Latest / Dangerous Laughter / No Jokes Allowed? Comedy, Cancel Culture & the Future of Free Speech | Lou Perez on Dangerous Laughter with A.J. RICE

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No Jokes Allowed? Comedy, Cancel Culture & the Future of Free Speech | Lou Perez on Dangerous Laughter with A.J. RICE · Dangerous Laughter

• 0:01
  Speaker A: Dangerous laughter. Laughter. Dangerous. Dangerous laughter. Dangerous laughter. Danger. Laughter. Sa. Day 8.
• 1:09
  Speaker B: The Emergency Destruct system is now activated.
• 1:14
  Speaker C: The option to override detonation procedure has now expired.
• 1:20
  Speaker B: The ship will automatically destruct in E minus one minute.
• 1:36
  Speaker C: We are back on the DL. Dangerous laughter. Where comedy is our civic duty. It's our civic duty. And we got a great show for you today. Really get into the fabric of what dangerous laughter actually is one of. Big, big, big shout out to our new sponsor, Valley Forge Automotive. If you're ever in Philadelphia and your car breaks down, just go see Shane. He'll take care of you, maybe hit you up with a few beers. My next dangerous guest, ladies and gentlemen, believes comedy is murder. He's a satirist, a producer, co host of the podcast Happy Hour Econ on the Free to Choose network. His philosophical battle cry is live Laugh. Love. Okay? You know, he. Love and look. He fights wokism with every breath. He's author of the book that Joke isn't Funny Anymore. On the death and rebirth of comedy. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you humor's deadliest weapon, the unparalleled Lou Perez, everybody.
• 2:35
  Speaker B: Here he is.
• 2:36
  Speaker C: Yes. Losing the house.
• 2:37
  Speaker D: Thanks for having me on.
• 2:39
  Speaker C: No problem, brother. No problem. So, you know, I wanted to talk with you because it's rare. We, you know, I. I'm in the. I came up through the political business, radio, tv, I do PR for a lot of different, you know, famous, you know, right wingers, a few left wingers and so on. But with this show, we rarely get to sort of dig down into the DNA on most episodes of Dangerous Laughter, of satire, of comedy, this sort of umbrella of humor. And, you know, I got to be honest with you. It's a. It's going to be a real treat for me to talk to you today because, you know, I'm looking at your resume, and it's just crazy. I mean, it's. It's. It's. It's an unbelievable resume. I've been waiting for a while here, very excited to do this. So this book, that joke isn't funny anymore. You know, before we totally dig into this and, you know, we have a lot of taglines here. One is that comedy is our civic duty, sort of a pressure valve, an audit of society. I mean, and I've been going through, you know, this book. You got a lot of different vignettes. I love it when it's written like that. I've done it myself a few times behind me. I gotta be honest with you. People want to know when, when you have a career like yours and your resume is crazy. What is the Lou Perez origin story? How do you go from. Because look, you've taught creative writing at City College of New York. Is that right?
• 4:05
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, when I was a grad student. So I, I'm one of those people walking around with an MFA fine arts.
• 4:13
  Speaker C: Looky, look at you. I almost had one of those too. But Ingram maybe leave grad school to come go get her coffee there. So go get her leg tanning lotion, you know, which I bust her stones about all the time still. So there are a lot of funny people out there. But what I gather from you and the way you write and I've been watching your videos over the last week, you're. You're concerned with why things are funny and why satire and humor, which are not the same, why it's important to have that in society, the intellectual undergirding of it. And I've watched you on Gutfeld and a lot of other podcasts, and you hold your own with anybody. So tell us the origin story and why you concern yourself. And that's what this book is kind of about with, with that, with the DNA of humor.
• 5:06
  Speaker D: Well, I, I wonder. I'm trying to do kind of like a, you know, a cell, like a self analysis, like maybe a psychological one. And I think this might be. It might be that I am selfish in that my brain works the way it does, and I'm looking for justification for it working that way. And a lot of it is just the way that I, That I see the world and the way that I interact with the world, and it comes often from a place of, of humor. Or if I see something that is egregious and wrong, my mind just kind of starts twisting it and seeing like, oh, how can I make this. How can I make this funny? Or how can I make this poignant, etc. Etc. And I think, you know, I, I think it's. Humor is, Is really important, especially when we, when we, when we're talking about things like free speech and open inquiry. Because the idea is that if, if you're able to laugh at something, mock it, deride it, you're also able to talk about it. And I, I'm of the mind that, you know, no subject is, Is off limits when it comes to discussion, when it comes to, to humor.
• 6:22
  Speaker C: Right. So dangerous laughter. This is a phrase that I have been using for some time before the show existed. I've been doing a sort of a. Some research on the history of what that Might be. I saw you were writing you. There's a couple sections, your book, where you get close to it at least the modern sense, the analysis of it and what I tried to. What I've been doing and it's for a book, but I've been going back in time. I went back to about 500 years before Christ to Aristophanes and I've come all. I'm slowly coming all the way forward. And what I've noticed about Western civilization in particular, so Greco Roman, Judeo, Christian civilization, is that, you know, the truth tellers that unlike in totalitarian regimes and, and there were some close calls, believe me, that we don't necessarily kill our court jesters or our satirists or our playwrights and, and you can kind of watch dangerous laughter evolve from a chorus in ancient Greece where you've got a government funded wine festival, where Aristophanes is basically filling the freaking audience with politicians that he's making fun of to their faces in the middle of a dumbass war between Athens and Sparta and everyone's drunk, the government's paying for it, he's making fun of politicians. Right. And you think to yourself this is unheard of. But. But no, that's what we do. That's what we're supposed to do. And it's supposed to be the equal distribution of mockery. And I think in at least when we're dealing with wokeism the last 10 years, I think that, you know, people forget that there's always been movements to silence. And so whether it's Aristophanes come all the way forward to Lenny Bruce and Prior and Carlin and all the rest, even Shane Gillis getting fired from snl. And I'm sure you've dealt with it that that cancel culture has, has always been there. And the interesting thing about Western civilization is that we've never really murdered the big guys. We've put a few in jail. Voltaire was thrown in jail, Lenny was thrown in jail, and so on. But that's what makes us special I think is the dangerous part is the ability to not punch down or punch side to side, but punch up and audit society.
