Anti-gay stand up and comedians in the 1980s

Kinison = funny

Clay = funny

Murphy = funny

TBH, would LOVE to hear a gay comedian's set comprised mostly of heterophobic jokes. Sadly, because of cancel culture and P.C. this is not a possibility.

I wonder what Kinison would have been like today had he not died. Probably obscure, hidden like Murphy. He was a preacher so he may would have gone full-on rightwing like Dennis Miller, maybe. He was really into becoming “family entertainment”. Or maybe he could have gone sitcom route like The World According to Jim or King of Queens.

R1 is self-loating.

R2 Kinison was desperate to get into TV and movies. He was enraged when Clay got the Bruce Willis intended movie Ford Fairlane, which bombed and was out of theaters within a week. Then he got his own TV show which only lasted a couple of months.

Kinison did Married With Children and In Living Color but was apparently hard to work with because of his drug addiction.

I think if Kinison was alive today he'd be on Fox spouting rightwing propaganda. Clay has a revived career because of his movie roles but I don't know what his material is like today.

What I find a little sad is that these guys were thrust into the spotlight by Rodney Dangerfield who never did any anti-gay material and who was actually pretty gay positive in the 80s.

I didn’t know that

I love Rodney Dangerfield. Always have, even as a little kid. Loved Back to School.

R1 is a right wing nutjob, just posts trollish stuff all over DL, never actually contributes anything worthwhile.

[quote]these guys were thrust into the spotlight by Rodney Dangerfield

How so? You mean they were the latest generation of insult comics?

Unfortunately, gay jokes were typical and acceptable in the olden days. Even gay ally Joan Rivers made some edgy remarks about gays in the 1960s.

In her interview with Dick Cavett, starting at 2:38, she tells Dick about her stay in Fire Island, and a few euphemistic comments about gays were mentioned, included a bleeped-out word that Joan said at 2:58 (I believe she said "faggots"). But back then, the average straight person wouldn't have found any of that offensive at all.

Kinison’s ugly fat ass would absolutely have eventually become a right-wing asshole as soon as his career dried up. All has-berms blame their dead careers on the “libtards.”

R6 You go, Tiger! Growl!

[quote] Clay = funny

Especially if you're not a gay.

Andrew Dice Clay burned hot for about 18 months and then fell off the planet.

Now he's back to acting - like that roll with Lady Gaga in A Star is Born.

Lisa Lampanelli still does well - but it's really such crude, juvenile and old school humor.

I'll never understand how picking on people - women, different races, gays, handicapped - is funny.

Clay seemed like rough trade back in the day.

R7 - Rodney Dangerfield used to have a nightclub called Dangerfield's, which introduced a lot of young comics.

He also hosted a Young Comedians special on HBO from time to time, where some of the more promising of the comics were introduced to TV. (In addition to Clay and Kinison were then new comics like Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Saget, Barry Sobel and Robert Townsend.)

Dangerfield introduced young comedic talent who then went on to make antigay jokes. His memory needs to be erased. If he were alive he would be sent to a Gulag. Anyone alive today who ever laughed at Dangerfield should be canceled.

Rodney Dangerfield was famous for his self-deprecation - I don't remember him making fun of other people too much. That was rather unique for his era of comics.

Don Rickles was also an awful mean insult comic - but was genuinely warm and nice offstage.

Joan Rivers balanced insults with self-deprecation, but she usually targeted celebrities, her husband, her kid and made-up characters. I don't put her into the same meanness category as others. Celebrities can take it.

R8 is an interesting clip. I think Rivers' take (on "faggots" on Fire Island) was not unusual. I've known women from that generation, some of them pretty intelligent, and I've been shocked how they could be sophisticated and know (and befriend) gay men while casually dropping the F-word. This was the 1980s and 1990s (and perhaps later). Eventually, that changed. As we know, Rivers (a GOP loyalist) was also an early LGBTQ supporter and adored her gay male fans.

That said, there's no excuse for anyone using the F-word. Not now, not ever. (That includes you and your shitty movies, Matt Damon.)

Here is Kinison responding to his gay critics.

You need to separate Clay and Kinison from the others in terms of anti-gay material, and take in consideration that they were doing this material when AIDS was incurable and gay men were hated and feared by many at that time.

^which might have made it more accepted, R19, but in retrospect, all the more repellent.

I delight that Sam Kinison is dead. Just saying.

Howard Stern was also hugely anti-gay in the 80s and 90s. He was protested by an AIDS rights group because he said you could catch AIDS just by being in the same room with a gay man. It was on YouTube but I can’t find it now.

Sam Kinison is so descriptive at R18. He knows how long the dates are, he knows how long the cocks are—he must have spying.

That fool that splatters watermelons all over his audience is an anti-gay right winger as well, or at least he was in 1991.

