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Colin Quinn Skewers Political Correctness
If you know comedy, you know Colin Quinn. The Brooklyn native began his career on MTV’s “Remote Control” (alongside Adam Sandler), which led to a gig on “Saturday Night Live” (alongside Adam Sandler). Then, in the early ’00s, he hosted the vastly underrated “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn” on Comedy Central, broadcast nightly after “The Daily Show.”
“Tough Crowd” was set up as yet another cable panel show, but everyone was a comedian, most were friends, and the political viewpoints were all over the place. Guests ranged from the far left to the far right to utterly unclassifiable. One common topic was political correctness since, even then, comics found audiences growing increasingly censorious.
When “Tough Crowd” comics left or right spouted cliched talking points in a joke format (i.e., the “clapper humor” popularized by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert), Quinn would heckle the crowd and ridicule the lazy comic. The guest would usually throw it back at the host and the segment would end with laughter. Nevertheless, the message was reinforced that comedy isn’t just another vehicle for social signaling; it’s about making people laugh and sometimes squirm.
Quinn’s storytelling style doesn’t fit in with the usual stand-up “set-up/punchline” format, so he has created several brilliant one-man shows offering commentary on culture, politics, and growing up in Brooklyn. Their best feature is that none offer the clapper humor he rightly despises. I’m sure most audience members agree with Quinn on some issues, disagree with him on others, but still laugh at his observations regardless.
His latest one-man show, “Unconstitutional,” is now streaming on Netflix. Our friends at The College Fix provided this clip which seems an all-too-accurate skewering of today’s PC-mad culture.
What a great illustration of how our ability to communicate in the most basic of ways is being compromised. So can someone explain to me how we achieve greater understanding of each other when we can’t communicate clearly?
I’ve had this in my Netflix queueueueue for a few weeks now. He’s been on Adam Carolla’s podcast, cracked me up, and I had no idea he was out doing standup, etc. I still had him pegged as a sidekick on “Remote Control”, and he was funny then – and still really funny now.
I stopped watching comedy, stand up, improvs, etc. I got tired of having the PC crap shoveled down my throat while they ridiculed my traditional values, all the while the comic expecting me to pay their inflated ticket prices. Maybe this guy is different, but I have my doubts.
I’ve got tickets to see him perform on Sept 10. Looking forward to it.
Management won’t give You keys to the Member Feed?
Tough Crowd really was a great show, It was such a shame when it was replaced by The Colbert Report.
Jon is not allowed on the member feed. That is where all the cool people hang out. You have to be worthy. You have to have skin in the game.
For God’s sake, don’t tell him about the member feed.
I’m horrible! I missed that post, but saw this video on RealClearPolitics this afternoon.
I think Remote Control is better described as Kari Wuhrer alongside a bunch of sloppy doofuses.
You mean sloppy dufi.
I am totally Mr. Short Attention Span Theater when it comes to these clips you all put up. I can not believe that that short clip enticed me to stop my Ricochet-perusing activity for a solid HOUR to watch that whole thing. I just can’t believe it. But I could not stop it.
It was better than just funny.
Try Anthony Jeselnik. PC is about as far from his schtick as you can get.
http://www.anthonyjeselnik.com/
You must have been a whiz in the “Latin House on the Prarie” category.
“Unconstitutional” (aka the toosh) was good but not as good as his previous one-man show. Tough Crowd alumni and successors are now often cruder ( see, e.g., Race Wars podcast–some wickedly funny stuff but not family fare) but they are inreasingly united against PC and the prissy privileged class that imposes it.
Colin Qinn’s Twitter feed is itself an art form.
I just spent the last few hours watching old Remote Control episodes on YouTube.
Thanks, Jon!
“Sloppy Dufi” was the nickname my classmates had for an overweight foreign exchange student from Bavaria. Nice guy.
Also, Norm MacDonald. He claims to be apolitical, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome that he accused Bill Clinton of “killing a guy” on The View just to set off Barbara Walters.
Insert extremely non-coc compliant Bill Maher joke [on roughly the same topic] about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski here.
If everyone thinks exactly the same way, you don’t need to communicate.