• 8:58
  Speaker D: Well, have you ever met somebody who, who can't take a joke?
• 9:02
  Speaker C: There's.
• 9:02
  Speaker D: So it's, it's a. What a miserable experience or you're hanging out with the, with the one guy who's able to dish it out, but he can't take it. Nobody likes that guy. And I think, I think it is a testament to one's own strength. One's own confidence in their beliefs that they could, that they can sit there and take a joke and also, and also dish it back. And I think something that you're alluding to, I mean, if we were talking about things like the Soviet Union, where artists would have to speak in code so as not to offend the censors and ultimately disappear, it says a lot about the society when the powers that be can't take criticism, can't take a joke. So I think it's a, it's a real, I don't know, it really shows, I think, like a healthy, you know, a healthy society is one that's able to, to, to laugh. Sure.
• 10:00
  Speaker C: And I've, you know, people have said this that, you know, you know, true totalitarianism has arrived when the comedians are scared. And the last decade, I mean, so six years ago, you write a piece in the Wall Street Journal, something like, I, how I became a, like, right wing maniac or something like that.
• 10:19
  Speaker D: How I became a, quote, far right radical.
• 10:22
  Speaker C: Far, far right radical right.
• 10:23
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 10:24
  Speaker C: You know, I, I believe you probably were pulled there as somebody that's, that's represented RFK Jr. I, I've been his publicist. I work with Naomi Wolf. You watched Elon move. You watched Joe Rogan endorse Trump. You know, and, and a lot of other sort of comedian type podcast types, they all kind of did. Whether they're happy with them now is another. Is it? You know, I mean, they're auditing them now and that's fine. I mean, given the choice of Kamala, I get it. I watched after 9 11, certain actors come out of the closet. Rudy got him out of the closet. George W. Bush come out of the closet. Al Qaeda, you know, everyone from Ron Silver to James woods, they were all sort of pulled by events. So in the last decade, we've had everything from the MeToo movement to the patron saint of Fentanyl dying, George Floyd, to the COVID lockdowns. So what was the thing that, that got you? What, at what point, what was your breaking point? The cancel culture stuff?
• 11:27
  Speaker D: Well, I think I've always been, you know, very big on, on free speech. I've always liked dangerous laughter, dangerous art. You know, as I said at the beginning, I'm walking around with an mfa, Master of Fine Arts from City College, and the best thing that actually ever happened to me is I had applied to the master's program at Columbia University and I did not get in. And it's so, and it's so great that I didn't get in. Because had I gotten in, I'd be walking around with, I don't know, 80 grand in debt or something like that. So I was able to do the same thing that I would normally do at City College, which is great. Something that really radicalized me, I think, was the murders at Charlie Hebdo. So those. Those really radicalized me. And they were, you know, you had cartoonists who were murdered by Islamic jihadists. And, you know, rather than it radicalizing me to become Muslim, it radicalized me to basically become a free speech jihadi. That's how I would. Sure. How I would describe myself. That was a very. That was a very big moment for me. And then I think a lot of the stuff that, you know, I think there's kind of all these, you know, different, you know, moments, you know, since then that, you know, didn't necessarily impact me as far as, like, free speech goes, but just like life in. In general. And I think for a lot of people, Covid was a. Was a big one. My. My first son was born in March of 2020, which was, you know, kind of the beginning, the height of this. This madness. I was taken with the madness. I was scared, you know, beyond belief. Having a newborn and living in Brooklyn and a wife and. And all this stuff. And in. And what I sort of, you know, kind of discovered in that. In that moment was I was looking for positivity. I was looking for good news. And you would think that once you receive good news, like, hey, you know what? This thing. This thing that's going around, it actually doesn't affect babies. Like, kids are really safe. Like, man, that's amazing. And so I was grasping at any kind of positivity I can find. And then so many of those around me were not. So many of those around me didn't want to hear that. They were almost enjoying either being locked down or being in a position where they can kind of go after others, you know, for not believing X or Y or Z, whatever. So there. There. That. That was. That was a very big. Very big moment for me. And then I think also becoming a father, just in general, it's. It really puts into perspective. It's kind of like if I am fighting for anything, I am fighting for a future for my children, you know, and I'm doing it the way that. That I can do it, which is, you know, by. Through art, if you will.
• 14:26
  Speaker C: Absolutely. You and I are similar that way. I mean, I. My first kid was two years later. It's in 22, and, you know, it's and I've had another one since. I've got two as well. You know, you look around at. And it's funny you bring up Charlie Hebdo because I. My story is I. So you're. You were in the art world and then you've moved towards doing different types of political commentary. I mean, you're not. I wouldn't, you know, I see. I've seen some of your writing. I've gone through the book. The book's amazing. I started out kind of in that world you talk about not getting into Columbia. I was on September 11, 2001, I was a junior at Penn State University and I was getting ready to go to class, English Literature. Okay. So I was in the humanities department with all the cookies. And, you know, I'm listening to Howard and Robin. They're talking about plane just hit the World Trade Center. Howard immediately called it at terrorism and Baba Bowie comes in another one. So, you know, classes got canceled and I was at that time applying to go get a Master's of Fine arts from. It was worse than Columbia. It was like Emerson and, and Bard and like all like to go basically do screenwriting or film or whatever, creative writing. And I basically canceled all of that because this was a flashbulb event for me. September 11th. I'm from Philly. We had about 85, you know, bucks county, which is right north of Philly, fairly famous Washington across the Delaware. You know, we had about 80 people from Bucks county that died on September 11th. Because you can commute up to New York fairly easy from there.
