by Adam Carolla
For every real racist, there are twenty-five guilty white guys trying to undo what that guy and his grandfather did and actually be nicer. If a white guy cuts me off, I shout, “Fuck you, motherfucker!” But if a black guy cuts me off, I don’t say anything, A) because he’s packing, and B) because I don’t want him to think I’m doing it just because he’s black.
RACIST OR ASSHOLE?
I have a theory that’s going to sound convenient because I’m a white male, but if the brothers who stole this book will hear me out (see, that’s a racial joke), I will attempt to explain why it feels like there are so many racists in this society. You’re confusing assholes for racists.
First, let’s talk about “driving while black” and the LAPD. The LAPD are basically assholes to everyone they pull over. And I’ve been pulled over for everything from not having a front license plate to flicking a cigarette ash out the window. Not throwing a cigarette butt out the window, but flicking an ash out the window. And not in Malibu during fire season, in Hollywood in November. I had a cop pull me over on my motorcycle and tow it when I begged him to let me just push it and park it on a side street and leave it there. He said, “Tough shit,” and while I was hitchhiking home I saw my motorcycle pass me on the back of a tow truck. I once got a jaywalking ticket in a crosswalk because the cop said I began walking after the light started blinking “Don’t Walk.” I arrived on the other side so far in advance of the light changing that the asshole motorcycle cop had time to cross the intersection behind me and the light had still yet to change.
You think the LAPD picks and chooses who they pull over and who they’re assholes to based on the color of their skin. Now, I’ve never tried to outrun a cop in my car and been caught, but I’m sure if I tried and was caught, they’d beat the shit out of me. The same way they beat the shit out of the brothers. I’m not saying there are no racists on the LAPD—what I’m saying is, there’s an army of assholes on the LAPD that you think are racist because you’re black. If I was black, I could draw no other conclusion than that the cop who wrote me the jaywalking ticket was a racist.
Let’s move from cops to fellow citizens. In almost every home I’ve lived in, I’ve had a run-in with an unreasonable neighbor: calling the cops every time I had a party, accusing me of things I didn’t do—I won’t bore you with all the details, but let’s just call it general douchebaggery. But here is one specific example.
I have a home now that when I bought it was a dilapidated, rat-infested mess. I dumped almost a million dollars and a ton of sweat equity into it, and I turned it from an eyesore into a palace. I have an old man who lives next to me. An old white guy. There is a hedge between our two homes. It’s not growing into the sewer pipes, it’s not obstructing his view; it’s not doing anything except offering a little privacy. But he called the Department of Building and Safety on me. He didn’t come and talk to me; he called Building and Safety, who sent over a letter and then an inspector. The neighbor even checked the box that said “unsanitary living conditions” despite the fact that my house is pristine. So I said to the guy, “Why do you have an issue with this hedge?” And he screamed, “It’s above regulation height.” I replied, “So is every hedge on this hill. Most people like it that way. Next time, instead of getting the city involved, ring my buzzer, tell my gardener, or just leave a note saying, ‘Hey, the hedge is a little high. Please have your guy cut it.’ ” Four months later, I got another summons from the Department of Building and Safety for a court appearance. And it hasn’t stopped. I just got another super-shitty letter from him the other day threatening me about the hedge.
Fortunately, I have the great privilege of being white, and thus the knowledge that this guy is just an old fuck and not a racist. If I was black, Hispanic, Asian, or even Jewish, I would have no choice but to assume he was a racist, and I don’t think any reasonable person would disagree.
Here’s my final synopsis. Again, I’m not saying there are no racists, I’m just saying you’re inflating the numbers by mistaking a lot of assholes for racists. These shitty neighbors/cops/nine-dollar-an-hour dickheads behind counters/rude garage attendants aren’t racist, they’re assholes. I wish they were racists; as a rich white guy, that would make my life easier.