Sam Kinison read about a group of homosexual necrophiles who paid funeral homes to have sex with corpses, so he did a comedy routine where he played the part of the corpse being raped.

This was one of the routines that enraged many gay critics. It's on Youtube.

Somewhat off-topic, but in the 80s you had a lot of people who were both very anti-racist and very anti-gay at the same time.

Kinison was just a louder hairier Rush Limbaugh, what a punpkin-headed piece of human garbage.

Anti-racist?

[quote]Sam Kinison read about a group of homosexual necrophiles who paid funeral homes to have sex with corpses

Did he, though? Because that sounds like either obvious tabloid lies or something he just claimed to have read, but didn't.

Yeah because there was a shortage of casual gay sex, sure.

Sam had a gay arsenal, how could he not? Gay porn everywhere.

Not condoning these guys, but it was par the course back in the '80s and even early '90s. Several films would have characters saying "Are you a fag?" I watched The Last Boy Scout from 1991 the other day and, yes, while it is 30 years old, it had one scene featuring Bruce Willis asking Damon Wayans if he was a fag.

Andrew Dice Clay was hugely controversial back then. Nora Dunn famously boycotted an episode of SNL when Clay was the host. He's managed to have a bit of a film resurgence in the past decade with acclaimed roles in Blue Jasmine and A Star is Born (curiously, co-starring supposed "friend of the gays" Lady Gaga). Not sure if he ever apologized to the gay community or atoned for his homophobia and misogyny.

Sam Kinison was a mess. I remember that episode of Joan Rivers' daily talk show when he was scheduled to be her guest and he didn't show - and Joan and her crew went to his hotel to find him.

I still collect audio cassettes as a hobby. A few weeks ago, I found an Eddie Murphy comedy album on cassette. I thought "this is a cool find". I looked at the tracklisting, and the first title said "Faggots".

I placed it back on the shelf.

I have to admit it - there was something about Sam Kinison that I, a young gay man while he was alive, found funny. I don't know if it was how his material and persona matched up or just his ability to pull off a gradual crescendo, but when he was shocking, it was actually shocking - and it was funny. That said, a very little of him went an awfully long way. His cameo in Back to School was just about the right amount.

Clay was a fucking piece of shit who was never the least bit funny and is a lousy actor as well.

I'd like to think Kinison would have mellowed with age, but hard to tell.

[quote] " Sam Kinison read about a group of homosexual necrophiles who paid funeral homes to have sex with corpses." Did he, though? Because that sounds like either obvious tabloid lies or something he just claimed to have read, but didn't

There's a short film on YouTube that explains how Sam found out about this. Someone read it in the paper and told him about it right before he went on stage. He apparently created the routine that night on stage.

See the discussion at timemark 2:45 about how the routine was created.

I thought Rickles deal was that he made fun of people in the audience and might make fun of a woman for being a woman or a Black guy for being Black, but would then "make up" with them and actually make them feel good -- at least when his act worked.

Versus making jokes about woman and Black people when none were around..

Don't worry, OP. One is dead and the other's career died decades ago and we're still here and queer!

Howard Stern was fixated on lesbians. He had a whole routine about how everyone loves lesbians--straight guys love them, women love them, I believe the tag was "You can't go wrong with lesbians" -- it was sort of funny because he'd have some Hollywood director on talking about his movie and Stern would, with mock seriousness, ask if there were any lesbians in the film and when the director said no, Stern would tell him he was making a big mistake because "You can't go wrong with lesbians..."

He also had a song called "The Lesbian Song" he used to play (at link)

When I was in fourth or fifth grade we thought listening to (and laughing at) Stern was the height of sophistication though we had little idea what he was talking about most of the time. Especially the lyrics of the lesbian song which went [italic] "Lesbian, Lesbian, any woman can be a lesbian." and "Life will be better with no penis between us"

[quote]Someone read it in the paper and told him about it right before he went on stage

Some guy says it was in the paper, he doesn't say what paper. Was it next to the story about Bat Boy? It's just weird that I can't find any reference to this, and you'd think people would remember a "band of homosexuals paying $3000 each for the chance to have sex with corpses."

Also, r33, Sam's own words about that story's origin don't match up AT ALL with what that guy in the documentary said.

It's b.s. Sorry, it's just not true, it was plain old homophobia masked as a joke.

I'm remembering this now, we had a science teacher we didn't like in 6th grade, we thought she favored the girls in the class, and we would sing The Lesbian Song but without words, just "Da da da, da da da" but the whole class knew what we were doing. There were about eight of us who would sing it, plus some of the girls who wanted to seem cool. One of my friends told her it was something we needed to sing at our bar mitzvahs so she was none the wiser.

What obnoxious little spoiled brats we were.

[quote]That fool that splatters watermelons all over his audience is an anti-gay right winger as well, or at least he was in 1991.