• 16:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 16:12
  Speaker C: And I redirected my entire life into politics and into Middle east studies in particular. So then I ended up on Capitol working for a congressman special election. I end up on Capitol Hill. And then I was up there watching our money get flushed down the toilet. Ingram hires me as a 24 year old 22 years ago, and the rest is history. I've been doing in this world ever since. But I've always sort of had the thirst and hunger for the entertainment world because I was there. And, you know, I've kind of built. I've done pr, I host the show. I've written three number one books that are behind me here that are political satire. But I, I had a chance to talk to PJ o' Rourke when he was alive. I had a chance to interact with Limbaugh. I was mentored by Andrew Breitbart. Charlie Kirk was my client. So I've been in this sort of milieu where I'm trying to Brent Find more Lou Perez's. You know, we can all quote Breitbart till the day, you know, till the freaking cows come home. And almost every guest does. Oh, you know, downstream from politics is downstream from culture and all the rest of it. But the one thing that they miss about Andrew is that he. We could say that all we want, but we need to stop complaining and get into the freaking arena. And that's what Lou Perez is doing with this book, what Lou does every day. Lou's out there, he's opening for people. He's doing stand up. He has his own podcast. You know, was there anyone in particular, any conservative, known conservative, that helped you come out of the MFA closet?
• 17:51
  Speaker D: Oh, they came out the MFA closet. Well, I, I, Before I was. Before I got. Before I started doing, like, kind of political satire, I was doing sketch comedy, you know, straight up sketch comedy, maybe a political thing, you know, here and there or commentary. And then when I started producing videos for we called we the Internet tv, that was sort of the first time where I was able to fuse kind of my sketch comedy and my comedic sensibilities with my, you know, more political, ideological point of view. And I think it's, for me, I think I'm sort of very fortunate that I started out as a comedian before getting into politics, because ultimately, for me, what, you know, I don't want to come off as. As preachy. And I'm sure sometimes I do. I want to, you know, put out the best work that I can and the funniest work. So I'm, you know, know, very. I appreciate very much the people I work with who aren't necessarily political, who were able to say, like, hey, man, this is working. This isn't working.
• 19:03
  Speaker C: Right?
• 19:03
  Speaker D: Et cetera, et cetera. So that was a really, you know, a really important thing for me. And I think in general, too, when you're talking about people on the right or, you know, or, you know, in the center or however you want to describe them, I. There seems to be this tendency to just be reactionary, you know, or reacting to whatever the left is doing. Like, oh, the left is so crazy. They're doing this, this and this. Rather than focusing on. Make your own stuff, tell your. Tell the stories you want to tell, highlight the great things that are happening that you want other people to know about. Talk about how amazing America is. You know, the. The World cup is. Is going to end this weekend. You know, we had so many tourists from overseas coming here and experiencing America and falling in love with it, and I think we need to be doing a lot more, a lot more of that. I, you know, I really appreciate so many of the gifts that we have. And one of those gifts is. Is comedy. For sure.
• 20:06
  Speaker C: For sure. Absolutely. Well, we're going to take a quick break. We are with Lou Perez. His book that Joke Isn't Funny anymore. We'll be right back on the other side with more Lou.
• 20:16
  Speaker E: Women's rights champion Riley Gaines calls it a fierce defense of principle wrapped in humor from a satirist who dismantles the Trans Mafia's propaganda number one. Amazon best selling author AJ Rice completes the trilogy that started with the Woking Dead and the White Privilege album. The Curse of the Bearded how the Trans Mafia whacked American Sanity, Volume 3 of Publius Prose, already a bestseller. Get your copy today available everywhere books are sold.
• 21:03
  Speaker A: And now please enjoy another elegant celebrity endorsement of dangerous laughter with A.J. rice.
• 21:13
  Speaker F: A.J. rice, no one wants to hear your voice. Just like high school, you'll get kicked out of the Preston AV Club like a total freaking loser. And then you tried to be a DJ but never played Jamiroquai. Your podcast was called Dangerous Laughter. Only a host with no girlfriends would have a garbage show called that Girls don't want Boyfriends who have great Skills. You have less than zero skills. You have minus skills. That's why President Pedro stole your fat, tubby girlfriend. Do you practice your show talking to me like Batman with a high cholesterol? Like, good luck with the Dangerous Laughter. A podcast is so stupid, not even Uncle Rico will listen to it. Idiots.
• 22:02
  Speaker A: This endorsement has been brought to you by collapsing standards everywhere. And now back to Dangerous Laughter.
• 22:11
  Speaker E: The management of this station are clueless.
• 22:16
  Speaker G: You're listening to Dangerous Laughter with AJ Rice on the Publius Media Network.
• 22:23
  Speaker D: Well, if you're a comedian, it doesn't matter who's in office. You should be able to. To make jokes. You know, little did I know, you know, Trump was such an existential threat that, you know, when a meteor is coming to earth, you know, you have to use everything you can to, you know, break apart this meteor, to deflect it or whatever you have to do. And if you're a comedian, well, what do you got? Well, you have jokes, right? So suddenly you had like, this huge population of comedians that were just, you know, aiming their. Their weapons, you know, at the president, right? And there was like, you couldn't stray from that, you know, for, for a lot of people, you know, you couldn't stray from that. You couldn't, like, let this guy, you know, get an inch. You couldn't make. You couldn't even make jokes about your own party if you were a Democrat.
• 23:09
  Speaker C: And that is Lou Perez, everybody. I mean, Lou, you were just. I mean, you were just talking a little bit about that. I mean, the reality is that I always say if you tell a comedian what they're not allowed to joke about, that's exactly what they're going to go do. And it's not really ideological. Like, if you tell Chappelle no trans jokes, that's what he's doing. Right. Because if it's a sacred cow, your job is to make cheeseburgers out of that cab. Right? Yeah.
• 23:38
  Speaker D: And also to. To hold yourself to a standard of trying to do the best work you can. I think sometimes a comedian, you know, might fall into this trap of, oh, you don't want me to talk about that? Well, I'm going to talk about it, but then not work on the material. And then if it doesn't work, then they're like, oh, you got. You guys are snowflakes, you know, so, you know. You know, so I get that that's kind of a, you know, a safety valve. You know, it's like, oh, you know, you guys are woke. You can't handle this. As opposed to like, nah, man. What? It was kind of.
• 24:08
  Speaker C: It's not funny.
• 24:09
  Speaker D: It's just not funny, you know, it's not funny.