People need to understand the difference between passively racist people and actively racist people. Every guy I know loves a race joke, will use derogatory terms to get a laugh, and probably has thoughts that range everywhere from “I hope there’s not a bunch of Middle Eastern guys on my flight” to “I’d rather a Japanese family bought the house next door than an Israeli family.” Our society would love to label them bigots and racists. But my point is, unless they’ve ever acted on any of these thoughts, who gives a shit? If you call a fat guy fat when he’s not in the room and never say a thing to his face and you don’t have any policies against hiring fat people, then what the fuck’s wrong with a fat joke as long as fat Marty isn’t within earshot? I believe this country is filled with people of all ethnicities who like to toss around racially insensitive jokes and racial epithets but would never do anything to harm, degrade, or deny employment to anyone because of their race. I’m sure many of the people reading this book, at some point in their life, wished that someone was dead. But that doesn’t make you a murderer. Killing somebody makes you a murderer. Making a Polack joke doesn’t make you a racist. Not hiring a Polack makes you a racist. And writing a book where you say Polack doesn’t make you a racist either.
I’d argue that the guilty white liberals in this country are actually more racist. Take the example of drugs coming in from Mexico. The left is basically apologizing to Mexico and explaining that it’s our consumption of these drugs that’s creating the market and funding their corrupt government, police, and army. It’s not the drug dealers’ fault; it’s our fault for consuming the drugs. Then why are these same people coming down on the tobacco industry? They just manufacture the product; we create the market. If nobody smoked, they’d be out of business. And what about gun manufacturers? The lefties don’t like them very much either, yet all they do is make a product. So why does Mexico get a pass while Philip Morris and Smith & Wesson don’t? Race is the answer. Two of them are rich and white, one of them is poor and brown. And it’s always Whitey’s fault. While constantly complaining about racism, they engage in the ultimate racism. They treat Mexico as if they are inferior and incapable of governing themselves. If these drugs were coming out of Canada, they wouldn’t be blaming the U.S. They would insist that Canada fix the problem and fucking fast. It’s belittling and far more racist. Just like when the news reported about what was going on in the Superdome after Katrina. Every rich Manhattan honky I knew was shouting, “There are three-year-olds being gang-raped! Why isn’t Bush doing anything?” If the Superdome had been filled with white people, your question wouldn’t be “Why isn’t Bush doing anything?”—it’d be “What the fuck is wrong with those people?”
And why are the charges of racism only directed at white people? Not too long ago, Miley Cyrus got in trouble for a picture where she pulled her eyes back to do the Asian squinty-eyes thing. But what about Japanese anime, where all the white people have enormous round eyes? Sure, we do an exaggerated version of what we think Asian eyes look like, but they draw ours in a caricature too. Our eyes are rounder than theirs, but they don’t look like dinner plates. Each one is an exaggeration, so why was Miley Cyrus raked over the coals while Speed Racer got a free pass? Because we don’t give a shit. We don’t have a chip on our shoulder. Us roundeyes have a sense of humor, which perhaps we should export.
DIVERSITY SEMINARS
Not only does every employee of every corporation have to sit through a bullshit sexual-harassment seminar, they are also mandated to have three hours of their lives stolen for a diversity and racial-sensitivity seminar. I had to sit through these when I was working for CBS radio. They always do a question-and-answer thing at the end of this garbage, and I declared to my lackeys that no one could ask any q
uestions or I would fire their ass. The more questions asked, the longer we were going to be stuck in that room. Ironically, I then ended up dragging the thing out because I eventually reached the tipping point and couldn’t handle the bullshit being piled on.
The woman conducting the seminar, who looked like Maya Angelou with the giant amber beads and muumuu, posed this retarded question: “A Hispanic male robs a liquor store. The only information the news has is that he is Hispanic and male. Should they mention his ethnicity?” At this point you, like me and every other rational person, are thinking, “Of course. Whatever is necessary to get the word out and catch this guy.” But I kept my mouth shut. Florida from Good Times declared no, his ethnicity should not be mentioned because there are too many Hispanic males in Los Angeles (twenty thousand more slipped in while you were reading that sentence). To say that fact would draw suspicion on every Hispanic male in the population. At that moment I hit my saturation point with Aretha Franklin’s less talented sister and asked, “Then why are you bringing up that he’s male? I’m male—I don’t want to get lumped in with liquor-store robbers.” Her response was as stupid as her original point: “But he was a male.” I shot back, “He’s Mexican too. Why do we have to ignore that fact but not the fact that he’s he’s got a dick and balls?” Take that, Cinco De Maya Angelou.
