I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real and Imagined)

  I must be jealous.

  Or maybe just nervous?

  No. Not nervous. Jealous.

  It doesn’t feel that way, but it’s the only reasonable explanation. And I suppose it’s the perfect explanation, because it also [conveniently] explains why I want LeBron James to succeed, despite my inability to like him. I mean, why would I be jealous of LeBron James? He’s not changing the world, and he’s certainly not changing the world in his favor. He’s incrementally changing the game of basketball, but not that much (the league would be worse if he didn’t exist, but it wouldn’t devolve — we’d just spend more time fixated on Durant). He doesn’t seem anything like me, physically or emotionally. He is just a tall, strong man on the TV, blowing my mind without remotely changing it. I root against him because I can. It’s sports, and that’s part of it. It’s only a game, which means losing doesn’t matter.

  HUMAN CLAY

  “The culture is coarsening.”

  I have placed the above phrase in quote marks, as if someone specific has said it directly. It certainly would not be difficult to find someone who has. But what would that prove? I’m not trying to suggest that this is any kind of combustive, uncommon opinion. It’s a given. Sometimes a contrarian will try to dispute the sentiment, usually with an abstract argument about how civilized our modernity seems when compared to the Crusades or the Roman empire or pre-LBJ Mississippi, and — technically — that’s true. We no longer watch people kill themselves for pleasure, unless you count pro football. But that’s not what normal people mean when they lament the coarsening of the culture. It has nothing to do with actual violence or an erosion of fundamental morals. When people say the culture is coarsening, they’re ostensibly arguing that what is totally acceptable now would have been only marginally acceptable ten years ago and virtually unmentionable twenty-five years before that. It’s not really about people’s private behavior or personal taste, because that doesn’t change much; it’s more a statement about what’s tolerable to talk about in public during daylight hours. The historical arc of MTV is an easy way to see this evolution. The way people argue on FOX and MSNBC is another, as is pretty much the entire lifespan of the Internet. As an all-purpose semantic rule, the culture is coarsening. It’s not an unreasonable thing to notice or suggest. Yet there are at least two unlikely exceptions to this phenomenon: mainstream rap music and mainstream stand-up comedy. From the perspective of pure vulgarity, both idioms peaked around 1990.

  Hip-hop acts like 2 Live Crew do not exist anymore, and they never will again. Verbally, no one will ever explore the realm of uncharted tastelessness with such limitless ambition (other artists could go as far, but they can’t go further, unless we invent some totally new words for the vagina). The same can be said for comedian Andrew Dice Clay. This is because a) they worked within a language-based medium, and b) we have a finite amount of usable profanity. Both 2 Live Crew and Andrew Dice Clay reduced their respective art forms down to literal nursery rhymes, completely devoid of (what we normally describe as) creativity. 2 Live Crew wrote songs like “Fuck Shop” (where fuck is used twenty-two times in less than three and a half minutes) and “Face Down, Ass Up” (self-explanatory). Their album As Nasty as They Wanna Be sold far beyond expectations (particularly among suburban audiences) and was, of course, controversial in its time: It’s now possible to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and examine the court documents from their 1990 obscenity case in Florida’s Broward County (the album was initially deemed obscene, but that ruling was overturned on appeal). Three decades later, 2 Live Crew no longer seems unsettling; somehow, songs like “Me So Horny” are now goofy and delightful. Almost no one views 2 Live Crew’s music as important, but only the most puritan consider it problematic. Luther Campbell doesn’t seem that far removed from “Weird Al” Yankovic. “Me So Horny” is sick and raw, but it’s also cute. It’s funny that someone decided that this was a good way to make music. It’s funny that it happened at all.

  Yet this is not how history views Andrew Dice Clay.

  People loved him in 1990 and people hated him in 1990. Now they only hate him (not as intensely, but more homogeneously). His signature routines do not seem charming in retrospect. They just seem mean-spirited, and not even particularly daring. They seem worse now than they did back then, which is the opposite of how this is supposed to work.

