‘That’s the Ultimate Race, Poor People’: In Praise of Adam Carolla’s Brutal Honesty
As far as I know, Loveline was never broadcast in Canada. Or maybe I just didn’t stay up late enough to hear the fondly remembered sex-and-drugs (and rock & roll) advice show co-hosted by Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla.
(We had our own late-night call-in show called Sex with Sue, which, being Canadian, wasn’t as exciting as it sounds because “Sue” was an earnest, erudite elderly lady who looked like the school librarian, if the school librarian had barely survived a three-alarm blaze.)
So I first heard about Adam Carolla when Dennis Miller had him on his show to talk about Carolla’s first book, In Fifty Years, We’ll All Be Chicks:… And Other Complaints From An Angry Middle-Aged White Guy.
Despite my advanced age and previous ignorance regarding everything “Aceman,” after reading that hilarious, ingenious, politically incorrect book, I turned into what stand up comedian Marc Maron dismissively refers to as a “Carolla-tard.”
(How serious an affliction is that, you ask? “Superfan Giovanni” supplies the farthest-gone with six-hour long — that’s not a typo — bootleg compilations of old Lovelines. Some messengers on the CarollaBoards have been “getting it on” since 2003. Fans set their phones to “ring” with “It’s just a waste of my time,” hoping to aurally locate each other, bat-fashion, in airport lounges.)
Carolla, "The Weez" and the legendary Ray circa 1984
Carolla’s hotly-anticipated follow up book, Not Taco Bell Material, is his second New York Times bestseller.
Here, he tells more R-rated stories of his rags-to-riches life, this time arranged thematically around the many homes he’s lived in, from the borderline hovels of his white-trash North Hollywood childhood to the million-dollar mansions he built himself (literally — he’s a former carpenter) after he made the showbiz big time.
While reading my (pre-ordered, of course!) Not Taco Bell Material in hardcover, I half wished I’d purchased the audiobook. Hearing these stories in Carolla’s own “nasally drone” adds to the experience.
That’s really my only gripe. Like his previous book, Carolla’s new one is a refreshing, old-fashioned Valentine to the rewards of hard work and discipline.
With some fist fighting & fart-lighting thrown in.
Carolla and family today (photo: Aaron Farley)
Carolla’s parents were divorced. His mom was such a hippie, she majored in “Chicano Studies,” even though she was white.
Too lazy to buy a Christmas tree or even give Adam a middle name, she went on welfare and never went off, to the disgust of her ambitious if aimless son.
In case that “Chicano Studies” bit didn’t tip you off, Carolla was born in the ’60s and raised in the ’70s. We’re both Gen-Xers who never thought we’d miss the “Me Decade” — with its avocado green kitchen appliances, gasoline shortages and 13 TV channels — until we grew up and were forced to live in the bike-helmet, peanut-allergy, illegal-lemonade-stand alternative.
Fans will be pleased to learn that all their favorite “Aceman” stories are in Not Taco Bell Material: “The Pretty in Pink After-Party,” “The Custom Closet,” and “Sleeping on the Beach in Tijuana.”
However, the story below is new to me.
I suspect that, whether readers are “Carolla-tards” or the utterly uninitiated, it may be the one that haunts them.
Before hitting his stride in comedy, Carolla worked plenty of jobs: ditch digging, boxing instructor, “comedy traffic school” instructor (?), carpet cleaning and a uniquely Californian gig: earthquake rehab. That is, reinforcing shabby public housing so it won’t collapse the next time that old San Andreas Fault acts up.
Recently, Carolla ran into a fellow he’d worked with on earthquake rehab jobs. He writes:
He didn’t remember me being there but said, “I remember that job. I did it in between courses in college during summer.”
I said, “You know how I remember who you are? I gave you your first tool bag [that is, a construction worker's tool belt.]” (…)
After a little reminiscing he said, “You were friends with Jeff, the racist guy, were you?”
I said, “I knew Jeff. He was a nice guy. I didn’t know he was a racist.”
I should clarify at this point in the story that Chipper is a black guy.
So I asked him why he thought Jeff was a racist, and he said they had a couple of issues on the site and that Jeff had it in for him.
I asked Chipper if he knew Jeff’s backstory. All he knew was that Jeff was a racist and was obsessed with becoming a fireman.
