Adam Carolla rants about transgender, gay issues; GLAAD reacts
Adam Carolla, a comedian known primarily for his past sidekick work on Loveline and The Man Show, took on LGBT issues last week on his popular podcast, The Adam Carolla Show. The 90-minute, complaint-driven program concluded with a section where his co-host, Alison Rosen, began discussions about odd topics in the news.
She mentioned an online petition created last week that urged the long-running children’s show Sesame Street to allow muppets Bert and Ernie to come forward as a married gay couple.
Carolla reponded with a rambling, uncensored rant against LGBT visibility and more specifically about the lack of interest he thinks Americans have in transgender people:
“When did everybody fucking get lumped in with the gays? … What percentage is transgender? Do you know what I mean? Let’s just say, I was a politician, and I was like ‘Hey, transgender folks, I don’t need your vote.’ I don’t think I could get elected? What do they make up — 30 percent of the population? Sure, I went to school with a bunch of transgender guys and now I work with a bunch of them. I mean, what the fuck? When did we start giving a shit about these people?… And now there’s all these variations where it’s like, ‘I’m a pre-op transgender, trans-neutral, transfat’ — shut the fuck up…. Everytime I see Chaz Bono, my cock just looks at me and goes, ‘Huh? What do I do?'”
“What is it again — the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender communities?… Should it be something that spells something, like YUCK? You know, an acronym…. It’s important that I teach my five-year-old about guys who want to have their cocks cut off and a vagina put in their place. ‘Hey, kids, wake up.’ You know there’s a small percentage of American’s who are angry at their cocks, and they’d like to have them surgically removed and a hole put in their place. And it’s very important that you treat them with a certain amount of respect, okay?'”
Some bloggers and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation took issue with Carolla’s comments, to which he responded (via Twitter):
“I’m sorry my comments were hurtful. I’m a comedian, not a politician.”
GLAAD’s Herdon Graddick noted that Carolla has a history of insensitive remarks, and added:
“Networks and advertisers should remember that attacking people who are different from him, and following it with empty apologies, is just a regular part of Carolla’s routine.”
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