  This is how it’s supposed to work: An uncompromising comedian goes further than society is comfortable with and pays a price in the present-tense. He (or she) draws attention, but most of that attention is negative. He is labeled as polarizing. The ensuing controversy causes the size of his audience to spike . . . but that brand of ephemeral popularity fades just as fast. The comedian starts to seem like a caricature and provisionally disappears. But then — years later, and especially if he dies — that same comedian is rediscovered as a universal genius. People change their own memory of who the person was and how they once felt about his persona. The artist becomes less defined by the specificity of his material and more defined by the unspecific idea of what his comedy was supposed to achieve. Over time, the fact that he went “too far” is precisely what makes him beloved. Obvious examples of this transition involve Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Andy Kaufman, and Richard Pryor; smaller-scale versions have happened to Don Rickles, Joan Rivers, Redd Foxx, and Larry David. It will happen to Gilbert Gottfried within the next ten years. And it seems like it should have already happened to Andrew Dice Clay. It seems like he was genetically engineered to have that kind of comeback. But he won’t. The pendulum is not swinging back. He will always be vilified, and dying won’t help. The fact that he resurfaced in a recurring role in the final season of Entourage actually made things worse, because the qualities people don’t like about Clay perfectly dovetailed with all the qualities they don’t like about Entourage. Being on Entourage actively reminded people that they didn’t like him (or that if they did like him, they weren’t supposed to).

  Now, is this the Diceman’s fault? Partially. He is one-third responsible for why this happened. But there were two other factors that were beyond his control — the era of his success and the type of person who paid to see him perform. It was a perfect storm for eternal antipathy.

  Let’s start with the stuff that was his own fault. Clay’s material was not that funny. It did not mine a deeper concept or change how people saw reality, unless you count the guys in the UK dance band EMF. But this is a minor failure; there have been many allegedly brilliant comics whose core material, and particularly their earliest attempts at stand-up, do not withstand the test of time. If you transcribed their jokes on paper, you might not even know that they were attempts at comedy. But that shortcoming can be totally overcome by character, and Clay had a strong, recognizable character. The way he talked (and the way he smoked cigarettes) was 50 percent of the act. It might have been 80 percent of the act. If you want to argue that Clay’s execution was certifiably genius, that’s an argument that can be made. But this was still a problem. He started his career as an impersonator (first as John Travolta, then as Jerry Lewis), and he always claims that the Diceman was an invented character. He was openly suggesting it was a character at the height of his fame. But the fact that he asserted this distance made things worse: His real personality seemed unnecessarily close to the fake character he claimed to be manufacturing. He wasn’t totally invested in that character (like Kaufman), nor was he irrefutably pretending (like Stephen Colbert). If he had taken the former route, people would have said, “This routine is disturbing, but at least it’s real.” If he’d taken the latter route, he would have been seen as a satirist commenting on the entrenched hypocrisies of human sexuality. But Dice ended up splitting the difference, and that never works over the long haul. He was generating a persona that seemed exactly like the person he actually was, but still arguing that the Real Andrew Clay Silverstein was somehow separate (and that he could always tell the difference, even when no one else could). It was like
he was choosing to become the worst idealized version of himself, without taking responsibility for what that implied. As such, he’ll never get credit for being dangerously authentic or secretly insightful. The only positive memory of his career is that he was popular.

  And he was popular. He was popular in a way that no comedian had ever been before; while other major comics had managed to sell albums, Dice could play Zeppelin-size arenas. He could sell out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row. He could sell out the 18,000-seat Nassau Coliseum in minutes. And as his career amplified, a pattern emerged: Before any massive event, there would be a profile of Clay in the local newspaper. If that media outlet managed to interview him, the angle of the feature would typically focus on the possibility that the Diceman was secretly sensitive; if he didn’t grant an interview, the piece would generally focus on his critics and the magnitude of his success. Following the performance, Clay’s act would inevitably be reviewed by the same publication, almost always negatively. And then the newspaper would run predictable letters from people who either loved or hated him, such as these from Newsday in November of 1990:

  I take strong exception to [Newsday writer] Paul Vitello’s characterization of the fans of Andrew Dice Clay as a riotous, womanizing rabble. . . . What Vitello fails to realize is that Dice is creating a parody of a certain type of male and mocking the behavior of the females who associate with that type. Dice does not degrade women in general. . . .