Gallagher? Don’t tell me he’s anti-gay and a right winger! That’s going to ruin my memories of watching him when I was a kid.😢

Kinison and dice were over by 1990 and their time as big comediennes lasted about 2 years.

Comedy is subjective and not to be seen through our usual moral lens. It’s either funny to us, or it’s not. You can either laugh at yourself, with yourself, or you can’t. Chris Rock does a bit called “I hate n*****s” and it’s insightful and hilarious.

For me the two FUNNIEST comedians are Mario Cantone and Lisa Lampinelli.

[quote]Gallagher? Don’t tell me he’s anti-gay and a right winger! That’s going to ruin my memories of watching him when I was a kid.

Oh, God, he's awful.

[quote]The French: "They ruin our language with their faggy words." Above all, everything is gay, gay, gay to Gallagher. He leans into it with the borderline-­nonsensical, icked-out, ignorant glee of a boy—or the protest-too-much vigor of a GOP senator. Gallagher delivers your Bible verse for the day: "Without God, we are nothing but dust. What is butt dust? Is that what you get if your homosexual isn't properly lubricated?" He relates a story about spilling mouthwash onto his crotch during a show: "Lucky for me, there was no homosexuals in the area—'cause my balls was minty fresh." At other points during the show, Gallagher says, "Men and women can't live in the same house" and "There's no way men and women can have a relationship." He says he can't remember why he used to feel pleasure in looking at a woman. And, "There's only one kind of homosexual guy, and that's the pretty ones—why do homosexual men have to be so good-looking?"

[quote]Then Gallagher gets a tin pie plate. He opens a giant can of fruit cocktail and pours it in. He opens a can of some Asian vegetable—water chestnuts, maybe—and pours that in, too. "This is the China people and queers!!!" he screams and takes his sledgehammer to the thing with a fury that is no fun at all. Wet chunks of China people and queers fly everywhere.

Wow, he should have stuck with the hammer...

Gallagher's routine was always dreck, but at least it used to seem like harmless, rather sweet-natured dreck. And occasionally he could put out a wry comment that indicated that something else was going on upstairs, or make a social point (especially with pollution).

Evidently those days are as long gone as the ruins of his hairline.

R7 both guys got their big breaks on Rodney's comedy specials on HBO.

As a kid and even now as an adult Murphys bit about Ralph and Norton fucking cracked me up. His impressions were dead on and he got the physicality into the joke. The rest of his anti-gay jokes did not entertain me not even as a kid.

I was in my late teens when Kinison and Clay were hugely popular and I did not get their popularity. My brother loved them, but even though he was apolitical, he hated everything that wasn't white male and Catholic.

There was a visceral reaction with their audiences that looked like a Klan rally with the crowd reacting to the guy on stage railing against the people they seemed to think deserved their derision. Even today reading the Youtube comments on their videos people still seem to think that are very existence somehow lessens their own existence.

Here's the bit about Ralph and Norton.

I think it's interesting that these guys came around before the internet and Youtube and they could do the same material for months or years and it was always new because it wasn't seen in mass media. If they were working today their material would be online within two hours and everyone would have heard their material a million times before their second show even started. On the other hand, their anti-gay shit is still alive today because of the internet.

R44 Thanks for that link. I had no idea he was such a piece of shit. Glad his career is over.

Eddie Griffin much more recently

I don't know what's worse, that clip or the comments complaining that you can't call gay people faggots anymore.

Like you can't read between the lines anyway. The "faggot" is just silent. Call it the "silent F"....

I second the call for an openly gay comedian who talks trash about hets similarly. That would be payback for this.

That Eddie Murphy routine made me want to channel my inner Archie Bunker, but then Dice and Kinison made me want to go full-on George Jefferson.

But what hets? Black hets? White hets? Will he single out the hets based on race? “Breeder” jokes or “crotch dropping” jokes aren’t very funny nor daring.

[quote] There was a visceral reaction with their audiences that looked like a Klan rally with the crowd reacting to the guy on stage railing against the people they seemed to think deserved their derision. Even today reading the Youtube comments on their videos people still seem to think that are very existence somehow lessens their own existence.

They are worse than the KKK because they will hide behind Black heterosexuals to justify their own homophobia.

This thread makes me want anti-lynching laws repealed.

[quote] But what hets? Black hets? White hets? Will he single out the hets based on race? “Breeder” jokes or “crotch dropping” jokes aren’t very funny nor daring.

I hope he goes after heterosexual of all races. You can even use racial slurs for all I care. Whoever he is, he has earned it.

Every clip on this thread is why. Gays have earned the right to use every derogatory word and phrase in the book. Breeders have not. I will keep calling breeders breeders.

If you attack my sexual orientation, I will attack everything you are. I will use slurs against your race, your religion, your sex, your nationality, and even your genus and species.

