Andy Kindler lays into Adam Carolla

Andy Kindler has launched an all-out attack on fellow comedian Adam Carolla – branding him a hateful bigot with no right to be called a comic.

Kindler dedicated a large chunk of his State Of The Industry address at Montreal’s Just For Laughs comedy festival to criticising the former Man Show host.

He told the audience of comedians and industry executives he was sorry he appeared on Carolla’s podcast, adding: ‘I had no idea he was a bigot with a capital Nazi.’

Warming to his theme, he called Carolla a ‘muscle-headed hate bot’ and said: ‘Adam Carolla is like Hitler if Hitler wasn't funny.’

He also rubbished his nemesis’s defence that his offensive comments were ‘just a joke’ expected of a comedian, saying: ‘What would you know about comedy? You are not a comedian - comedians tell jokes.’

‘I hate these people who think they are stand-ups because they've done it a couple of times.’

He then when on a digression about Carolla’s forthcoming crowdfunded movie about the life of a road comic ‘as if he’d know’ and Ricky Gevais not earning his place alongside Chris Rock, Louis CK and Jerry Seinfeld on the Talking Funny discussion panel on the basis of four mediocre stand-up shows.

He then returned to the theme that Carolla was using comedy as a fig-leaf for unpleasant views by saying: ‘What Adam Carolla’s done, neo-Nazis should have thought of years ago.

Carolla is no stranger to controversy, garnering headlines last year when he claimed: ‘Dudes are funnier than chicks’ and that female writers were always the weak link on the writing staff of shows he was involved with.

In 2003, he called Hawaiians ‘in-bred, retarded’ people who are among the ‘dumbest people we have’; and in 2011 said of trans gendered people: ‘When did we start giving a shit about these people?’ and suggested that the LGBT acornym should be replace with ‘YUCK’.

And earlier this year, when discussing why a high proportion of black and Latino people in California don’t have access to bank accounts, he said: ‘What's wrong with them? I want to know why those two groups don't have access. Are they flawed?’ But he claimed negative reports of his comments had taken them out of context; and that crying ‘racist’ whenever social problems in some communities was discussed was silencing the debate.

Carolla’s publicist was not immediately available to comment on Kindler’s new outburst against him.

However, Kindler also spoke about how the media should not stir up artificial controversies about comedians by misunderstanding the joke.

He singled out online magazine Salon for peddling ‘horrible bullshit’ after it made an issue of a Patton Oswalt tweet posted after a San Francisco news station was duped into broadcasting fake names of the pilots on the Asiana Airlines flight that crash-landed in the city.

Oswalt wrote: ‘SF news station KTVU has announced hiring PR spokesman Wi So Solly to address the Asiania Airlines on-air gaffe.’

After Salon tried to stir up online outrage, Oswalt suggested a slogan for them: ‘It's Like If Your Baptist Aunt Who Doesn't Get Jokes Turned Into A Website!’

And today, who Kindler said he had his issues with Oswalt, admitted he was a great comic who’d written a ‘perfect joke’ and that you’d have to be willfully ignorant not to appreciate the comedy in the tweet.

ALSO ON KINDLER’S (SHIT) LIST

On Gallagher: Gallagher has had a series of heart attacks. He has four, five heart attacks a day. He has one when he picks up the mallet, he gets angina when he strikes it, he gets pains when he thinks about his act... Doctors say that when he came out of the coma he started cracking jokes. What they didn't say is ‘...for the first time.’

On the Jon Lovitz comedy club in New York: Jon Lovitz’s tragedy club – it's not the worst comedy club in the world, it's the worst enclosure.

On Jay Leno: I'd like to do my impression of Jay Leno if he was a comedian...

On Colin Quinn: What was incredible was how he crammed ten minutes of material into an hour

On Grown Ups 2: Will those guys ever grow up... comedically?

On Louis CK: He has a fashion look, which I like to call ‘American Gervais’.

On the sitcom Workaholics: They gave a warning that the show may contain strong language and mature subject matter. I could not locate the mature subject matter.

On Eddie Izzard: He’s going to do his act in German. I don’t like it in English, maybe I’ll like it in German. Pre-tentious.

Assorted:

The best part of twitter? I just heckle corporations. I tweeted: Dear Comcast, no matter what I do, I’m still getting Leno. I checked all the cables. Do I need a box?

If Huey Lewis was a comedian his band would be called Huey Lewis and What Else Is In The News?

People ask me if these speeches have affected my career? They already don’t call me. What are they going to do, not call me more?

Here’s Adam Carolla talking about US schools being ‘flooded’ with Mexicans:

Published: 26 Jul 2013