  What disturbs me most, however, is this double standard that is employed in defining “hate comedy.” Apparently, Clay’s critics are not bothered by the many comics who degrade Christian Fundamentalists, anti-abortion activists and others on the political right. But when Dice mocks certain women, minorities, the handicapped, etc., this is branded as “hate comedy.” . . .

  What we need to do is recognize comedy as such and not take it too seriously.

  — J.M., Wading River

  Unfortunately, Paul Vitello’s column on Andrew Dice Clay does not go far enough. Clay is a dangerous man. He espouses attitudes that may lead to abusive behavior in some people. Clay calls women “pigs” and “whores” and says how a man should humiliate women in public. These are the kinds of attitudes that lead directly to domestic violence and sexual harassment. In fact, I think Clay is really raping women figuratively in his act. . . .

  I’d like to see Clay 40 years from now. Let’s see if he finds his own act so amusing then. I find the reaction of Clay’s audience most despicable. When they stand up and cheer at every remark Clay makes, the audience seems to be saying, “We love your swill! Give us more to rot our brains!”

  The fact that we need a comedian like Clay tells us something is fundamentally wrong with our society. . . .

  — G.S., Long Beach

  In short, what we have is a popular, polarizing comedian that audiences took personally. His fans saw him as culturally necessary while his detractors exaggerated his impact. He was banned from MTV. A cast member on Saturday Night Live (Nora Dunn) refused to appear on the SNL episode he hosted, and that evening’s musical guest (the equally controversial Sinead O’Connor) did the same. How you felt about Clay symbolized something about how you viewed the world. As a result, it seems as if he should be a meaningful figure to pop historians. It seems like even people who hated his material should now like the idea of Andrew Dice Clay, because he represented so many fascinating things. But this is not the case. Clay remains vilified, twenty years after his fame. And I suspect the reason why is the same reason the apex of his popularity was so much greater than logic dictates: It happened in 1990.

  This is the part that’s not his fault.

  There are things we cannot control about ourselves. One of these things is the degree to which we find something to be funny. It’s not a choice; our body physically reacts to the sensation of amusement. And if something feels undeniably funny — if you hear a joke and find yourself unable to keep from laughing at its content — there’s no way you can view that joke as personally offensive. No one has ever honestly said, “I hate that this joke exists, even though it’s clearly hilarious.” It doesn’t matter how controversial the topic is or what language you use. You might recognize how it could be offensive to someone else, but it can’t offend you personally (if it did, you wouldn’t be able to laugh). You may think that the sentiment is wrong, but it can’t feel unfunny. This is why a handful of exceptionally transformative comedians — Louis C.K. being the current example — are allowed to talk about anything they want in a public setting: If people can’t renounce their own outward amusement, they can’t simultaneously claim to be hurt.

  This is the standard for what’s acceptable to joke about in public.

  This is a totally illogical standard.

  When people want to criticize a surface-level comedian, like Andrew Dice Clay (or Seth MacFarlane, or Katt Williams, or Daniel Tosh), they inevitably work from the stance that what the comedian said is “just not funny.” That’s always part of the argument. But what this actually means is that the comedian is not funny enough. What they’re really talking about is the skill level of the person delivering the material and whatever they assume his (or her) motive must be. And that’s flat-out idiotic. The standard should be this: If the message a comedian expresses (within the proper setting for comedy) would not be funny to any objective person, regardless of who said it or how it was said, then those words are unacceptable. Otherwise, it should just be considered what it is — unorthodox discourse of undefined value.