• 24:10
  Speaker C: I mean, that's. And that's what Seinfeld says. That's what Louis CK Says. I mean, that's what Ricky Gervais says that you need. It has to be funny first. Yeah, it's funny is the key. So you can make Holocaust jokes, but it better be funny. You can make 911 jokes, but it better be funny. And that. That's the thing, you know, and obviously, the left tries to move the goal post on us. Well, you know, you're not allowed to joke about this or that, but funny is. Is the key to everything. So whether it's. And look, there. There are. I mean, even in, you know, Chappelle's most recent thing, you know, there's people. The left is mad because he's making trans jokes. And then there's people on the right, man, because he's talking about Charlie Kirk and I, you know, and if both people, both sides are pissed off, I have to say that means the man's probably doing his job. Like, if everyone's a little bit uncomfortable. Right? I mean, that. I mean, from my perspective, that. And that goes all the way back to who Mark Twain. It doesn't matter. You know, you could come all the way forward. That is, I think, the key to, to balancing out humor. And I, and I think just what has happened here in the last decade, and you write about it talking to Lou Perez, his book, that joke isn't funny anymore is that, you know, and you were saying in that clip is that everyone ran in one direction and put their laser scope on Trump and, you know, left all this sort of real estate out there. No jokes about Obama, no jokes about Kamala, no jokes about, you know, Joe Biden being plugged into the extension court. And it's just a target rich environment, right?
• 25:52
  Speaker D: Oh, totally, totally. And, and also the, you know, the way things were. I mean, I have friends of mine who were, you know, Democrats. And even when if they would even step out of line and make fun of, even if they made fun of a local politician, you know, not even talking about somebody on the national, on the national stage, they make fun of a local politician, they would have all these people like, oh, so I guess you're MAGA now? And it's like, no, man, no. The joke was just there. You know, the joke was just there. I went and I, and I took it. But yeah, I really, I felt like there were all these kind of comedians kind of, I don't know, just all cannibalizing, you know, the same source material. And people were like, you know, complaining about that. But then me as, you know, I guess an entrepreneur, I was like, this is great, you guys keep making, you know, keep doing, you know, Orange Man Joe. Sure, fine. I'll be over here, you know, carving out my own, my own niche.
• 26:47
  Speaker A: Niche.
• 26:48
  Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, and you have a situation where every single late night host, you know, or all these, you know, doughy Gen Xers and they're all telling the same jokes. They, they scribbled out Sarah Palin's name and they inserted Trump's. And, you know, some of this has been going on since Nixon. It's gotten worse lately. Some of these people are going away on their own or because they failed or because they didn't get good ratings, like Stephen Colbert, you know, Kimmel. I mean, one thing I will say, you know, the government shouldn't be involved in, in what Kimmel's doing. I mean, I think that if Disney owns abc, the shareholders, if he's not getting ratings or if he's not funny or if he's not good at his job, that's a market decision, you know, so whether it's a Democrat president, Republican president, We've got to be careful that we don't look like Caesar. We don't look like. You know, in Elizabethan England, there was this position called the master of Rebels. And their job was to run every single joke you had to run if you wanted to put a play on. Right. Whether you're Ben Johnson or Shakespeare or Marlowe, whoever, you had to run it through there first, which is why Shakespeare basically just threw in the towel and just did pro Elizabeth propaganda the whole time. Whereas a guy like Ben Johnson was thrown in jail because, you know, the Master of Rebels and the Privy council had him arrested for jokes, for a play, really. A play that doesn't survive, by the way. So this isn't new. It's not new. It. We have this totalitarian tendency to go after, you know, the court jesters of. Of life. But at the end, you know, from what I've. Different people have been thrown in jail and stuff, but no one's ever really been like, murdered. Not like that, not in the West. But whether, you know, if you're Salmon Rushdie, if you're the Charlie Hebdo people, if you're Tio Van Gogh, remember he made that documentary about Islam. Obviously, the South Park Boys, they've had death threats and a personal one. I don't know whether you remember this, but Pamela Geller, who was a former client of ours, you know, she did a draw Muhammad contest at the. I don't really remember this. That The Garland. The Garland, Texas Mall. I mean, she was our client when
• 29:08
  Speaker D: this happened and she picked the perfect location to set that up because. Yeah, I believe both the perpetrator was. Were there two perpetrators that were taken out? Yeah.
• 29:21
  Speaker C: Huh. So I haven't talked to Pam in a while, but I was her publicist when that happened. And, and she did. You know, everyone in line at Cinnabon is packing. Everyone in line at Finish line and Foot Locker is packing. Everyone in line at Zbarrows to get a slice of pizza is packing. So, yes, if you're going to do that, the Garland Mall is key. Don't try to do it. You know, Dorchester, Massachusetts, and nobody, nobody's coming running. Right.
• 29:50
  Speaker D: Well, well, so. So a couple of things, you know, one, I think people really need to just take into account that, you know, right now your guy might be in office, but four years from now or however many years from now, the things can quickly change. Right? So, I mean, it wasn't, it was, it wasn't too many years ago that we were dealing with examples of jawboning which is a term where, you know, the government is basically leaning on private, you know, corporations to do their bidding. You know, they're not outright saying you should censor this or take down this post, but they're saying it'll probably be in your best interest. And I want to remind people, I mean, there were, you know, congressional hearings where Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg was. Was brought in front of, you know, congressmen and women and had to answer questions. And what was so revealing were that there are so many people in Congress who had no idea what Facebook was, what social media was, what maybe the Internet was. And it's really telling in that on every committee, there are people like that who have no clue what's going on. So I don't know. I don't even know if you can necessarily rely on the government to protect your rights. I think what's even more important is to have a culture of free speech, which is something that fire the foundation for individual rights and expression. They've expanded their mission from free speech on campuses to free speech, you know, beyond. Beyond campus. And it's really important to keep reminding people the importance of our free speech culture and to, you know, to stand up and fight for that.