Stop calling gays f——t, boy, or we will lynch you for acting uppity to your gay superiors!

[quote]If you attack my sexual orientation, I will attack everything you are. I will use slurs against your race, your religion, your sex, your nationality, and even your genus and species.

I like that. That’s fearless.

I’m amazed R31, that a scene of Streisand’s from The Owl and the Pussycat doesn’t get mentioned more. If you are going to give him shit then give her some too.

Hate speech is only hate speech when directed by heterosexual against gay people. When gays and especially lesbians do it to heterosexuals, it’s payback for their hate speech and for every act of violence against LGB people that hate speech incites.

God, how I wish Rosie and Ellen would’ve gone after the breeders in their stand up acts. Rosie owes us after ruining the last season of [italic]Gimme A Break![/italic]

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see an uberbutch lesbian go after the handmaid breeder bitches who refused to chow down on her pussy.

Except for a gay man calling for every man whoever cockblocked him and called him a bad name to be sent to a concentration camp as punishment for cockblocking and hate speech.

Gun up, gays! And shoot to kill!

In Living Color would really push the envelope.

Yet the big gay sketch show did not.

The sooner that era of homophobes dies off, the better

My God you people need to lighten up. Its called comedy for a reason, everyone is fair game. Stop crying about getting your feelings hurt, grow some balls.

Thanks for putting us in our place, hetero piece of shit R71

What cretins like Gallagher and Andrew Dice Clay did/are doing is not "fair game". It's pretty much hate speech.

An openly gay comic going after heteros would not be particularly funny because it would just fit into the current zeitgeist where denigrating all white people, all “cisgender” people, all heteros is just… what everyone does on Twitter.

What is *truly* funny is when an openly gay comedian like Tim Dillon says things about his own sexual desires (lusting after murderous twinks, saying he’d “bathe in” his stepbrother’s balls every morning if he had a hot stepbrother) that make people uncomfortable—THAT is actual comedy because it’s somewhat transgressive and isn’t the same cheap shots that everyone else has already been taking for the last few years.

But I doubt most DLers would like him.

The one thing I always remember about Kinison was how Madonna mentioned him “spitting on Jessica Hahn” (whoever that was) and saying, ‘why is it okay for TV audiences to see that but not my “Justify My Love” video?’ or something to that effect.

R71 black people can make fun of black people, no one else can. Muslims can make fun of Muslims, no one else can. And along it goes with all minorities. However, it seems that everyone is permitted to make fun of gays and lesbians and I will add straight women to that group.

[quote] Black people can make fun of black people, no one else can. Muslims can make fun of Muslims, no one else can.

The issue isn't who is allowed to say what. The issue is that, say, a black man get what black people go through each day and make light fun of that. The black man gets it, the audience gets it.

Some straight white dude bitching about gays doing it up the ass, an orifice used for shitting? He doesn't get it. The (gay) audience doesn't get it.

An outsider never gets it and will most likely fail at making the audience laugh with him AND the subject matter instead of laughing AT the subject matter. And laughing at something isn't fun or cool anymore. It's considered mean and cruel.

[quote]However, it seems that everyone is permitted to make fun of gays and lesbians

Because minorities and whites don’t see or even believe that gays and lesbians are real people. They see only “behavior”. You can’t see “gay” the way you can see “black”. - which is complete ignorance.

Andrew Dice Clay was never funny.

R75, blacks, Muslims and everyone else make up the gay community.

Not according to many black and Muslim people R79. They seem to think only white men are gay.

R76 Straight people who do anti-gay jokes are making us the outsiders and that's why straight audiences laugh. On the other hand and with the right audience I could as a white man make fun of black people and they would get it and laugh. As long as I make my jokes as grossly stereotyped as possible, they will get it. Straight people doing anti-gay jokes aren't using nuance to get laughs.

[quote] Straight people who do anti-gay jokes are making us the outsiders and that's why straight audiences laugh.

Well, duh! That's what laughing AT someone means. You laugh WITH people you consider your like-minded kind, you laugh AT people you don't necessarily associate with for whatever reason (usually bias).

Yeah, it's a thin line, R82. It's also very subjective, and then we have the effect of time and evolution/devolution of sensibilities.

There will never be an agreement on what is funny or why. I think that good comedians get that, and can play that game in their routines.

I was pleased when Kinison died.

I was thinking this morning how much straight people hated us during the 180s because of HIV/AIDS. They viewed us a diseased and spreaders of disease.

Today they hate us because of the trans movement and see us as pushing pronouns and sex reassignment surgery on society.

I think we had a good period in the late 1970s to the early 80s and the late early 2000s to about 2010 where most straight people didn't hate us.

[quote]I was thinking this morning how much straight people hated us during the 180s

1980s