Adam Carolla has talked more during his 30-year-long comedic career than some do in their entire life. But he has more to say. His latest stand-up comedy tour brings him to Eugene’s McDonald Theatre on Friday, July 12.
“I just say whatever I want because that’s my job,” Carolla says in a phone call with Eugene Weekly.
“Satire has always been a good way to make a point.”
Good comedians, like Dave Chapelle and Jon Stewart, are able to effectively communicate ideas using comedy, he says, although their views can be unsettling to people who have different beliefs.
Carolla got his break in entertainment co-hosting the relationship and medical advice call-in radio show Loveline in 1995, and later co-hosted The Man Show with Jimmy Kimmel. He’s hosted his comedy podcast The Adam Carolla Show since 2009 after his radio show with the same name was canceled.
The Adam Carolla Show was awarded the Guinness World Record for the most downloaded podcast in 2011. It’s unclear if anyone has applied to challenge it since.
Satirist or not, Carolla has made a number of bigoted statements during his career.
During an interview with the New York Post in 2012, Carolla said, “chicks” are “always the least funny on the writing staff,” and “dudes are funnier than chicks.”
Carolla has teenage twins: a son and a daughter.
In 2014, The New Yorker reported that two years previously, Carolla said rich people “are better than poor people” because “rich people work harder.”
Carolla said at the time, “I’m not going to apologize for telling the truth,” just like he “didn’t back down” when he said “Hawaiians were dumb” on Loveline in 2003.
The New Yorker reported in the same article that Carolla said people who serve fast food, take care of children and clean airport bathrooms should try a more difficult job if they want to make more money, “like being the voice of an animated éclair-policeman in a Disney movie, or being the spokesperson for T.G.I. Fridays for two years.”
Carolla says his fans understand him and aren’t bothered by his statements.
“I just sort of give my opinions. And sometimes people have a problem with it, sometimes they don’t, and then at some point, I turn out to be right, and then they never apologize,” Carolla says.
When asked who he’s referring to, he says, “people on Twitter, the L.A. Unified School District…whatever dumb B-list celebrity like George Takei or Valerie Bertinelli… or publications like the LA Times.”
Carolla recently announced he is moving away from California. He says California Gov. Gavin Newsom is a sociopathic “slippery eel of nothingness,” and Californians are dumb for voting for him, the Los Angeles Times and Fox News report.
Both outlets also report Carolla is unhappy that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass beat Rick Caruso, another Democratic candidate, in the 2022 mayoral election. He says she won because she’s a “woman of color.”
If he could go back and talk to his former Loveline fans about sexuality and gender, Carolla says he would tell them to “be prepared,” adding, “There’s going to be a lot of talk about it, and we won’t even really be able to identify a man or a woman,” he says.
Regardless of Eugene’s general appreciation for political correctness, Carolla says he has faith in the people of Eugene to turn up to his show.
“I usually am able to find my crowd almost no matter where I go,” he says.