• 31:36
  Speaker C: I totally agree with you. And you're right. I mean, you know, the Obama administration was worried about Cheryl Atkinson and James Rosen, and, I mean, they were worried about the Tea Party people and, you know, and they were slowly migrating towards talk radio hosts. I mean, Bill Clinton once blamed Limbaugh for the Oklahoma City bombing. I mean, he. He. He blamed Rush for that. Rush. Rush used to play the clip all the time. Obviously, Breitbart scared people. You know, whether it's the Anthony Weiner thing or the ACORN takedown, you know, Charlie Kirk absolutely scared a lot of people with. With his, you know, unabashed free speech, you know, and the thing about guys like Charlie is that he was able to weave culture, politics, and in some cases faith just off the cuff, extemporaneously. One of the best I've ever seen, and I've worked with them all, and I've seen them all, you know, and. And. And, you know, you. Like you were talking about earlier, you know, I'm glad that Gutfeld is doing what he's doing. Steven Crowder does what he does. The Babylon Be does. Does what he does. And, you know, Alex Stein's out there and whatever, but it's not enough. It's not enough people. It's not.
• 33:01
  Speaker F: We.
• 33:01
  Speaker C: We don't have enough people pushing back from the other direction. And you know, my first, and I think the 2024 election in particular, it was interesting to watch because my first, you know, taste of Donald Trump was him going on with Stern, Howard Stern, you know, all through the 90s and, you know, the women and the, you know, this, that, you know, the casino fights with stuttering John, all the rest of it. And that's where he kind of became a sort of counterculture icon in the beginning. And what was interesting about 2024 was that there was about 6% undecided voters out there. And where were they hiding? They weren't hiding at the Wall Street Journal or Fox News or CNN or the New York Times. They were hiding in what I guess is being described as the manosphere. These sort of Joe Rogan, you know, barstool sports, Theo and, you know, Tim Dylan and all the rest of it, you know, Schultz and all the rest of them. And he went into these places, the Nelk boys. He went in there and found that undecided voter. And, you know, it was kind of like him going back to his roots where he was, you know, just talking crazy. I mean, Theo Vaugh's talking about doing cocaine and all kinds of stuff, right? So I think there is a space, it has gotten bigger. And some of those people are not real happy with Trump about Iran or this or Israel, all the rest of it. And that's fine. Debate it, fine. You want to, you know, be an expert on Israel, there's other people that are too, and you can, you can chop it up. But I think the space is growing. I've watched a bunch of, you know, I, I listen to some podcasts with you. I mean, what is your take on that? Do you, do you feel that there's some real estate, we're gaining ground in the, at the free speech absolutist, you know, zone.
• 34:57
  Speaker D: Well, when it comes to like podcasting, I wonder if, I don't know if the bubble has burst yet on that. I, I could definitely use more, more listeners. If you are tired of hearing all the other guys, you could, you could hear my stuff, you know, going back to, to the campaign. I think one of the best things that, that Trump and his team did was to bring on J.D. vance because at the time before then, I really didn't know much about J.D. vance. And suddenly he was appearing on these similar podcasts, having these long form conversations and I was like, oh, he's like a regular guy. He's a regular dude. Which was completely counter to the, to what, you know, the Democrats are trying to be like, oh, he's weird. Isn't this guy weird?
• 35:47
  Speaker C: Right? So remember, that was their little. Their little. And they, they came here to town and they paid millions of dollars to some jabroni on K Street to come up with that.
• 35:56
  Speaker D: Yeah. Like, oh, man, isn't this guy so weird? And then you hear him talk for three hours, you're like, no, I, I. No, he's, he's actually pretty normal.
• 36:03
  Speaker G: So.
• 36:04
  Speaker C: So. Right.
• 36:04
  Speaker D: So what does that even tell you? It's just being, you know, halfway normal. Is now. It's.
• 36:11
  Speaker C: Is now what?
• 36:11
  Speaker D: Countercultural.
• 36:13
  Speaker C: Right. Being sane. Like, like, you know, I. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna let Lou speak for himself. But I don't think Lou wakes up every day and says, I'm gonna be a right winger today. No, Lou, you probably wake up and say, I'm gonna be normal, insane. And, and apparently that's right wing. That's, that's. I mean, because you're right. It was. Kamala represents hope.
• 36:38
  Speaker F: Right?
• 36:38
  Speaker C: You know, playing that stupid thing with, with the Obama retread. The Timu Obama. And then obviously that's what they tried to tag Vance with. Advance is like from the holler. And he went to Ohio State and, you know, he's had a. His career is kind of crazy, you know, and, you know, hillbilly elegy and all the rest of it came from nothing. And he's sitting there and he's talking to these people. And you're right, that, and, but that, that's the funny thing is because I was on with Ingram on Fox not long ago, and she, she's playing these clips of Kamala in the LA Sparks locker room. And there she is once again in a comfortable place. I mean, obviously she, she's. She's diarrhea the mouth. And you know, sometimes you can't. Can't understand what the hell she's talking about. But again, she would only go into controlled environments. She would only go into places where her audience is. And that was a killer in the 2024 election because, you know, she went on that like, who's your daddy? Podcast, but she wouldn't go on Rogan. She never goes on anywhere because, I mean, they know that. She's like a freaking claymore mind that's going to blow up. Right?
• 37:51
  Speaker D: I love, I love the idea of her going into the LA Sparks locker room, which is no man's fantasy, just an idea. Can you imagine? There is a room with naked women that no man wants to be in.
• 38:05
  Speaker C: That's what One of many, right? Yeah. There's no. Sophie Cunningham's on that team. So she's in there, full sisterhood. She's pretending to be Jimmy Valvano. Right. She's pretended to be Pacino in any given Sunday. Right. She's Right. She's. She's dead, Zale. And remember the Titans. She's trying to give the pep talk, and it's just a she in there going, like, you know, there's people that look at you of all genders and all races, and you're never gonna meet them. And I'm like. He's like, they're never gonna know your name. And I'm sitting here thinking, and they're never gonna buy a ticket, and they're never gonna watch any of this dumb. And they're never.
• 38:39
  Speaker D: I mean.
• 38:41
  Speaker C: I mean, it's nuts.
• 38:42
  Speaker D: Yeah, well, there's a. There's a point, too. And, you know, getting back to, like, you know, like, the. The JD Advanced stuff and, you know, the podcasting manosphere stuff. You know, you can't spend, say, a decade basically beating up on men, or in particular, you know, straight white men. Like, remember when straight white men was a put down? Like, oh, you're just a straight white man. Like, sure. You know, you spend all this time beating up on these people on. On these men with the idea that, oh, they don't have dignity, they don't have self respect, they don't have the power to turn around and say, wait a minute, I'm not a. I'm not a piece of garbage. I'm, you know, I'm. I don't deserve this. And you know what? Which party is saying that about me? Your party. Okay, F you. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go to the party who, you know, doesn't outright hate me.
