Several weeks ago, the “Right Network” premiered with many conservative programs in its lineup. I recently watched  an episode of one of the network’s new shows entitled “Right 2 Laugh.” The stand-up comedy program featured a few strong conservative comics and highlighted the fact that there are so few right-leaning comedians in the mainstream media today.

From Bill Maher to Jon Stewart to David Letterman, the television airwaves are full of comedians with their own programs who lean to the left and love skewing those on the right. Many of these comedians have attracted widespread praise and admiration for their talents. Comedians on the right, however, often haven’t had a television forum to criticize those on the left.

Hopefully, that will change with “Right 2 Laugh.”

Comedian Evan Sayet hosts the new show. At the beginning of the episode I screened, Sayet opened the show with a few jokes and introduced the featured stand-up comics.  (more…)

Actor Comedian Bob Golub created the documentary Dodo, about his father Donald and family that feels at times like a true life Scorcese movie. All the people in the film seem ripped from the cutting room floor of Raging Bull or Goodfellas, with all the pathos, angst and drama. But it’s not fiction. It’s a collection of edited home movies and interviews with Golub’s kin. The result is an interesting and often moving trip through memory lane.

The rough and tumble Golub family grew up poor in the small town of Sharon, Pennsylvania. Donald was a self-employed working man. The economy in the town was bad enough. Donald, aka “Dodo,” drummed up business by schmoozing in bars when he wasn’t getting hammered or beating on other people who got on his nerves. Dodo was a local legend in his time. His impact on his kids was immense.

Born into a working class Polish-American family, Donald was an athletic kid who had to go to work fast. The options in Sharon were limited. He decided to go into roofing instead of a factory job. Those were dying off even back then. But being a roofer in the North East is a tough job, especially in the winter. Donald was up to the task, but there were a lot of downtimes and he spent them at the bar “trying to get work.” (more…)

My old writing partner, the Leftist animation writer Steve Marmel, posited a question recently.  He was thrown by the concept of “fairness” in the news, arguing — rightly — that facts and truth, not “balance,” should be the news media’s objective.

And it once was.

All this changed with the “cultural revolution” of the 1960s when objectivity went out of style.  The argument put forth by the Modern Liberals was that the individual is incapable of being objective.  They argue everything a person believes is so tainted by their personal bigotries – bigotries borne of the color of their skin, the color of their hair, the nation of their great-great-great grandfather’s birth, their height, their sex and their weight, etc. — that the only way to eliminate the evils of bigotry is to eliminate all attempts at rational thought.

Since the 1960s, the Modern Liberal has been preaching that rational thought is a hate crime.

Writing about this phenomenon as it relates to one of the communities most infected with the Modern Liberal dogma, the leftist news media, the great Thomas Sowell argued that the quest for objectivity has been replaced with the quest for  ”neutrality.”  What’s the difference between objective reporting and neutral reporting? (more…)

I opened TimeOut NY magazine this morning and saw that I was featured in their “Essential New York” issue. Excellent. I’m overjoyed, as most performers are when they get some press. Now among the other nice things in their profile, they said this:

“He’s the only conservative Republican comedian who’s actually funny.”

Now, what do you think was the first thing I did when I saw that in print? Defend the honor of Evan Sayet and Steven Crowder? No.

My act is personal, not political, and those are two different things, unless you believe what it says in that dog-eared copy of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” on your ex-girlfriend’s bookshelf. But since Andrew invited me to “come out” on this site last year and air my (comparatively moderate) center-right views, the word has gotten around to some of my fans and associates that I might be playing for the other team. I’ll be at a showbiz cocktail party and someone will playfully say, “I heard a rumor about you…” They’re not trying to be mean or McCarthyite-they genuinely like the idea that they may have a right-wing acquaintance. It’s fun for them! But then they want to pick my brain. “How did it happen? Was your dad a minister?” They begin to introduce me to their friends as “their favorite Republican.” (more…)

[Ed. Note: Carl's 'Grand Theft Audio' airs tonight and every Thursday night on LATalkRadio.com at 7pm PST]

It’s not easy being a conservative in comedy these days. Folks like Evan Sayet, and no doubt Drew Carey or Kelsey Grammer, can tell you that.

