http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=36149&title=carlos-mencia-katrina
It’s said that humor like art, or huevos rancheros, is subjective and that one’s taste depends on one’s own persona and upbringing, economic class, ethnicity, and politics.
I kind of fit into the category of a typical Eastside native. Attended the local schools, descendent of immigrants (although as my Grandmother used to tell us, “our people were Mexican hillbillies from New Mexico”), working class family, large family background (the oldest of nine children), I could go on but essentially pretty typical of an Eastside native.
But I have trouble finding Carlos Mencia funny. I know he claims he is from the Eastside and is a typical Eastside native as I have described, but in my opinion his humor has a mean, biased, nasty streak to it. IMO he comes off as a pissed off, politically conservative, self-hating Latino.
Click on the Comedy Central website above for a “bit” of Mencia’s and all this becomes apparent. He somehow thinks his take on the African Americans who suffered and died in the Katrina fiasco are to blame for their own suffering. It’s the old line spouted by racist Bush/Cheney apologists and isn’t funny whatsoever IMO.
On the other hand, the website above that has President Obama reading from a story and using some pretty rude epithets is very funny to me.
In fact I wish he would use the same voice and language when addressing those wealthy executives with the sense of self-entitlement who are still living large on we the taxpayers dollar.
“You ain’t my bitch nigga, buy your own damn friesâ€!
But as they say, humor, like home is where you find it. Whaaaa?
I don’t think Obama could use the voice he is using when he is reading conversations that his friend Ray had with him in the book.
“Ray, a fellow classmate of Obama’s, was also bi-racial, and also trying to define himself. But what set him apart was his colorful manner of self-expression. Ray cursed like a motherfucker.”
That’s not who Obama is. I think Obama is a very mainstream, straight laced guy, but you know Rays exist and they do help. I liked to say Nation of Islam helped MLK. You give people an unfavorable alternative that is more extreme it’s amazing how they will start seeing your side more clearly.
I always like to say that I stand on the backs of the black women in the welfare line who curses out the case worker who is judging the amount of kids she has. That woman is my comrade.
Now on to Mencia…uh…I’m not really into comedians. I like comedy, but most comedians aren’t that smart. Mencia is not very bright. I find it sad that most comedians of color that gain mainstream success go into this self hating mantra, because that is what gets movie deals and contracts and what the mainstream finds funny.
Mencia is even a more sad case, because even if he were the mainstream he is not clever enough to be truly funny unless he is stealing someone else’s material. I’m almost sure Mencia lifted his Katrina act from someone else. It’s an easy kill though, not very smart. It goes along with his conservative uncritical eye.
But I don’t find it more offensive that he is doing it just because he is not African-American, to me funny knows no boundaries if it’s truly funny, even if it’s vile. Vile can be smart and funny.
Dave Chappele left his show, because he was becoming a caricature of himself (or say he says, but I think Dave is a genius.)
But this self hating, conservative bs is really tired, that’s why I started to really hate the Chris Rock show. That’s why Margaret Cho so often disappoints me, Cho started out funny, but became this horrible pandering caricature and it pains me to say that, but it is true.
I know of a comedian who really does blend this well. Russell Peters he is an Indian-Canadian.
http://www.thebusbench.com/2008/08/russell-peters.html
Browne
Off topic glad to see Don Quixote here. He has some great perspectives.
On his show he went to “The Barrio” to show how terrible it is and did his skit in Pico Rivera. Yeah, the dude really represents the Eastside quite well.
Browne, of course I was being facetious when suggesting that Pres Obama use this kind of language with those fat cats using taxpayer $$ for there expensive opulent lifestyles, but not untruthful, I bet many of us would love to hear Obama lay it on thier ass’s just like his friend Ray.
We had to hear Bush and his “Bring it on, Lets Roll, Mission Accomplished, and worst of all “Yer doin a good job Brownie”, all in his phony Texas drawl, wasn’t that kind of ethnic?
Oh well one can only hope.
And as far as Mencia, what piss’s me off is his Tio Taco style of currying favor with the conservative’s view of a typical sterotype Mexican caricature. Fucking lambe culo ought to be ashamed of himself.
And Browne you may be correct about the plethora of politically unconscious and stereotypical ethnic so called comedians. But it hasn’t always been this way, years ago, even in the McCarthy red scare era, there were many great comedians who chin checked all the rascist anti-democratic haters and ridiculed them as nincompoops and fools.
Lennie Bruce, Mort Sahl, Red Foxx, George Carlin, Dick Gregory, Cantinflas, Richard Pryor, come to mind as politically savy proponents of free speech, democracy, and equality.
What has happened today I couldn’t say, except that maybe comedians don’t have the same sense of history and personal experience to draw from.
“What has happened today I couldn’t say” Don Quixote.
The corporate system co-opted comedy. They gave out their form of “work at the post office” in the form of HBO Specials and sitcoms. The best tool that corporate America has to make you “behave” is a paying gig.
Browne
WIKIPEDIA
Ned Arnel MencÃa was born the seventeenth of eighteen children in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. At the time of his birth, his Mexican mother, Magdelena MencÃa, was engaged in a domestic dispute with his Honduran father, Roberto Holness, and declined to give her son his biological father’s last name.[1] The name appearing on his birth certificate is “Ned Arnel MencÃa”, although Mencia has said that out of respect for his biological father he went by the Holness name anyway, and was known as “Ned Holness” until he was 18 years old.[2]
Mencia was raised in East Los Angeles, California by his aunt Consuelo and uncle Pablo Mencia.
SOMEBODY PLEASE PUT A ZIPPER ON HIS FATHERS PANTS!
Ned Holness, it figures.
What about the subversive stylings of the revolutionary known as Jay Leno? His comedy is right up there with the greats. 😉
Now someone should introduce Roberto “zipper ripper” Holness to Nadya “lookin for love” Suleman (octuplet mom).
puras chingaderas, you want real comedy? listen to Polo Polo, eso es comedia y no chingaderas
I am not into Ned. When one hears George Lopez you laugh at the quirks of being Mexican and its funny. When you listen to Ned he divides Mexicans by those that are “succesful” and the other ones as he says, the “gardner type”, I find that offense to divide us like that. I heard him once for a bit and lost all interest, he is not funny. There is this great video where Ned and Joe Rogan go at it. Joe ripes in on Ned on how he steals other peoples jokes, Joe rips Ned live on stage while Ted was performing, its great.
http://www.spike.com/video/joe-rogan-vs-carlos/2822368
Thumbs down.
You guys didn’t know his real name was Ned Holness? Anyhow, it’s funny that Chappelle is rumored to have walked away from his show and all of that money because he feared white people were using him to say things about black people they were too afraid to say. Then comes Mencia. Look at his audience….almost all whites, with token minorities. Every joke he says about Mexicans is met with “hoo hoo hoo hooos” from guys in the audience who sound like Marines. What else? Oh, his incessant use of the word, “bro”. Only cops say “bro” anymore. Cops, and Carlos, aka Ned.
I’ve kinda ignored Carlos/Ned over the years. I saw a couple of his TV shows and was like, eh. So after this thread decided to look him up on youtube and now I get what you all are saying:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BijJcFI6E8&feature=related
Wow, he’s really fucked up!
Say what you will about George Lopez but his special “Why You Crying?” is a pretty good analysis of working class Chicano dysfunctionalism and preferable to some academic tome on the same subject.