So I told him what I knew.
Jeff was a big, strapping white dude from Topanga Canyon whose lifelong dream was to fight fires. (…)
So Jeff had this placeholder [construction] job for eight years while preparing to be a fireman. Why?
Because of affirmative action. He went in for the fireman job and there was an eight-year waiting list.
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable.
I asked Chipper, “How did you get the job?”
He said, “I just showed up, the boss liked me and hired me.”
I said, “No offense, Chipper, but you didn’t even have bags when you showed up at the site. And when I gave you mine, you threaded a dress belt through it.”
This was earthquake rehab for the city, a government job, so there was affirmative action. We needed a certain number of black guys, a certain number of chicks, a certain number of Hispanics, et cetera.
They didn’t advertise it as affirmative action, but that’s what it was.
This was dangerous. We weren’t installing closets in a condo, this was earthquake rehab. We had to hang on the sides of buildings and cut steel.
Yet we ended up with Chipper, the world’s least experienced carpenter, who probably could have lost an arm building an Ikea end table.
Chipper never knew why Jeff hated him so much: He stood for everything that was in the way of Jeff and his dreams. This was the biggest payday of our lives, nineteen bucks an hour for carpenters, twenty-one if you were a laborer. (…)
Jeff finally got this bump-up and had to work next to a guy who’d never picked up a hammer and only got the gig because of his skin color.
[Jeff] was just as poor and disadvanted and came from as broken a home as any of the black guys who got a leg up because of affirmative action.
That’s the ultimate race, poor people.
Chipper is now a lawyer and probably doing quite well for himself but spent twenty years plus walking around thinking Jeff was a racist and not knowing he got on the job site because of affirmative action.
I don’t know what happened to Jeff.
Related from Kathy Shaidle:
- ‘This Would Be Heaven For Me’: An Evening with Dennis Prager and Adam Carolla
- The 3 Biggest Myths About Generation X
- Why Skipping College Was One of the Smartest Decisions of My Life
When people talk about “race-class-gender” issues, they really just include “class” as a little Marxist nostalgia.
I don’t know. There are people out there for whom class is as fundamental to a person’s identity as race and gender. They say the rest of us are kidding ourselves, suffering from false consciousness. Becoming “politically aware” was, for them, like a Buddhist monk achieving satori or a Christian accepting Jesus as his savior – this huge, life-changing experience. All the pieces fell into place, all doubts were resolved, and no further seeking was required. I don’t think these jokers are merely nostalgic about class.
I used to listen to Loveline in ’97. Carolla hit his peak on that show. For anyone not familiar with the show, I urge you to get the free downloads. The edge comes off a bit since it’s so long ago but I felt that on that show, Carolla did the best ad lib comedy I’d ever heard, with the exception of the old Groucho TV show.
A bemused, befuddled, PC, compassionate, somewhat starchy and loving Dr. Drew was the perfect foil for Carolla. Despite their fundamental differences, you could tell that these guys really liked each other and won each other over to the other’s side so-to-speak.
Carolla is still funny, but he’s never been as funny as his run on that show. They had on celebrities, talked to them and then would take phone calls about love and sex while the celebrity sat in. It was hilarious.
I used to listen to Loveline every night, and Carolla was indeed brilliant. Off the top of his head he would come up with analogies for the listerners’ problems that a team of a hundred writers couldn’t think up in a year. Listening to him made me
a) realize how bad the public school system is, because something is wrong when a brilliant guy like Adam can barely graduate from high school.
b) wonder what Howard Stern thought of him. It turns out Stern had never heard of him when I listened. The first time he was on Stern, Howard called him a genius within five minutes. And Stern is the ultimate trash talker who rarely praises anyone.
For every white guy who loses an opportunity for a job because of affirmative action, there are probably a thousand minorities who have had the same experience due to their skin color. I’ve personally seen minority teenagers get turned down for jobs at Walmart while white kids get the job. Our program prepped both the minority and the white kids for the positions, and the basic difference between them was skin tone. One time two kids from our program applied to Walmart. The black kid was told there were no jobs available. He was well dressed, clean cut and reasonably articulate (Do I sound like VP Joe?). Ten minutes later the white kid, similarly attired and qualified, went into the same office and was hired on the spot.