Add in the fact that I’m just trying to get to where they are, and not already fully entrenched in success, and a lot of people would wonder if admitting I’m a conservative (actually, libertarian but pro-life to boot) isn’t tantamount to career suicide. The fact I’m also a reporter in the ultra-liberal world of alternative-weekly newspapers, and some would say that I might as well pick out my casket.

I’ll admit that I was a virtually a card-carrying liberal for about a decade until I reached my moment of conversion last summer. Before that, I was hoping for Hillary to win it all, having grown up in Arkansas with Bill ‘n’ Hill keeping things colorful, and then watching Bill keep us out of wars and leaving us with a budget surplus while in the White House.

I bought the Kool-Aid that Bush could do nothing right and was a fervent follower of Michael Moore (I even have a photo with him where we sadly almost look like twins). But when I saw my brethren in the news media suddenly fawning blindly over the Chicago mystery man Barack Obama, giving him the easiest free pass to the White House I’d ever seen despite the fact he had less relevant job experience than it takes to manage a department store, I started to wonder if maybe my profession and its liberal slant had veered dangerously off-course. (more…)

In all of history, so far as I’m aware, there had only been two famous tea parties.  At the first one, Samuel Adams and a few of his freedom-loving friends pitched several crates of tea into Boston Harbor.  The second was the one Lewis Carroll wrote about, a madcap affair with the March Hare, the mad Hatter and the narcoleptic Dormouse, ganging up to give Alice a hard time.    

All of that changed on the 15th of April, when a series of tea parties took place all across America.  Even I, who try to avoid crowds, attended a gathering here in the San Fernando Valley. 

If you believe the creeps in the MSM — and why would you? — we were all dues-paying members of political fringe groups, and none of us would think about leaving the house without first donning our little aluminum hats.  If you believe Janet Napolitano — and how could you? — we were not merely man-created disasters like Somali pirates and Islamic butchers, but full-fledged terrorists.  Some among us even confessed to being military veterans.  (more…)

It was almost exactly two years ago that I walked into the Heritage Foundation in Washington to deliver a speech about how the Modern Liberal “thinks” and why he invariably and inevitably sides with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. 

Having had very little experience with the Internet, I had no idea that the talk would go much further than that half-empty room of eggheads.  Instead, it soon went viral and became the talk of the conservative community.  To date, the speech, which I called, “Regurgitating the Apple: How The Modern Liberal ‘Thinks’” has been viewed by almost a half-million people on YouTube alone.  As far as YouTube hits go, that’s perhaps not the biggest number, but remember, I wasn’t wearing a bikini and singing about my love for Obama. This was a forty-seven minute, rather wonkish talk, by a previously unknown (at least in Washington and political circles) television writer with a bad haircut. (more…)

What an exhilarating week. Big Hollywood is finally up. Traffic is way better than expected.

Greg Gutfeld is posting his wondrous inanities and many pointed yet not vitriolic salvos have been launched against the intransigent Hollywood left and vital ones aimed at the right — for forfeiting culture to the opposition. Movie and television reviews and historical treatises abound, and we’re even breaking news.

John Ziegler launched a massive story where Sarah Palin unleashed on the media for treating her so unfairly. It is easily the mainstream news media story of the week. Big Hollywood is the site to go to for the inside scoop on Ziegler’s forthcoming documentary, “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected“.

Actor-singer-songwriter Joe Lima in a timely fashion came to bury Guevara, but also put usually reliable director Steven Soderbergh in his place for wasting so much studio money and movie watchers’ time with the execrable, “Che.”

(more…)