Tracy Morgan, Adam Carolla Rail Against Political Correctness in Comedy, Modern Sitcoms

On Adam Carolla’s Tuesday podcast, he and guest Tracy Morgan lamented the invasion of political correctness into some genres of comedy including stand-up routines and television sitcoms.

Morgan faced his own controversy in 2011 for a reportedly homophobic portion of a stand-up routine in Nashville and was later forced to apologize. But Morgan still insists that comedians shouldn’t be held to as high a standard as teachers or the president.

“[I] don’t think we can have a show like Archie Bunker on ever again,” Morgan said. “Before you even get into to it, I want to thank you for saying something that you said about stand-up [comedians], man. You can’t hold us to the same standards that you hold the teacher or the president. We’re stand-up comedians. We’re supposed to hold up a mirror to who we’re afraid of, look at what we fear, look at all this craziness. That’s why we had shows like Archie Bunker. We made fun of ourselves. We made fun of our bigotry, our sexism, our racism – we made fun of it. Could you do that now? No.”

Carolla agreed and argued that certain elements of society are left out of sitcoms because denying their existence is a form of disapproval for those who produce sitcoms and movies.

“What drove me insane when I was trying to do sitcoms and you probably run up against this a lot, which is you go ‘I want this character to be this way like Archie Bunker,” Carolla said. “And they go, ‘Oh no, no, no because we disagree with the things he’s saying. And you’re like that’s fine but you have to admit there are people who exist who think like he thinks. And they’re like, ‘Yeah, but we disagree with how he thinks.’ It’s like smoking on TV, where they go no smoking. But you go, ‘There are smokers, right?’ And they, ‘Yeah, there are smokers but we don’t encourage it.’ And you go ‘but it does exist.’ It’s like saying, ‘We’re going to make a World War II movie — no Nazis.’ And you go, ‘Why not?’ And they go, ‘We disagree with what they did.’”

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