EVERYONE EARNS IT
So let’s drop the act and just face the fact that as a race, you earn your stereotype. We’re supposed to celebrate our differences, but as soon as somebody points out that some of those differences are negative, that person gets called a racist.
It’s an all-or-nothing attitude that causes the problem. Ironically, the Berkeley-educated white folk who attack me and say, “Not all black men are in prison” and “Not all Muslim men are terrorists” are the first ones to get the petition going to have a peanut-free school because one kid has an allergy. Not all the kids have a peanut allergy, so why should all of them suffer? I’m not saying “all” of this group or “all” these people, but “some” of this group and “enough” of these people.
As I stated earlier, whether you are a car company or a race, you earn your reputation. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this chart of ethnic stereotypes.
STEREOTYPE ETHNICITY
Big Noses / Run Hollywood and the Banks Mexicans
Large Penises / Great Athletes Asians
Excel at Math Native Americans
No Sense of Humor / Love Hasselhoff Blacks
Make Good Prize Fighters / Gardeners Indians
Love Rap / Teenage Pregnancy Canadians
Make Great Doctors / Computer Techs The Irish
Uptight / Have Bad Teeth Brazilians
Terrible Drivers Germans
Treat Women Like Property / Are Religious Zealots Swedes
Own Convenience/Liquor Stores The British
Constantly Drunk / Love Casinos Jews
Constantly Drunk / Love the Celtics Arabs
If you believe there’s no truth to stereotypes, then nothing in that chart seemed odd. But admit it, you fucking hypocrite, you laughed.
My “everybody earns it” theory extends to the gays, who technically aren’t a race but, fuck it, it’s close enough. They have anti-defamation leagues, their own parts of cities, and parades. That’s enough to qualify as a race. Plus gay is its own race because that’s the number-one attribute that gets made fun of. So if you’re busting the chopsticks of a fat Chinese gay guy, the first insult is about his sexuality. Then eventually you work your way down to fat and Chinese.
Before you call GLAAD, let me say this. I have no problem with gay people. I’m open-minded, but closed-behinded. I love the gays. All they do is pay taxes for schools they don’t use, for prisons they don’t inhabit, and to repair potholes their peach-colored MINI Cooper convertibles don’t create. Meanwhile, they rarely use government programs and they don’t crap out more kids that use up resources. In fact, they gobble up all the world’s unwanted kids. They recycle like hell, their cars always have a fresh coat of carnauba wax, and the lawns of their houses look like someone took tweezers and nasal-hair clippers and finely manicured them. Their homes look like country clubs. You don’t see the gay guy with an El Camino up on blocks and a sofa rotting on the porch. Those are the Jews. (Oh, confused? I thought you didn’t buy into stereotypes.)
The gays take care of their homes and their community. As a group they care about the environment, they are very civically minded, and nonviolent. You don’t need to worry about a gay guy putting a knife in your back at the ATM. Plus they leave all the chicks for me. (Hold this page up and high-five it.) You want to live in the gay part of town. If you live in L.A., all you need to know about the gays versus other groups can be determined by a drive down Santa Monica Boulevard. Santa Monica Boulevard is a long, filthy, graffiti-covered stretch of asphalt that cuts through the heart of Los Angeles. Except for one two-mile stretch that has medians with green grass, spotless sidewalks, and happy couples strolling with laptops and lapdogs.
Al Gore is obsessed with big business and its carbon footprint. I’m obsessed with groups and their social footprint. And the gays have a small social footprint. This is a stereotype they’ve earned, and it’s a good one. But another not-so-good one they’ve earned is on full display at the “pride” parades.
The juxtaposition of people at these parades demanding respect while dressed in assless chaps is funnier than anything that hack John Waters could ever shit out. Don’t worry, gays, your respect is coming. It’s just around the corner. Continue dragging your gimp partner down the street by his nipple clamps. You’ll soon get that respect you so richly deserve. Society is this close to accepting you and your life partner with the handlebar mustache and the studded leather thong.
