Calm Down, Internet: Adam Carolla Said Something Sexist!
Adam Carolla Says "Chicks Aren't Funny" in a New York Post Interview
People often complain about our modern television news cycle. Because we have so many 24-hour news channels, we're forced to cover and recover the same stories over and over again, from every different angle, because there is more time to fill than there is news. As a result, we give more attention to subjects that don't deserve it, and feign more outrage over stories that are fairly innocuous. Gotta fill that time somehow.
The Internet is that multiplied by a thousand. We ONLY have time on our hands, and we all have the potential to be amateur journalists and take part in the news cycle, which is one of the things that's awesome and terrible about the Internet.
So Adam Carolla said a stupid thing, and it could have ended there. But then blog after blog started covering it. And "Adam Carolla" became a trending topic on Twitter for 48 hours. And hilarious and talented comedians put on their serious faces and jumped up to defend funny women.
Why?
We can finally kick this Carolla/Behar feud into high gear!
Remember, I'm not defending Adam Carolla, I'm just questioning the Internet's over-the-top reaction to it. I don't think Carolla's right, but I also think it's important to remember that the Internet is getting up in arms over something stupid Adam Carolla said in a newspaper interview. He says stupid things all the time. It's part of his job. But we reblog, and we respond and refute, which makes the stakes seem so much higher than they actually are. The Internet takes one guy saying one thing and turns it into a self-sustaining media hurricane. The response has been so immediate and so passionate, and that's great, but I wonder what exactly it is that we were worried Carolla's interview was going to actually do.
Everyone's treating this like a big, hairy deal, like if we don't stick up for funny women then the terrorists win, but they're forgetting two important facts:
1) The intentionally controversial guy from The Man Show said he doesn't think the female hosts of The View are as funny as male comics in an interview in a newspaper. What is either surprising or interesting about that?
2) The rest of the world doesn't know and doesn't care about this.
Come on, Internet. This can be a disposable footnote in the story of a goon trying to make waves by being "shocking," or we can make it a big fat news story that needs lots of coverage if we give it that kind of attention. This doesn't need to be a story. Next time, let's all take a deeeeeep breath before we turn some idiotic quotes into a crusade.
