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I listen to Adam Corolla almost every day. I think he’s funny and keenly intuitive.
He’s also crass, iconoclastic and politically incorrect. Some of what he does is offensive but much of what he says is stuff that I agree with…not all.. but a lot.
He railed on the occupiers and here’s a blog about it.
I’m curious what you think–do you agree with Adam, strongly disagree or fall somewhere in bewteen? Please send me your comments,
Glad someone else saw this, too. I def had a reaction to it an I’ll share some of it here. Hopefully Rivest and I will still be pals after I spit it out. Love ya, MR! Honestly, I’m not sure we disagree all that much if at all.
First- I’m sure you know AdamC is a boxing fan and I’m pretty sure had a few bouts. His movie “Hammer” is a riot. Then again, I thought ‘Shakes The Clown’ was the funniest alcoholic clown movie ever made (one of them, anyway) so others may not share my taste.
The other first – big people are aware that utopia is not an option and that if someone’s so revved up that his ideological needle is pinned, he probably don’t have a willingness to listen to other POVs let alone have a reasonable solution. We can all ignore the lone nutjobs and True Believers.
I thought AC’s broad brush observation that this is the result of the Participation Trophy Generation was pretty damn funny and it wouldn’t be if I didn’t think it had a grain of truth.
These OWSers aren’t all Generation P(laystation)ers or chronic tagalongs looking for the campus crusade du jour. Some are. Some in the mix are professional agitators and true thugs– but not all. Obviously.
Many are as representative a cross-section of America as any group.
I am down with me OWS brothers & sisters 100% as far as a couple beefs go:
Should Bigcorp Corp get gov’t contracts because Bigcorp’s CEO is Senator Bitforshrains bro-in-law? God, no.
Should top-tier corp & gov’t golf buddies conspire to hinder/stop competition? God, no.
Should AIG, Goldman Sachs, GM etc etc etc get a dime from me (Gov’t bailout) to prevent them from “failing?” God, no.
I am down, down, down with all that. Sign me up.
If a CEO, trader, financier or government employee does something illegal– nail’m.
If we vote for legislators who have a philosophy that allows for theft from some to “save” others from “failing,” then we need to vote differently next time. Probably a few next times.
The ones Corolla is busting on are not the rational folks pointing out illegality and conspiring amongst the elite. I agree with his assessment of those who go beyond legitimate complaints (my definition of “legitimate”). The complaints from OWS don’t stop at immoral and illegal cronyism. …and that’s where they lose me.
I don’t blame “OWS” for some fringe nut bitching about The Man inserting subliminal commands into radio waves which compel him to eat too many Twinkies, Obey, Consume, Watch TV, Reproduce… (name that film!).
The reasonable complaints re: cronyism and insider manipulation of markets to the detriment of the end-users quickly degenerate into demands for higher wages for some and lower wages for others, forgiveness of student loans and other such free-lunch demands and other petty demands motivated by envy (and ignorance of basic economics).
I loved Corolla’s analogy of the rich guy driving by & the dad tells the kid, “there’s Mr.so&so. He works hard, respect him….” and contrasts the OWS philosophy which seems to have the immediate reaction, “let’s throw rocks at him.” Funny but sadly apt from what I’ve seen and heard.
To me, unfortunately for the legitimate protests, it seems the majority curse the darkness, ask for the head of the darkness, throw rocks at the darkness, ask the co-conspirator-in-the-messes-we-all-decry (Government) to punish the darkness …and define “the darkness” as anyone who “has.” I don’t have sympathy or patience for that whiny crap. Grow up. “Light a frikkin candle” as enlightened Oprahites might say. Try not to leave the melted candle for someone else to clean up, either. Do your best not to rape another darkness-curser while you’re at it. For the record, nurturing and indulging your inner anti-semite is probably not productive and by the way, if protesting has a fibrous effect on you, the fountain or the hood of a car may not be the best place to go.
I could be all wet. Maybe Walter Payton should have been given a valium before every quarter and Michael Phelps should have 10oz weights sewn into his calves. My mom said I was pretty special, too. I think I’m entitled to a 1968 black on black Cutlass 442 (chrome Cragar wheels, naturally), no lupus, understand calculus, have 80% more fast-twitch muscle fiber, three or four ’59 Les Pauls and Gina Gershon.
Corolla’s tirade was damn funny. Of course it doesn’t apply to evvvveryone. If this movement was initially begun by those merely wanting to point out the cronyism which those in power employ to enrich themselves without producing value for anyone else ….awesome. Good on ya.
Unfortunately those initial OWSers couldn’t keep out the violent and the degenerate and those who wanted to usurp a legitimate protest to, as usual, say, “gimme gimme gimme.”
Pointing that out in a funny way is refreshing after hearing fawning and “understanding” from gov’t and movie star big shots.
Corolla is consistently funny on his podcast just riffing on whatever. the thing that amazes me is that he pulls it off five days a week. The guy likes to portray this slacker no caring attitude but he’s incredibly driven. Got his start as Kimmel’s boxing trainer.
He makes me wince sometimes but I think comedy isn’t supposed to be safe.
There is something about the Occupy movement that feels disingenious to me. i don’t know if its all the middle age white guys in $400 REI gear and expensive Coleman tents asking for sinks and heaters. I know that’s an easy straw man argument but that’s what I go with when I’m not smart enough to come up with something solid.