• 39:30
  Speaker C: Right?
• 39:30
  Speaker D: And then. Yeah, and then it's just. It becomes really funny when, you know, the. The think tanks and. And the PR firms have to go like, oh, man, we really messed up. What do we do now to get these people back? And. And, yeah, I. It's, you know, it's, you know, it's glorious and for many reasons in. And the comedy is in no short supply.
• 39:52
  Speaker C: Absolutely. We're talking to Lou Perez, his book that Joke Isn't Funny Anymore. On the death and rebirth of comedy. We're going to take a. We're going to follow up on this on the other side. We're going to take a quick break. We're going to find out on the other side here on what the Democrats are doing to channel masculinity. And it's not the masculinity from the LA Sparks locker room, although I think there is some in there more so than even male Democrat politicians. You're watching Dangerous laughter. We will be back on the other side now. AJ Another. Another actor I know you follow very closely is Elliot Page, who's making an argument about animals and LGBTQIA plus two.
• 40:36
  Speaker B: Looking at nature as if it's this heteropatriarchal structure is absurd. And that this gender binary that we've created is nothing but a quaint little myth. What we have been taught in school in regards to these structures, men being superior, women being inferior, it being this heterosexual existence is just completely false.
• 41:00
  Speaker C: AJ I know you're not heteronormative, so I'm really yearn for your analysis of this. Well, Elliot, they. Whatever. Whatever's happening there, the former star of Juno. Never forget, ladies and gentlemen, what they took from you. Because that right there is what Homer. Because she's gonna be in the next. She's gonna be in the Odyssey movie this summer. That's exactly what Homer had in mind when he. When the great poet wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. That. That's the star right there. The Bearded lady.
• 41:33
  Speaker G: You should be women.
• 41:35
  Speaker E: And yet your beards forbid me to
• 41:37
  Speaker G: interpret that you are so. Someone once said comedy is the art of turning horror into humor. That's the essence of the Curse of the Bearded Lady. Laughing in the face of madness before it devours us whole. Nothing in living memory has been funnier or more horrifying than a movement convinced there are 72 genders. Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina. The Curse of the Bearded Lady. The Curse of the Bearded Lady. The Trans Mafia has whipped America's sanity. It's Monty Python by way of Mengelo. A absurd theater with real victims. I'm not here to conduct a medical examination of the Trans Mafia. This is a cultural autopsy. If Billy Shakespeare could write tragedies, histories and comedies, why can't I? The radicals refuse to surrender their gender mad stranglehold on America's vital institutions. This book, we'll show how we got here, how we fight back, and how the Democratic Party's obsession with mainstreaming the Bearded lady will doom it to political extinction.
• 43:00
  Speaker D: Stay locked in with the man who slayed the Woking dead. This is Dangerous Laughter with A.J. rice on the Publius Media Network.
• 43:13
  Speaker C: Back on the DL with Lou Perez, my new homie. I remember.
• 43:17
  Speaker D: Guys, we're on the DL now.
• 43:19
  Speaker C: We are on the DL. I'm gonna slide into our DMS about the DL, okay? We live the DL lifestyle here with Lou Perez. Don't tell our wives. We're gonna have a little fun today talking about masculinity on the DL here. Dangerous laughter. I am AJ Rice. So what you were just talking about is second third wave feminism spent decades basically telling women that, you know, men are either completely unneeded, unnecessary, or that at best and at worst, evil. Right? So, you know, in the MeToo movement, you can. You can't say, someone looks nice in the elevator, you're standing in line at Starbucks. You can't ask, you know, tell the woman she looks great or ask Sally to prom or whatever, because you might be a, you know, predator or toxic. Toxic masculinity and all the rest of it. So what we saw in the 2024 election was a giant gender gap with the parties. And like Lou was just talking about in the last segment, you know, men, not just white men either. I mean, Trump had Hispanics and Middle Eastern and Jewish and African Americans all break his way in pretty much, you know, Reagan type numbers. I mean, we haven't seen. And before that, Eisenhower. We haven't seen that many different types from the Benetton ad, the sushi. The sushi ad of different. Different ethnicities. We haven't seen it in years. You haven't seen it since Reagan won 49 states. And I think part of the reason is the fact that they tried to make in the 2024 election Tim Waltz and Doug Emhoff. Who's Mrs. Or Mr. Mrs. Kamala Harris's wife. I mean, husband. You know, the face of masculinity. Right, Lou? And we had some of these stories. Okay, here we go.
• 45:16
  Speaker F: Here you go.
• 45:16
  Speaker C: What do you think of that one?
• 45:17
  Speaker D: Well, yeah, Doug. The antidote to toxic masculinity. So there's. Yeah, there's something. Yeah, it was. It was very. It was very odd to be. To. To be alive during this time. And I think. I think most men wake up every day and don't give one thought to masculinity. You kind of just live our. Live our lives. And then you have people who are really interested in masculinity and. And putting it down who end up kind of creating these kind of cartoonish. That's right, These cartoonish ideas about. About masculinity. And, you know, I. I guess maybe I'm. Maybe I'm just one of those people who. My whole life, I've just. I've had it, man. I've Just kind of had it. I don't have to work for it very much.
• 46:08
  Speaker C: That's right. You can feel the vibes. That's right. Yeah.
• 46:11
  Speaker D: Yeah. But also, it's sort of like, you know, I, I do wonder. I don't know much about, like, the manosphere stuff, but, you know, as a, you know, as a husband, as a father, I think my idea of masculinity might be a little different. You know, I. I'm not a looks maxer. I don't know where that falls on the right. I mean, my nose is crooked, so if I did.
• 46:34
  Speaker C: Hammer, you're not taking meth to have 1% body.
• 46:37
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. I track my macros, you know.
