Dunham’s and Chappelle’s act is that Chappelle’s skits- the ones about race, at least (there’s no real subtext to “World Series of Dice” that I can work out) tended to really play with our concepts of what race is. The “racial draft” one has a team of black people “claiming” Tiger Woods, then the Chinese team picks the Wu-Tang Clan, I forget whom the white group select- it points out how nebulous race can be. There’s one where he tries to explore what kind of music different races like, making that stereotype look absurd by treating it as anthropology, and even the “racist fairies” one that Chappelle regretted specifically had good intentions.

    Dunham just has a bunch of puppets repeat stereotypes and has that itself be ostensibly hilarious.

    The sad thing was, Achmed alone didn’t make me realize this- I figured “okay, I guess you can make fun of terrorists, since that’s what he is in specific”- but then I saw the promos with the black pimp and I was like Whatthehellseriously.

  87. Seeing someone berate Jeff Dunham in such terms was a Christmas gift in and of itself. His increasing popularity over these last few years has pretty hard to bear for people who don’t hate laughter itself.

    And I think you may have accidentally left ‘sexist creep’ off your list BTW.

  88. The difference between Richard Pryor and Jeff Dunham is that Pryor killed his car whereas Dunham is just a stupid fucking cracker.

    hth

  90. I wondered why I despised Jeff Dunham. Usually I dismissed my revulsion as simply him being a boring hack, or my completely and totally rational fear of ventriloquist dummies. Now I get it – Jeff Dunham is the death of all joy.

  91. See, when I was younger, Jeff Dunham was the shit on “Evening at the Improv.” And then over the last couple of years there’s been all this Jeff Dunham hate and I was wondering why, because, fuck, Peanut was hilarious back in the day!

    And then I saw some of his new stuff. It was kind of like the video equivalent of drinking a beer that’s gone skunky.

  92. Im sry but as a long time reader and big lover of mr. sims “scroll comedy”, for some reason the whole time im thinking …

    did mr. sims pull the “andy kaufman switch on us” and reveresed roll and went WWF bad guy on all of us?

    all the power to start a “race war” 2 days before christmas”

    not only am i laughing my ass off but kudos to you mr. sims i love you for making my holidays.

    ps. i was anticipating a post from the twitter girl who loved twilight to add her 2cents in to0

  93. Once upon a time, years ago, I remember seeing Jeff Dunham on TV, and actually being entertained. But that was then. Frankly, the guy just isn’t very funny anymore, which is a shame.

    Even if you conclude that he is not racist or homophobic, the fact remains that his bread and butter these days comes from playing to the lowest common denominator.

    (Regarding comment 39, I had no idea Pam Geller was one of your readers!)

  94. I’d seen some of Dunham’s stuff from when he was just relying on the old guy, and it wasn’t terrible, but I couldn’t tell why this guy was more famous than most ventriloquists, because it was the same basic routine. Puppet says outrageous things, puppeteer plays the straight man.

    But that wasn’t *that* long ago- maybe back when Joel Hodgson was referencing him he was actually good.

  95. Ahh, reading this on Festivus was awesome. lots of Festivus spirit. Now that the Airing of Grievances is over, let us move on the the Feats of Strength!

  96. But that wasn’t *that* long ago- maybe back when Joel Hodgson was referencing him he was actually good.

    I was under the impression that the MST reference was based on the fact his act was so incredibly hacky.

  99. Personally I enjoy the comedic stylings of Dara O’Briain. Ventriloquist acts see like comedy for the lazy since you have another ‘person’ to give your punchlines.

  103. I am counting the days until those shitheads at Comedy Central cancel that puppet-fisting hack’s show. I can’t imagine anything could be worse. Unless they give Dane Cook his own show.

  104. I only know Dunham for a youtube video featuring Ahmed, and I found it funny.

    Yeah I said that, sorry, dont kill me.

    Now I guess Ill have to watch some other routines to understand why everyone here hates him.

    Would anyone recomend me some specific piece that makes me see him as the racist asshole Sims claims he is?

  105. My favourite joke is how he can’t pronounce his puppet Achmed’s name correctly, as if this is somehow the puppet’s fault for having a tricky name (WHAT?).

    Joke? No, wait, I meant “bit of lazy pandering bullshit for an audience that needs to have its insular beliefs confirmed in the most boringly base possible ways”

  107. Would anyone recomend me some specific piece that makes me see him as the racist asshole Sims claims he is?

    If one of his Achmed bits wasn’t enough proof for you, no, there probably isn’t one that will.

  109. Up here in Canada, the Comedy Network, in a gesture of vicious sadism, has decided to treat the viewers to an all-day Dunham marathon for Christmas. Having sampled a minute here and there at various points of the day, I have come to conclude that NOTHING is out of bounds when it comes to insulting anyone who finds this ambulatory shitbag funny.

  110. Oh honestly. I admit, I do occasionally find some of Dunham’s stand up funny, but trying to argue that a lot of the guy’s humor isn’t racist is like trying to argue water isn’t wet.

    Just because you guys like something doesn’t mean it doesn’t have serious flaws.

  111. May the Christian God damn it, Chris Sims!

    I happen to BE a racist, cousin-fucking centaur, and I am SICK and TIRED of you constant hate speech.

    I come here for occasional wrestling references, NOT to be PERSECUTED.

    I guess it’s your blog and you can write what you want, but stop writing what I don’t want you to write!

  112. Dammit, I meant to say “racist, cousin-fucking centaur teabagger”. That’s what I get for posting at 6 a.m.

    Oh, well. Perhaps a cousin-fucker is an implied teabagger.

  113. you guys all suck dick if you dont think hes funny you have no humor and when he says racist jokes hes joking thats the whole comedy thing!! and if someone is trying to get u to watch it watch it bc i never heard of him till my friend showed me a video and i started crying it was so funny.

  114. Lookit me! I won the argument! I totally ended everybody’s conversation about this by putting them all in their places, grammar be damned, two and a half months after the conversation was over!

    Ah, blog posters, your tricks never fail to entertain.