What is Digg?Sponsored by AVG
CNET Top Weekly Download for Free Anti-Virus view!
free.avg.com - 2.4 million people a week get AVG Anti-Virus Free, for the best protection against web threats.
7 Comments
- TheMadgician, on 11/08/2009, -0/+1***** all of you i bet one person but this on and all you people with no lives digg it up wow he uses racial names so does every other freaking person in comedy . your probaley all the same freaking people how is he unorginally have you everf seen anybody come up with the stuff he has ummm lets see he has his own show bout his puppet no one else has that and he made his own caracters no one else has those personalities how bout all of you quit being so hypocritical cause i guarentee most of you have dropped the n word or insulted a minority but no we gotta go pick on the famous guy
- wildgift, on 06/26/2009, -1/+1I just saw some of his stuff on youtube. The guy is racist. Some of the stuff is funny, but most of it is unoriginal.
- bboytora, on 10/07/2009, -1/+1He sucks so much.
- p3jb, on 05/09/2009, -1/+1I caught Jeff's act last night without knowing anything about him. I received the tickets as a gift. In my opinion he is a talented ventriloquist and puppeteer. I thought ventriloquism was all but dead. There have been some great ventriloquists in the past like Edgar Bergen (and a couple of modern ones like Willi Tyler with his Lester character) but I couldn't name a contemporary American ventriloquist with a large following. Until now.
I'll be direct: Jeff's act is racist. Not a whole lot of way to get around it. Some may tag his detractors as people who are too politically correct or need to lighten up or point to the fact that Jeff makes fun of everybody. Still you can't deny that his two most popular characters, Walter and Achmed the Terrorist, play up to the latent and salient racism in his audience. With the Walter character, the audience laughs with Walter, not at him. They agree with his outdated racial notions, under the guise of a cantankerous old man spewing forth on various subjects like Manuel the Hispanic bathroom attendant. Achmed the Terrorist is even more blatantly racist. After watch Achmed the Terrorist, I couldn't stop and think, "Would Jeff be able to have a Sambo type character on his lap expressing his love of fried chicken and rap music and how much he would love to stick it to the Man?" Absolutely not. Civil rights groups would jump down Jeff's throat. Unfortunately, middle easterners have lousy PR and comedy like this goes largely uncontested.
Lisa Lampanelli also makes fun of all groups in her act, especially minorities. However with Lisa you sense a real affection she has for these groups of people. She's Italian-American, pretty much exclusively dates black men and once she's off stage and the comic persona is left behind, she comes across as very real and genuine. Not so much with Jeff. He's the Joe the Plumber of the Comedy World: a white guy with some intelligence and talent who shamelessly plays up to the prides and prejudices of his red state audience. - kjholt2012, on 12/26/2008, -1/+1I don't know that I would say he is biased, and I think it would be ignorant to say that ANYONE who at all ENJOYS his comedy is ignorant or racist. I enjoy Chris Rock's comedy, as well as Dave Chappelle's, but some of these men tell racist jokes that I find funny as well, and I'm a white man. I'm allowed to laugh.
But I'll step back and tell you, before you fume, that I agree with you. I got online immediately after watching part of his comedy special, to post about it.
His character, Achmed, is racist. The character itself is not awful, it is merely a caricature, and I understand that. It's like how Bubba J is a redneck stereotype, and that old man puppet is, well, an old man.
However, when Jeff resorts to making Christmas songs into songs about suicide bombing, it turns another corner. There are many people in our nation that have lost loved ones as victims of suicide bombings. Jeff turns this better when he says that the US military shot him before he could bomb anyone, but the tone of the song changes completely when Achmed's lyrics tell of how he blew up and was left with only a towel on his head.
Upon hearing Jeff make reference to the racial slur ("towelhead") vicariously through Achmed, my jaw dropped open. This is as bad as calling black people the N word on stage, or calling Iraqis (Achmed is confirmed to be from Iraq, I am not generalizing) sand n---ers.
I understand Jeff's right-wing tendencies, and I even don't mind that his old man puppet says it should be Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays. But when Jeff goes so far to please his right-wing audience as to use hidden racial slurs, it really has become a problem.
Please, Comedy Central, bring more guitar comedy or regular stand-up. Please stop showing Jeff and his racist puppeteering. - isseelew, on 12/25/2008, -1/+1I completely agree, his comedy is racist, stereotypical and biased. Anyone who enjoys his comedy is either ignorant or rasict aswell.
- alwaysright09, on 12/29/2008, -1/+0i agree w. all that...except what does that have to with a 'right wing audience'?
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is