Professionally-outraged Alyssa Rosenberg of ThinkProgress lays into Adam Carolla for mentioning that there’s a quota for hiring female writers in Hollywood productions:
I recognize that Adam Carolla’s entire schtick is to be awful and pretend he’s achieved some sort of profound insight, but I think his latest ugly comments about women in the writers’ room are worth highlighting, if only as an illustration of what men can get away with essentially without consequence in Hollywood.
This sounds like it comes from someone who has likely never heard Carolla speak, ever.
By the way Alyssa, Carolla isn’t the dish that ran away with the spoon. Your publicly-posted screed is already consequence enough.
Here are Carolla’s “ugly comments” in full:
They make you hire a certain number of chicks, and they’re always the least funny on the writing staff. The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor, I’m just gonna tell her, “Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they’ll have to hire you, they can’t really fire you, and you don’t have to produce that much. It’ll be awesome.
When you’re picking a basketball team, you’ll take the brother over the guy with the yarmulke. Why? Because you’re playing the odds. When it comes to comedy, of course there’s Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Kathy Griffin — super-funny chicks. But if you’re playing the odds? No. If Joy Behar or Sherri Shepherd was a dude, they’d be off TV. They’re not funny enough for dudes. What if Roseanne Barr was a dude? Think we’d know who she was? Honestly.
Carolla’s theory revolves around the fact that if “diversity” is going to be forced on writing staffs, for women to make the most of it, and that there are some extremely funny women out there.
How is that anti-woman again?
I cannot even imagine what would happen if a prominent female comedy writer was this openly dismissive of network brass, much less a request by network brass that you behave like every other employer in America is expected to behave, or add a little perspective to your team. Actually, I have a pretty good idea: she’d be branded a bitch, impossible in a way that Dan Harmon, recently defenestrated from Community, can’t even begin to contemplate.
Well Alyssa, if the pump fits…
Alyssa gets distracted into the plight of outspoken women in Hollywood who were never fired/terminated/criticized/in-any-way-impacted-for-speaking-out:
You can see that in Jessica Borsiczky being careful to say that even though she’s known women who were retaliated against for taking maternity leave, things are much better in television today. You can see it in Amy Sherman-Palladino trying as hard as she can not to be seen criticizing another female showrunner even as a (female) interviewer goads her as hard as possible into a catfight narrative.
If I was Rosa Parks and I saw these two instances as modern acts of courage and bravery, I’d drive the bus off a cliff.
And yet Adam Carolla, a comic so pathetic he thinks it’s clever to suggest nerds are undatable
According to Zack Stentz’s Twitter:
I met Adam Carolla at a party once when I was a journalist. I said something earnest and nerdy about another guest & he replied…”you didn’t get a lot of dates in high school, did you?” True? Definitely. Funny? You be the judge.
Wow, an uncorroborated quote about a joke that’s clearly funny to everyone except the unable-to-laugh-at-self-Stentz.
to say that men are somehow neutered by the rise of feminism
I challenge you to find that quote, or anything similar, or even the word “feminism” in the entire page of Carolla’s book linked to by Rosenberg.
Mark this one in the “Alyssa Rosenberg manufactures quotes out of whole cloth” column.
that it’s uproarious to suggest the acronym LGBT be replaced with YUCK
Ahh yes, gay marriage and NOH8 supporter Carolla who issued this apology.
Carolla told EW via his rep, “I’m sorry my comments were hurtful. I’m a comedian, not a politician.”
…is anti-gay.
is somehow, by virtue of these clear demonstrations of wit and the fact that he’s a dude with a frattish fanbase, free to behave like this. It’s not like the pretense that Hollywood is a meritocracy is anything but torn to shreds, but really, Carolla is one of the most humiliating illustrations of its utter, miserable failure.
I’m having trouble deciphering this “my creative writing prof told me to use hyperbole and complex structure to really knock out the reader” sentence.
First of all, dirt-poor Carolla who has done multiple pilots, written for all of his own shows, built up his fanbase from starving comedian to record-setting podcaster.
This wasn’t “I’m going to live in a van and pretend to be poor because it’s my choice” Jewel. This was “I was working cleanup crew on a construction site and now I’m making money in Hollywood” Carolla, in perhaps one of the finest examples of earning your way based upon merit.
It’s clear that if Alyssa Rosenberg attempted to do the same, her biased views and anti-Carolla chip on her shoulder wouldn’t get her far at all. And perhaps there is the source of her evident bitterness.