Despite this, I don’t believe in racial quotas. Affirmative action can take many positive forms, but creating a reverse bias system makes guys like Jeff justifiably angry and diminishes the accomplishments of minorities like chipper. That being said, minorities still have a greater burden in the job market, even beyond the problems that poor whites face.
I don’t believe you for a moment. Wal-Mart, and most other major retailers today, including the one I work for, require that all jobs be applied for ON A COMPUTER TERMINAL. Resumes and the results of the brief personality test admistered online go to a central office. When a local store has an opening, the CENTRAL office picks the candidates who go in for an interview. If a minority candidate gets far enough to get a an interview, the candidate gets the job. Period. Because, quite honestly, few of them get that far. And the company wants minority employees.
Even so, in our area, even with knowing from the very beginning that a urine test for drugs is part of the screening process, one of every two applicants who got far enough for an interview, both white and black, never pee in the bottle, and don’t get the job after all. They don’t even bother seeing if they’ll fail the test, they just don’t take it.
He didn’t give a date for when this happened. They haven’t *always* required people to apply “ON A COMPUTER TERMINAL”.
And so just what is the point, if we are not talking about what goes on today? Tossing around stuff from the past as if it goes on today is sloppy and unhelpful.
I am sure that there are employers out there who base a lot on appearance as far as who gets the job. I am equally sure that there are employers out there who would prefer to hire a black kid over a white or Hispanic because of the clientele. This is the problem with anecdotal evidence. It is only good for that one situation. Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly agree with your condemnation of setting up one biased system to counteract another. It is just the kind of idiocy that created the first system.
What Walmart are YOU talking about? Every Walmart I’ve ever been in has never had a white person behind the counter – all minorities and you’re grateful if they speak half decent English.
Tell the lawyers to stop discrimination lawsuits.
If you have equally qualified black and caucasion applicants it makes sense to hire the causasian.
The caucasian is less likely to sue you for discrimation if you have to fire him. Black comlexion has gifted many with guaranteed liftime employment or a big lawsuit payday. A big payday for one guy keeps the next guy walking in the door from getting hired.
Get rid of anti discrimination laws and employers will be more likely to take a chance on the brother-man.
Peter, I think your credibility has ‘petered out’.
Peter, I was encouraged by the first sentence of your last paragraph, but you ruined it with the last sentence. It is not true. Once you do hire the minority, if they turn out to be completely incompetent and you have to fire them, you will get sued for discrimination. Guaranteed. No Black or Hispanic person has EVER been fired for being a loser. It is ALWAYS racism.
And most unfortunately, this has made all the competent, hard working minority people have to work twice as hard to prove that they’re not just tokens.
Bad policy.
Hogwash. There is a monstrous difference between government sanctioned and enforced racial bias, such as “affirmative action”, and private racism that costs an employer the chance to hire the best person (your example). The former is a cancer that rots society, a moral wrong of the first order, the latter is some individual fool’s imbecility that is, as often as not, likely to be countered by some other individual’s bias running the other way (and, even if it were not cancelled out, private acts of bias are no basis for instituting government invidious discrimination – it would be far better to rely on the civil justice system if at all).
Moreover, there is NO moral or ethical support for today’s government mandated racial bias termed “affirmative” action; it penalizes the innocent (persons who have neither practiced racism nor benefitted from it) even as it rewards the undeserving (at this late point in its existence, affirmative action privileges persons who have not suffered from government discrimination but actually are the beneficiaries of it).
Our crumbling society would be far better off if this vile practice were discarded immediately. Whatever justification may have existed in the 1960s when affirmative action began, it serves no use today and wrongs the innocent generation of young whites and asians while it rewards a generation that is wholly undeserving of preferences, as they pointedly have not suffered from government sanctioned racism because it ended in the 1950s – 1960s.
Crapola. Every WalMart I’ve walked into has been staffed almost entirely by blacks. If WalMart favors whites in the hiring process, you sure can’t tell it from the people working behind the counters.
Peter – you are right on…I don’t know about the big retailers, but I worked for a mom and pop business for a few years that would never hire a black or Latino…and told us so. They told me just to file away any application from someone that appeared black or latino…to only pass on to them applications from white people. I hated it there, and left as soon as I could. And the guy Jeff should not have hated the black guy just cause he hated the government’s policy. That is the ignorance of such people.