A quick pitch for the dictionary folks. In the next edition, I would like to include a new definition for the word parade—“any more than eight gays congregated together.” That should be the term, like a flock of geese or a pod of whales: a parade of gays. Also, please add the term behymen, as in “a man who has never been with another man still has an intact behymen.”
Allow me to make a controversial point to show that despite all the cries of how homophobic and intolerant our society is, we’re actually very accepting: There’s surprisingly little gay-bashing based on how repugnant we find the act of gay sex. To be clear, I’m not saying we should step up the gay-bashing: I’m just saying it’s surprising there’s not more.
Straight men have a visceral reaction to gay porn. I would rather witness a nun get lowered into a wood chipper than watch ten seconds of gay porn. And this isn’t just me. Dr. Drew, one of the most open-minded, tolerant guys in the world, confirms this. When straight guys see two dudes tongue-kiss, they get nauseated. It’s the way we’re wired. When men are straight, we’re straight. It’s not like chicks, who can become a lesbian on any given weekend. Heterosexuality for men is a life sentence. For women, heterosexuality is like a club where they get their hand stamped but can come and go as they please. If you show a girl two dudes going at it, you’ll get a light “Ew.” Show a straight guy a clip of Glory, Glory Hole-elujah, and he’ll be swept out of the room by the tidal wave of his own vomit. And it’s not as if we have delicate sensibilities. The same guy who would rather poke his eyes out than watch five frames of cornholing is the same one who, if there’s a clip of a fighter getting a compound fracture in the octagon, will forward it to all of his buddies under the subject line “You Gotta See This.”
So the fact that this is something that is universally physically repugnant to straight guys and yet virtually none of them, not counting the religious nut jobs, ever raise a hand to gay men is a sign that we’re evolved. Or super-lazy. We’re not the backward homophobic nation that some people paint us to be. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still progress to be made in the marriage and “don’t ask, don’t tell” department, but look at other countries. Over there gays don’t even have the right to exist, never mind adopt. The reas
on you don’t ask and don’t tell in Yemen is because they’ll stone you to death or put a burning tire around you.
And it can’t get more damning than this: Every straight woman would rather watch two chicks going at it than gay porn. In other words, women who love cock would rather watch a video with no cocks than one with two cocks.
Let me wrap up with this:
I love it when a black guy says something racist against white people and they call it “reverse racism.” As if white people were the only group capable of being “real” racists. White people didn’t invent racism, we just perfected it.
I WANT MY
FUTURE
BACK
According to the TV and movies of my youth, by this point we were all supposed to have flying cars, robot butlers, and a crystal that would power our house for a thousand years. We were supposed to be living a technological utopia. But that’s not the case. I’m consistently disappointed by how the things we create to make our lives easier tend to fuck them up worse.
Growing up, we had a black-and-white Zenith TV in a metal case with fake wood grain that you could pound on. You could beat the shit out of it. It’d go vertical or horizontal or the stabilizer would go off. I’d be trying to watch Maude and it would be all over the place. So I’d come up behind it and do that Fonz move. Boom. And it would straighten out. To fix something back in the day, you didn’t have to be a technician. You’d just slap it on the side or whack it on the top. Even with cars, you’d start to smack the dash and shout, “Come on, baby.” There used to be radios you could hit, TVs you could whack, even toasters you could hit if they were mistreating the bread. I used to have an electric space heater with the coils in the metal sheath. I was living for a while in the garage of my dad’s house. It didn’t have heating or air-conditioning. During the winter it would be cold as shit, so I would sleep with a space heater next to my bed. And at some point in the night the thing would start making this weird harmonic buzz and vibrate. So I’d just whack it once and it would straighten out. It would be cool for about twenty minutes, and then it would start up with the buzzing and I’d smack it again. Nowadays, if your iPhone starts fucking up, you don’t start mashing it. You’re gonna fuck it up worse. If your Prius doesn’t start, you don’t drop an elbow on the dashboard.