Funny guys

Jason Zinoman has an article in The New York Times about the Blue Collar Comedy Tour:

You can tell a lot about a comedian by how long he takes to get to his catchphrase. In Ford Park, an arena in Beaumont, Texas that feels like the world’s biggest high school gym, Bill Engvall, a middle-aged goateed comic, takes his time before drawling: “Here’s your sign.” The line punctuates jokes about someone acting stupid. (The idea is that dumb people should wear signs.)
Next is Jeff Foxworthy, who spins a long yarn about a family reunion before delivering the line: “You might be a redneck”... A better catchphrase, perhaps, in that it requires no explanation.
But the night’s final act, Larry the Cable Guy (photo), the sleeveless id of this graying triple bill, gets down to brass tacks right away. Git-R-Done! he says, in his signature guttural style, to the delight of a large but not terribly loud crowd that paid up to sixty dollars per ticket. Larry, whose real name is Daniel Whitney, treats his all-purpose slogan— which can mean “Right on!” or “Do it!,” among other connotations— the way a classic rocker does a hit he’s weary of playing, getting it out of the way early before moving on to his act.
Over a dozen years after the Blue Collar Comedy tour began, its early performers (Ron White is the fourth) remain a major force in live comedy, Larry the Cable Guy, Engvall, Foxworthy, and White still routinely perform to large crowds, although you probably have to leave New York City or Los Angeles to find them. (White has stopped appearing with the others, however.)
Part of its success is undeniably due to the way its redneck jokes and Fox News-style gibes at kale-munching elites stand out in a comedy scene dominated by stand-ups who are based on the East and West Coasts. Being sneered at by comedians like David Cross, who recorded a brutal takedown of Larry the Cable Guy, probably helps their outsider credibility.
But these comedians have also been extremely savvy marketers, constantly experimenting with new platforms and adjusting their acts to reach larger audiences. There are three Blue Collar movies, a reunion tour, albums and best-selling books, television and radio shows and a mountain of merchandise. You can buy Larry the Cable Guy condoms and beef stroganoff. A two-hundred-million-dollar Blue Collar Comedy amusement park is in the works in Foley, Alabama.
Inspired by The Original Kings of Comedy, a concert film starring four black comedians and directed by Spike Lee, Blue Collar Comedy was started in 2000, led by Foxworthy, a prominent comic from Atlanta. In the early years, Larry’s crude Southern caricature was the opening act to Foxworthy’s folksy quips. While Foxworthy’s redneck jokes updated a similar premise deployed by Jerry Clower (“You know a man is a redneck ...”), his more direct antecedent was Lewis Grizzard, a fellow Atlantan who mixed yarn-spinning odes to the Old South with jokes about the chasm between North and South.
Grizzard, who wrote a newspaper column for The Atlanta Constitution before moving on to books and live comedy, praised the nuance of Southern speech in a proudly cranky style. But Foxworthy more forcefully celebrated the crudeness of the redneck, which he defines as a “glorious absence of sophistication”. Grizzard died of a heart ailment at 47 in 1994, a year after Foxworthy recorded his first album, reflecting a changing of the guard in Southern comedy.
The early Blue Collar shows included political jokes, like defenses of the death penalty and cracks about Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The comedians remain active politically: Larry endorsed “anyone but Obama” on Fox and Friends, and Foxworthy stumped with Mitt Romney. But the recent show I saw at the Ford Arena was heavy on the difficulties of aging and the difference between men and women, with almost no politics.
While they were once more confrontational about their cultural politics, the Blue Collar comics now have a cautious, inclusive vibe, especially since White stopped appearing with them. (His manager said he had gone in a different direction.) When I saw his stand-up last month at the Warner Theater in Washington, he boasted about owning a jet. Dressed in black and speaking in a baritone, he curses and drinks onstage and makes no attempt to whitewash his sins or his opinions. He refers to The Book of Mormon as Gullible’s Travels. In an earlier Blue Collar movie, he made fun of people who like Garth Brooks. (What is Blue Collar but the Garth Brooks of comedy?) White (video below) makes Foxworthy and Engvall look like smiling game show hosts, which has been one of their many roles. (Foxworthy’s new religious trivia series for GSN, The American Bible Challenge, is a hit.)
Here in Beaumont, the listless show by White’s former cohort, which was not helped by the cavernous room, seemed as if it were on autopilot— until Larry the Cable Guy walked onstage. Whatever you think of his juvenile humor, which includes jokes about flatulence, ugly women, and dwarfs, this is a hard-working performance. He provides puns and one-liners in bulk, and while his persona depends on obvious stereotypes, the core of his appeal is a pure silliness with a mischievous streak. “Good to be here in Beaumont,” he said. “Bet that’s the first time you heard that.” Unlike the other Blue Collar comics, who strain to establish blue-collar credibility (“Whole Foods?” Engvall says. “More like whole wallet.”) Larry comes off, oddly enough, as more real because he’s so transparently fake. The artifice is right there in his name and cartoonish expressions (underbritches, daggum). A city slicker could make a case that Larry the Cable Guy is the longest-running piece of performance art in pop culture today. But he’s really just an old-fashioned entertainer with an effective gimmick. (It should surprise no one that he’s appearing in the Tyler Perry movie A Madea Christmas this year.)
When Whitney, who is from Oklahoma, created the character, it was just one of many he did on a Florida radio show in the early 1990s. Another was an old Jewish lady from Boca Raton. She never caught on, but considering the success of Larry the Cable Guy, maybe she will have a second act as Iris the Gefilte Gal.

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