In an interview with Salon this week, comedian Adam Carolla opened his mouth and once again angered a lot of people with his bigoted comments about gay people, Asians and anyone who is not a straight, white male (and probably many of them, too). This is not particularly new -- Carolla has been offending for years -- but his name is plastered on headlines again as he continues to promote his new book, “President Me: The America That’s in My Head.”
If the owner of Tumblr account CallingOutCarolla, Micah Ranney, had his way, however, Carolla wouldn't be on the airwaves anymore. The blog, launched in April 2013, for a few months chronicled Carolla's bigoted statements with the ambitious mission of holding the comic accountable for his speech and to "bring it to the attention of the public."
Here's a sampling of the posts:
adamcarolla repeatedly says “Homo” when explaining how a bachelor party works. Original Audio here: http://adamcarolla.com/acs-greg-fitzsimmons-and-helio-castroneves-live-from-amalfi/
adamcarolla refers to a drag show as a “tranny joint.” Original audio here: http://adamcarolla.com/acs-greg-fitzsimmons-and-helio-castroneves-live-from-amalfi/
Two podcasts after saying he’d “own” a black man Adam Carolla says we don’t
need to have conversations about race in America anymore. Minutes after
this statement he implies that a woman wouldn’t need to worry about him
casing her neighborhood because he is white.
Ranney, a 34-year-old gay male scientist in California, began documenting the jokes after he heard Carolla joke about beating "on trannies" in a park on a local radio station in Los Angeles.
"I contacted the radio show, of which I consider myself to be a friend, and was even in studio once, and have called in a couple times. To their credit they removed the offensive comment from their podcast and apologized to me via email," Ranny wrote in an email to Salon. "I started listening to Adam's podcasts in January of 2012 right after that incident. I continued listening through about May of 2013, and posted incidents of anti-gay, transphobic, and racist language."
But eventually he abandoned the blog because listening to Carolla every day became unbearable. "It felt horrible," he wrote. "I noticed I got angrier, had a short temper and was very irritable. I couldn't believe somebody who in my opinion was wrong about so many things could have so many fans that took his word as gospel. I found myself losing faith in humanity a little bit. That was eventually why I had to quit listening."
"I finally decided that I needed to stop listening and abandon the blog, because my inability to get anyone to notice was causing me to become angry, and was affecting my quality of life," he added.
Carolla, for his part, doesn't really care that so many people are offended by his bigoted statements. After all, he still has an audience -- but, as Ranney's story illustrates, it may not be as easy for his critics to ignore him as it is for him to ignore them.
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