Officials at Comedy Central literally couldn’t believe their eyes when the huge ratings came in for ventriloquist Jeff Dunham’s debut special for the network.

“There’s got to be some mistake,” Dunham recalls them saying after seeing the gaudy numbers. “We’ll get back to you.”

Rodney Dangerfield swore he didn’t get any respect, but he didn’t lug around a suitcase full of ventriloquist dummies for a living.

Dunham knows the drill. East Coast elites look down on ventriloquism, while some comedy peers lump him in with other “prop comics.” Comedy Central makes hay with liberal darlings like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, not a Midwesterner who can make puppets talk without moving his lips.

Dunham licks his wounds by playing to sold-out houses around the globe.

“Jeff Dunham: Birth of a Dummy,” a 90-minute special debuting on the BIO Channel at 8 p.m. EST tonight, recalls the Texas native’s rise from a kid with a gift for throwing his voice around to the world’s top-grossing comedian. Team Dunham – the irascible Walter, Peanut and Achmed the Dead Terrorist among the ventriloquist’s homemade creations – also have generated more than a half-billion views on YouTube.

The special lets Dunham’s parents share their trepidation regarding their son’s curious career path, shows how Dunham creates each dummy by hand using old-school materials and software programs to guide his hand and how he knew he had made it when Johnny Carson waved him over to sit on the “Tonight Show” couch.

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Stand-up comedy is the least respected of all the performing arts. As if being a stand-up comic weren’t hard enough; the years of being judged by every person who owns a liquor license and a microphone, driving six hours to a non-existent gig, begging moronic agents and managers who are looking for a “new, original and exciting” talent to come out to see your show only to be asked why you aren’t more “Seinfeld-ish.” On top of that it takes years to develop an act and find your voice on stage. There are child actors, child musicians, tiny dancers and even I would guess a few very young working writers, but no child comics. Why? Because stand-up comedy is the only experiential-based art form. Kids can tell “jokes” but they can’t do stand-up. Stand-up comedy, really good stand-up comedy has evolved from joke telling into a personal narrative dialogue with the audience.

Still, every now and then some elitist hack with a degree from the right college and the proper connections gets a job at a failing weekly magazine and decides to take a shot at you and your profession, feeling they are qualified to judge this art form because they know how to laugh and talk. This is rarely if ever done with other art forms. Seriously folks, when is the last time you saw an article about actors who can’t act, dancers who can’t dance, painters who can’t paint or pointless “performance artists.” Yet, about every six months some “critic” declares a number of famous comics “not funny.”    (more…)