Carlos Mencia Shreds ‘Punching Down’ Rules

October 23, 2024 admin Celebrity Gossip 0

Carlos Mencia starts his stand-up shows these days with a curious warning.

“If you’re easily offended, please leave,” the veteran comic told the host of “Ryan Schuiling Live” on Denver’s 630 KHOW Oct. 10. “It’s because I care. I care about your time. I care about you. I care enough to know that I’m not for you. This is who I am.”

“Once you buy into that, it’s such a beautiful, cathartic thing to watch everybody just give in to the laughter and see the difference between comedy and anger, between racial and racist … all of this stuff becomes comedic fodder. And I think that’s where I’m living right now. And I think people need that.

“People need to be told you’re not a bad person because you laughed,” Mencia continued. “It’s a mechanism that we use.”

He didn’t mention it, but the comment connects to a Washington Post inquiry about a podcaster who laughed at a naughty Donald Trump joke.

The comedian has a deeply personal tie to laughing through adversity and pain.

”I was abused as a child and I do jokes about it on stage … That’s how I heal … if you don’t heal that way, I’m not the guy for you. That’s OK,” the former “Mind of Mencia” star added.

Mencia knows that comedy has come under attack in the Age of Woke. And he’s willing to fight for his right to tell his jokes, his way.

Schuiling brought up Dave Chappelle’s war against the woke mob, especially his routines involving trans people. It’s akin to the “new” comedy rule about never punching down with humor.

That gets under Mencia’s skin.

“Think about the phrase itself, ‘punching down…’ … it assumes or presumes that you either place me above those people or I do, and I don’t. I don’t understand punching down. I don’t get it. When I do jokes about me or my family, it’s OK … self-deprecating humor can be just as hurtful sometimes as everything else.

“I can go up there and talk about how I’m overweight, but the minute I talk about how you’re overweight that’s where the line gets crossed, and that’s the hypocrisy,” he said.

RELATED: CARLOS MENCIA: YOUR FEELINGS AREN’T PROTECTED BY CONSTITUTION

He’s no fan of shows targeting specific audiences, assuming that like-minded people are now allowed to laugh when one of their members tells the jokes.

“What’s happening in comedy, we’re reverting to shows for those people,” he says, referring to stand-up sets by various demographic or identity groups.

“You go to an LGBTQ show you will hear the ‘F’ word more than you will at any hetero or any non-LGBTQ show,” he said. “I see that, and I say, ‘No, no, no no. That’s not what we’ve been fighting for. We haven’t been fighting so we could go to our corners … we’re supposed to get together and laugh at ourselves and at each other.”

Comedy is having a moment across the culture, and it’s not happening at the local cineplex. Big, bawdy comedies in the “Hangover” style are all but extinct at the theatrical level.

Stand-up comedy thrives on podcasts, Facebook Reels, stages and comedy specials. Mencia is part of that comedy revolution.

“We the truth tellers are needed. We’re also the valve for people who are angry, who are taking life a little too seriously,” he said.

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