I’ve been sold on the Aceman’s new book. Visiting Amazon shortly.
It’s interesting how AC managed to tip the scales in the nature/nurture argument. Yes, it’s true that Adam is an exceptional individual. Still, how is it that a young man raised by a single welfare mom who majored in Beaner Studies became the disciplined, hard-working, successful individual he is today?
I’m leaning towards nature. There are countless Carolla examples out there, in addition to the flipside: kids who were given every advantage in life and still turned out losers.
Quick aside – Adam is very easy to listen to. Howeever, someone should smack his little bitchtern upside the head and tell her to STFU while the adults are having a conversation.
I get what Carolla was saying but how did being a bitter jerk to Chipper solve any of Jeff’s problems?
It didn’t “solve” any of Jeff’s “problems”. What it did do was enable Jeff to cope with the fact that our govt chose to kick Jeff in the teeth because he was born white. You know just like the black man got kicked in the teeth back in the day and the Irish man got kicked in the teeth in his day and the Italian man got kicked in the teeth etc… So in order to fix “racism” we use racism… Stuck on STUPID.
You want to know how Jeff felt? How about you send me 30 percent of your gross income and the next time you earn a promotion or a raise I get that too.
When someone gets a crummy deal they’re supposed to bend over and say please may I have another? This is the problem with women, constantly screening for Alpha-attitude, one of the major reasons anti-White discrimination continues, because most women figure “they guy wasn’t good enough anyway.” Meanwhile getting up in arms when a Black or Hispanic guy gets discriminated against. There is nothing quite so ruthless and predatory as a woman’s attitude towards a non-winning White guy. Not being an Apex Alpha is the one sin women never forgive in White guys.
Note: no comment on Chipper having the usual chip on his shoulder as an admittedly incompetent Black carpenter. Its only White guys who are “bitter.”
The guy got a crummy deal. He didn’t like it. And made it known. Anti-White male discrimination is based on at least in great part, on the dislike of White women for non-winner White guys.
Thought experiment: how about every White woman in America has to walk five paces behind every non-White woman, grovel in their presence, give up half of their bank account, give up their dream job (so a woman of color not qualified can have it), and give over their house or apartment and car to a woman of color? Heck give up their boyfriend to them if he is hot, and other women want him!
Then lets ask why they are being a bitter, angry jerk? After all if they were really winners, they’d be … Angelina Jolie. Or Charlize Theron.
Heck you might as well ask most women why they’re not as hot as most young Hollywood starlets, or as thin as most models, or as rich as Ivanka Trump.
Anti-White discrimination will only end when White women get the worst of it, good and hard.
Excellent point! I’ve been trying to tell people this for years!
Um, dude, the fact that you have trouble getting a date because you are a loser is not some minorities fault. Winners don’t complain, and winners don’t make excuses for why they are such failures. I see a big ole loser.
Jeff emigrated to a country whose government didn’t use racial discrimination to enforce mandated quotas in his career path. Performance and results matter. Oh, they also had prettier women and a wider variety of beers.
Don’t you just love “affirmative” action? Presently, its discrimination in favor of a generation which has never suffered any institutionalized racism (blacks, latinos), by practicing invidious (harmful) racism against another generation (whites, asians) who have never practiced racism, or been enriched by government sanctioning it…
To the fascist ‘progressive’ left (I repeat myself), its always 1930 or 1859. Not to mention they can’t seem to grasp the difference between private acts of bias (a sad aspect of the human condition that injures bigots, of ALL races, most of all) and the cancer of state sanctioned racism (Jim Crow, today’s affirmative action). In 300 years, these contemptible fools will still be championing government institutionalized racism, its what they do and who they are and they depend on the power it supplies them with…
The ugly truth is that every white or asian American is, simply by virtue of their pigmentation, a victim of state sanctioned racism (it flat out sucks in America to be white or asian, let alone white or asian and male), while every black or latino is, by virtue of their pigmentation, a beneficiary of state sanctioned racism (even though, in the aggregate, they’ve never personally suffered from institutional racism but in fact benefit from it under ‘affirmative’ action). No one can argue with a straight face that the people presently hurt by affirmative action somehow benefitted from past government sanctioned racism – nor can anyone argue with a straight face that the present beneficiaries of state sanctioned racism called affirmative action ever suffered personally from past state sanctioned racism – in each case, they were not even alive. So how is this fair? How is this consonant with the 14th amendment? Its not.