Haha, BD, yeah we’re still buddies:) I’m not sure what it means that I’m referenced in Tom Schreck’s blog, though. Does that make me famous? If so, I thought it would feel better:) Or that I’d have more money…
Anyway, OWS… I agree with Corolla (surprised?). There is absolutely an element of these folks who are as he describes – “self-entitled monsters,” who think “everybody owes them a living.” I’m not sure how he’d explain me, though, and the many, many, many who don’t fit his necesary, two-dimensional understanding – especially given that, poltically, I’m economically right of center, always have been. It’s easy to criticize a nascent reform movement by picking on the lunatic representatives. It’s like those who inveigh against the foolishness of religion by attacking fundamentalism, which has virtually nothing to do with faith.
All true reform movements begin this way – from the bottom up. They’re without exception, initially unfocused, have amorphous goals, and are confusing, shocking, unsettling, yet too big and widespread to ignore. Those of us who are old enough – which excludes BD and Schreck (and everybody but me in the world, I fear – remember the 60’s. It’s very difficult to appreciate what things were like then unless you were there (and not stoned. oops, stop reading). These days when you say “Civil Rights,” heads nod in righteous approval. Believe me, that wasn’t the case in 1964. White America was demanding to know “What do these colored people want? They’re never happy. Let ’em work like MY grandfather did when he cam to this country” blah, blah.
Also, say “Vietnam” today and everybody – except for the delusional few who fall into a category similar to holocaust deniers – will acknowledge that it was a great big and costly mistake. Not then. My father’s generation was horrified. They said the same thing about us that Carolla says about OWS. And my father was just as right RIGHT and WRONG. Sheesh, everytime we took to the streets against the war, a large percentage were just there because they wanted to fight with police. Look at Chicago 1968. There were thousands of people. The Corollas of the day chose to take the easy way out and talk about the criminal element, or the malicious one. On the other hand, most of us were dismissed as “self-entitled,” and “spoiled college kids who think everybody owes them.” They’d shout “Get a job,” “Take a bath.” We did those things eventually. But first, we ended the fucking war. You young kids (that is, BD and Schreck, haha. I wanted to say, “whipper-snappers,” but that would situate me as “an old fogey,” and I couldn’t bear it.) don’t remember. I do. BTW, the day MLK was shot, NO ONE outside my youth world voiced anything but approval. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but it’s true. The world was different.
So OWS…I believe that a generation from now, they’ll be similarly vindicated. Carolla needs to look a little deeper. The CEO to worker ratio in Japan is 11:1, in Canada it’s 20:1. Here it’s up to 475:1. The middle class is disappearing. OWS is the canary in the mine. This is what revolutions are made of. It isn’t capitalism; it’s the abuse of capitalism. It’s why all economic systems in their pure expression, are dismal failures. The last 20 years have seen the biggest redistribution of wealth in American history. Ayn Rand is a FICTION writer. Pure capitalism sounds wonderful in the abstract, but so does socialism and communism (before you cringe, think…everybody gets a share, everybody’s happy and the rest of that nonsense…). The trouble is in the application. It doesn’t work. I’m not a spokesperson for OWS, but I’m also not what Carolla describes. I’m not suffering from a sense of self-entitlement and I don’t think I’m owed anything. Carolla would need to explain my support of OWS in order to be convincing. Instead he sounds like my father in 1965. But he won’t look deeper. It’s too murky down here in the real, and he is after all, a comedian – not a political/economic analyst. I suppose he’d have to categorize me as a crazy liberal (I’m no such thing); or that I’m stupid (I’m not that either – but I do read Tom Schreck’s blog…hmm….)
If I’m right, what will happen next is that some figures will emerge from OWS, as spokespersons and then develop a political platform that will influence America politics and culture, same as we did. Then tens of thousands of them will take a bath and get a job. And a lot of people will have to eat their words. (The fact is, my generating was right about everything, except drugs.)
Gimme a little slack when you read this. I wrote it in… (he said, pausing to look at the clock in the upper right hand corner of his Mac) 7 minutes. I haven’t even had coffee yet. So, you know, bite me:)
oops, having now had a sip of coffee, I noticed that the last sentence in my second from last paragraph should say “my GENERATION,” not my “generating.”
I noticed the improper placement of several commas as well…
Anyone who can use nascent in a sentence has to be reckoned with…
I damn near this close to occupying Averill Park…
Thanks for chiming in on request, brother. It’s appreciated.
Naturally, when I get talking about Roddy Piper movies, boxing and number 2ing on cars a lightbulb joke comes to mind.
Q: How many libertarians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: None. Market Forces will take care of it.
Man, nothing funnier than some economics-based one-liners.
John Kenneth Galbraith walks into a bar and says “I’ll have a beer”. The bartender says “That’ll be $10.” but continues to stare at him.
“Aren’t you the famous economist?” The bartender says.
“Yep.” Galbraith says.
“We don’t get a lot of famous economists in here.”
“At $10 a beer I’m not surprised!”
hahahahahahaha!
Just me? Sorry.
How do you get a one-armed hippie out of a tree? Pass him the joint. (I know that’s suppose to be a joke, but I honestly don’t get it??? Is the idea that the hippie ISN’T suppose to take the joint? That can’t be right??)