• 46:41
  Speaker C: That's right. Well, you know what they're doing though, Lou? They're, they're, they're. And you can see it with these stupid stories. I mean, look, I'm a PR person. I plant stor. I can tell you, they have turned masculinity into another little group of theirs. Another little, you know, freaking, you know, Ben and Jerry ice cream flavor for them. It's. It's another little grievance group or a little, Little, you know, peg on the board on K Street and with the consultant class. So they tried to turn Tim Waltz, tampon Tim into this. He's out there, Elmer Fudd, he's low. He's loading the 12 gauge with a maxi pad or whatever he was doing. And then obviously, Mr. Kamala Harris, you know, who's impregnating the nanny and slapping women around. Remember that? The face of masculinity. Which leads me to their most recent attempts, which was this Senate candidate in Maine. They found one with a Nazi tattoo who was also beating women. Slapping. Slapping women around. You know, Doug Emhoff went into the LA Sparks, a locker room with a bunch of masculine women. I wonder if he tried slapping any of them around. They probably wouldn't have had it, right?
• 47:49
  Speaker D: No, there's. There's some tough, Some tough broads in there you got over there.
• 47:55
  Speaker C: But you're right. I mean, Lou, you wake up, you fart, you go eat a bowl of cereal, you know, you take. You deal with the, the kids. I mean, I. I mean, I. I've got a one year old, a four year old. Believe me, I know exactly what happens, okay? But the Democrats are desperate for this. They found this weird vegan goofball in Texas. I mean, this is their face. This is the guy that believes Jesus is one of the 72 genders or something non binary.
• 48:22
  Speaker D: I Think God is non binary or something like that?
• 48:25
  Speaker C: That's right. God is Lance Morissette, like Kevin Smith told us. But I mean that, that's, but that's where we're at. That's who they found. They, they brought in all these consultants and like, okay, guys, we saw the numbers, okay? You know, maybe we should read some Jack London novels. No, no, let's go. Let's find the Nazi tattooed oyster fishermen from Maine. Yeah, I mean, this is who they failed.
• 48:51
  Speaker G: Lou.
• 48:52
  Speaker D: Well, it's, it's something, you know, you, you know, I wonder how much of it is, you know, this idea that people will get behind somebody because of the actual, that they put on, you know, the costume that they put on, you know, like, like you said, like, you know, the, the oyster, you know, fisherman, etc, you know, with a, you know, with a beard as opposed to, you know, you know, he is those things, but they're also, he also holds values that I think a lot of people don't, don't support. Right. So you have like, you know, the Democratic Party definitely has to contend with the growth of, of the dsa Democratic Party, Socialists of America. So, you know, for all those years where people were throwing around the word, you know, socialists at, at Dems, you know, now they really have to contend with it because there's a big segment of their, of their base that, you know, actually believes this stuff. And those, you know, Democratic socialism, which I call socialism on Lupron, it's like ballist socialism. You know, there are a lot of, are a lot of people out there who, you know, find it such an appalling ideology that it doesn't matter how quote unquote manly your, you know, the proponent looks or, or comes off that. They see that for what, you know, for what it is. There was a, there was a short, short time ago, I think it was a third way, which is a think tank.
• 50:14
  Speaker C: Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah.
• 50:16
  Speaker D: They came up with a list of words and terms that they recommended Democrats no longer use on the campaign trail. And you know, there were things like, I think one of them was like birthing person, you know, et cetera. But the thing is they were, they were telling Democrats not to use the language. They weren't telling Democrats to stop believing this bullshit. So basically they were telling Democrats to lie, to lie to, to voters. And I think, look, if you really believe that the term birthing person is, you know, you agree with that, use it. You know, use whatever those, you know, whatever those, those terms are, stop lying. And, and I Think now, you know, which is everything on social media, podcasts, all that, everybody having, having a voice and being able to point this stuff out, it's a lot harder. It's a lot harder to, to, to lie. It's a lot harder to get away with the bs.
• 51:10
  Speaker C: I mean, I agree with you. And you know, Republicans have some branding issues themselves. They have, you know, some language issues themselves. Mean, I've been in the room on K Street. I've listened to some of this stupid stuff for years. You know, going through the George W. Bush years and trying to run Romney out there and McCain out there and getting our clocks cleaned. You know, Trump just came along and just, just threw as an apex predator, just through sheer instinct. He's not really an ideological guy. Just through sheer instinct, just shattered the board. And you know, his enemies, some of which are on the right right now, people that are criticizing him, they continue to make a, a huge mistake and that is that they continue to treat him like he's solely a political figure and not a cultural figure. So, you know, you, the consultant class on the right and the left, like you said earlier, they concocted this word to hit JD Vance with that he was weird. And then he goes on and he talks like a normal human being. And it fought the consultant classes. Branding falls apart. And then you take a guy like the Nazi oyster fisherman and again they branded him like some Hemingway figures, like the old man in the seas. Like, you know, he's like in a Kenneth Lonergan movie up there. He said, you know, it's like ridiculous. And like you said, though, it was all branding because on the inside he's a stone cold Marxist, right? And they, that's what they're going to try to do.
• 52:48
  Speaker G: Now.
• 52:48
  Speaker C: They've got Mamdani, they fed him after midnight. They dumped water on him. So you've got a little bit of Mom, Donnie. Gremlins are popping up everywhere. And that, you're right, it's inside the belly of the Democrat Party. And, you know, they're all scared to death. I'm going to tell you something. I know Schumer's people, they are scared to death that they're next.
• 53:12
  Speaker D: No, I, I totally agree. And, and it has huge implications for, you know, for the, for our country, the future, the future of the country. And that's why I think it is so important for people who, I don't, you know, I won't even say if you're on the right. I say if you're, you know, anti anti communist, anti socialist, anti Leftist to, you know, be out there and creating, you know, creating good work, creating great stuff. And it doesn't have to be, you know, Red dawn was a, is, is a fun movie that I can't wait to, to rewatch from the 80s. Everything doesn't have to be Red Dawn. You know, you could also have Conan the Barbarian. I'm here, here. I'm giving up John, Millie. Giving love to, to John Milius.