This is a profoundly sick country.
I don’t think it was meant to solve any of Jeff’s problems but rather explain to *Chip* that Jeff wasn’t just a “racist”.
I noticed a (?) behind the notation of Comedy Traffic School, so I thought I’d explain. Here in California, if you get a traffic ticket, in some circumstances you can get the fine reduced by going to Traffic School. You sit in a class room and listen to someone lecture you about the bad things that can happen as a result of running a red light or making an illegal turn. Everyone hates them…
So along comes the solution: Themed Traffic Schools. Some guy gives you the class dressed as a Storm Trooper from Star Wars, or wearing clown makeup, or whatever. Stand up comics doing a “Comedy Traffic School” are among the most popular. Believe it or not I’ve even heard once or twice of a “Topless” traffic school, with strippers giving the class. Since you get to choose which school you go to (as long as it’s accredited by some state agency) they compete for your business, and the comedy ones are very popular, because your wife won’t complain and your friends won’t ridicule you.
“This is a profoundly sick country.”
It has been for some time, but certain groups want it that way to stay in power´to push their agendas.
The DOD is going to let women in combat roles now. Yeh. Young mothers off to war for the man! The results of this decision will be ignored as those who made it will never wear a uniform, or face the draft, and will celebrate it as another championed “woman’s issue” for cheap political posturing.
The Republic is going to have to go thru some tough times if it wants to survive and it won’t be bloodless.
UM…women are already in combat roles. The Pentagon will now just acknowledge it…and pay them for it. And it is about time. Women are attached to fighting units in Afghanistan to speak to the muslim women, and they encounter combat on a regular basis. Women are flying combat aircraft.It is time they get the acknowledgement and pay.
Apologies David. My reply was meant for “My Country..”
OK, so apparently the Topless Traffic school was just a prank…but trust me, it’s the sort of thing that if it’s just a story this week, next week it’s going to be reality. We do crazy crap like that all the time out here…
I didn’t think it was very funny in the hardware bit video that was posted when he does the non-creative and insulting route of calling a stranger’s son a possible homosexual. If the kid had looked like he was a quarterback he probably would have done it another way. Or how about a black guy and his son? Pretty sure he wouldn’t have called a black guy’s son a possible homosexual. He’s just playing to his audience’s pretentions – a bunch of dimwits who don’t give a crap about anything but beer and boobs.
How about this from now on, Republicans and Conservatives not giving credence to everything which happens to be successful. You hear it all the time as a lame cop-out: “well, I don’t agree with what their doing, but their not breaking the law, their successful, and it proves capitalism, so more power too em…” Baloney.
the story about Chipper is really about obama isn’t it?
Carolla endorsed Obama in 2008. He said Obama would do such a good job from then on we would only elect black men president.
I highly recommend the audio books. They’re abridged but have some extra material. Mr. Corolla’s delivery is great. He also interviews Ray.
Every liberal I’ve spoken to with stories very similar to the one Carolla said gave me the same reaction. “Oh, poor white boy you think you have it so tough and you are soooooo oppressed”. It amazes me that they have a superiority complex about fighting racism yet they think the way to ending racism is by demonizing their own race. I really don’t get the mental gymnastics between that one. We should end ALL racism not decide hey now it’s time to punish the whites! How does that end racism?
To eliminate racism, repeal the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Once again, the conversation becomes obscured by esoterica. Bottom line: no one wants to hire a thief.
This article is a perfect example of the animosity caused by racial favoritism, whether past or present…the favored and penalized are encouraged to hate each other by the political-media-education perpetrated stereotypes deceitfully claiming unjustifiable tax funded, government enforced favoritism as “necessary” for all sharing an irrelevant physical characteristic, and while the population remains mired in perpetual racial favoritism’s perpetual animosity, the actual cause of the animosity, which is the political filth in D.C.,remains not only unharmed, but perpetually and profitably buying votes with racial favoritism.