  I’m reticent to use the term “political correctness.” I realize it drives certain people really, really crazy. [My wife is one of these people.] However, there isn’t a better term to connote the primary linguistic issue in America from (roughly) 1986 to 1995. Today, the phrase “political correctness” is mostly used as a quaint distraction. No one takes it too seriously. It feels like something that only matters to Charles Krauthammer. But in 1990, that argument was real. If you cared about ideas, you had to deal with it. At the debate’s core, a meaningful philosophical question was exposed and dissected: If someone is personally offended by a specific act, does that alone qualify the act as collectively offensive? It’s a problem that’s essentially unsolvable. But what made things so insane in 1990 was the degree to which people worried about how this question would change everything about society. Up until the mid-eighties, there was always a shared assumption that the Right controlled the currency of outrage; part of what made conservatives “conservative” was their discomfort with profanity and indecency and Elvis Presley’s hips. But then — somewhat swiftly, and somehow academically — it felt as if the Left was suddenly dictating what was acceptable to be infuriated over (and always for ideological motives, which is why the modifier “politically” felt essential). This created a lot of low-level anxiety whenever people argued in public. Every casual conversation suddenly had the potential to get someone fired. It was a great era for white people hoping to feel less racist by accusing other white people of being very, very racist. A piece of art could be classified as sexist simply because it ignored the concept of sexism. Any intended message mattered less than the received message, and every received message could be interpreted in whatever way the receiver wanted. So this became a problem for everybody. It was painlessly oppressive, and the backlash was stupid and adversarial. It drove artists to linguistic extremes, and it drove audiences to Andrew Dice Clay. He would not have been a megastar in any other historical window — it had to happen at a time when vulgarity somehow felt important.

  Here is what Clay would do when he performed: He’d walk on stage, mock angry, wearing a leather jacket. He’d light a cigarette and wordlessly smoke it; this might go on for more than a minute. When he’d finally start talking, the routine would go like this . . .

  DICE: Jack and Jill went up the hill, each with a buck and a quarter. (pause) Jill came down with $2.50. Ohhh!

  AUDIENCE: (together) What a whore! br />
  My reason for transcribing this dialogue is not to mock how unfunny it is, even though it (obviously) doesn’t seem funny in the pages of a book. You can still make multiple arguments for why this material matters. For one thing, it’s pretty weird (which is reason enough to care). If you’re a folklorist, you might appreciate the idea of a joke based on oral tradition. If you’re a sociologist, perhaps you’re intrigued by the call-and-response role played by the audience (i.e., the way they would memorize all of Clay’s jokes beforehand in order to shout the punchlines back at him). If you’re into Freud, maybe you think sexualizing a nursery rhyme gets to the core of why it exists. But all that stuff is tangential. It’s not important. What mattered was that this joke was not cognizant—yet still uninterested—in any social mores. The only arbitrator was Clay. When the audience chimed in with “What a whore!” they were able to say something without really saying it (because they were technically speaking for Clay, who was latently speaking for them). The specific content was irrelevant as long as it was profane and unsanitized. When Andrew Dice Clay played Madison Square Garden, it became a “safe place” for twenty thousand people who wanted to feel like language was limitless and unalienable. When they laughed at the idea of calling a homosexual a “cocksucker,” it was partially because they were homophobic and thought it was funny . . . but it was also because they knew this sentiment would disgust a certain type of self-righteous person protesting outside the venue’s walls. Dice’s fans felt like they were hearing something more real than what was happening in an increasingly artificial society. They saw it as straightforward and self-evident: Homosexual men do perform oral sex on other men, men do refer to their penis as a cock, and performing oral sex does require said cock to be sucked. In the minds of his supporters, Clay was hated for describing the world as it actually was. That was always the best pro-Dice argument — the world was becoming too sensitive, so he was forced to serve as the charmless counterbalance. And some people loved him for that. They loved that he would happily allow himself to be demonized. To those who thought political correctness was ruining America, he was a soldier they’d pay twenty-five dollars to see, just to hear him say “cunt” in public without fear or empathy.