• 53:59
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Well, here's the thing. You've got sane people. These are not people. Guys like Stephen A. Smith, guys like Senator Fetterman. I can't believe I'm saying this because I'm from Philly and you know, he makes more sense than most people. Guys like Bill Maher that I think are just looking for sanity. And you got Stephen A. Smith basically telling Sean Hannity not long ago that he's willing to vote for Rubio for president. So there once again is that 6%. It's going to decide everything. 6% in a swing state, 6% in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan. Because inside the Democrat party, it's a party that cheers on the murder of a health care executive in the streets. Once the MS.13 planes turned around burns Tesla dealerships. I mean this is, you know, this is the, this is what they, I mean, look, lift up their skirt. There's 72 genders under there. The bearded lady who's behind me here is there. And I mean that, that is who they are. So you don't even need to like be based, a based right wing knot. You just need to not be insane like Rubio and Vance and you will walk away with it. I, I think.
• 55:19
  Speaker D: Yeah, well, on the, you know, on the murder of Brian Thompson, you know, healthcare CEO, I actually just, I just wrote a review of Luigi the Musical
• 55:32
  Speaker C: that should be coming out.
• 55:34
  Speaker D: Yeah, that should be coming out next week with Pirate Wires and any of your, you know, listeners out there. Pirate Wires is a, is a great online magazine. They talk about tech culture, politics. They're wonderful. And this will be the, the second piece that they're publishing of mine. And you know, I, you know, I think I, you know, we're talking about, you know, moments that, you know, really had a big impact. I think the response to the responses I saw to, you know, Charlie Kirk's murder, Brian Thompson's murder has had a big impact on me. And it's something that Mike Solana from Pirate Wires calls a believe he calls it assassination culture that we're in now where, where it's, it's, you know, the targets are, you know, growing as far as who people are going after, whether they're, you know, billionaires, whether they're politicians. I mean, you have the, the instance talking about mom, Mayor Momdani who, you know, filmed out in front of a, of a New York citizens residence saying we're basically coming after billionaires and you know, the, I guess the wealth tax kind of way, which is totally out of line, really creepy. And it's something that I really, you know, I really hope we can put an end to it before things get really ugly because I'm, I was born in 1982. I didn't live through the 60s and 70s, but talking about some really violent times.
• 57:02
  Speaker C: That's right.
• 57:03
  Speaker D: The 60s and 70s were in insane when it comes to political violence.
• 57:07
  Speaker C: We had three assassins go after Trump. We've had people try to jump, you know, the fence at the White House here. We had Charlie's murder. We had this healthcare executive situation. You know, Steve Scalise shot baseball field. Rand Paul's neighbor broke his ribs. You had a gunman in Tucker's neighborhood, a gunman in Brett Kavanaugh's neighborhood. Mean, this is where we're at. I mean, this is pure Bolshevik Jacobin mindset. Right? You know, the people that, that go out and they try to, they attack ICE or they attack the cops. I mean, this is, this is where we're at. And you know, I'm not sort of shocked. Mom, Donnie's the, the face of it. He's out. I think it was Ken Griffin. Yeah, one of his place. I mean, they're going to push this. They're, they, they want it. It's street justice. You know, a Noah Rothman's book. We had Noah on not long ago. He details a hundred years of this stuff going back to, you know, really Reconstruction and through the progressive area world, you know, World War I and Wilson and, and some of the, some of the communist stuff in the, and you know, all through the early 20th century, I use this list all the time. I have to tell you, you know, since the Civil War, whether it's Lincoln or Garfield or McKinley. Now you jump to Kennedy, Reagan, Trump. You know, there were, there were some people that wanted to kill Ford and Nixon as well. Every one of those people on that list except JFK was, it was a Republican president. It was either Teddy Roosevelt was shot, didn't kill him. Some of them live, some of them didn't live. But when we hear that the Republican Party is the party of violence, I mean, that is just a canard that is just. I mean the 20th century is replete, like you said, the 60s, whether it's the Weather Underground or the Panthers or whoever. Right. The Chicago 7. That's street justice, street thuggery. Whether it's Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall street or antifa. They right now they're in hibernation. They're not to some degree.
• 59:13
  Speaker D: But you know, I would recommend, if anybody is looking to be a terrorist, it's better to be a left wing terrorist because afterwards you will, you will have a guaranteed position in some college or university and you know, basically your whole future is mapped out for you. You know, it's a really good internship.
• 59:33
  Speaker C: That's right. The, the chairman, the, the, the co chair of the Institute of Domestic Violence at Yale University or wherever. Or you'll get your own show on Ms. Mb Whatever the hell it's called Ms. Now. Whatever the hell it's called. Well, look, Lou, tell everyone before we go here, tell everyone where they can find you. The podcast, the website, all these places.
• 59:57
  Speaker D: Yeah, so I am very easy to track down. Too easy to track down. You can go to my website, thelooparez.com and I am at Lou Perez on I think all social media platforms. And yeah, obviously my book, that Joke isn't funny anymore. And my, my podcast, Happy Hour Econ, which I get to host with the great economist Phil Magnus.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker C: How's that work? You, you, you, you bring the jokes, he brings the numbers. How does it, how's that working out?
• 1:00:24
  Speaker D: A comedian and an economist walk into a bar and yeah. And boom, you have Happy Hour Econ.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker C: That's right. And hopefully the Economist picks up the bill. Right? I mean, he's gotta, you know, he's got to pick up.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, my tab is. He's never getting paid back.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker C: Well, look, brother, I appreciate you coming on. We'd love to have you back. Guys, you gotta go get this book. That joke isn't funny anymore. And just look up. Loose, loose pedigree, lose background. I mean, he's one of these guys that has been on every side of humor, every side of writing, in front of the camera, behind the camera, in the writers room, you know, we need more guys like Lou Perez out there just as truth tellers, you know. And look, it's a target rich environment and we believe in the equal distribution of mockery, which is what Lou does, you know, I mean, and go get this book. Help, help Jeff Bezos send his wife back into space, you know, with this book, you know, and, and look, just remember, ladies and gentlemen. You know there's no substitute for perfectly timed derision. Go to dangerouslaughter.com Lou, thanks for coming on, brother. I really appreciate it.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker D: Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker C: All right, guys, stay dangerous. I will catch you on the flip side.