One of the most frequent questions conservative entertainment reporters hear is, Why does Hollywood insist on putting out such left-wing content when ratings, box office, and other measurements show it’s not the way to win audiences?
Culture analysts have provided a variety of answers over the years, with some positing that liberalism is part-and-parcel of the artistic temperament. Others contend that it’s a sort of psychological over-compensation that comes from playing make-believe for a living. Still others, like The Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg, argue that we’ve got it wrong, and Hollywood isn’t as leftist as it would like to be.
Comedian Adam Carolla has a different answer — everyone is overthinking it. Hollywood doesn’t try to entertain conservatives for one simple reason, he says: they’re snobs. And unlike psychologists, professors, and pundits, Carolla is in a position to know, because he’s been in the business for nearly 30 years.
“They’re such elitists that they just say to the folks who like shows like [Fox News’ hit late night show] “Gutfeld,” ‘we don’t want your money,’” Carolla tells me when I ask him about the new conservative-friendly entertainment scoring huge ratings. “And that’s basically because they’re snobs. So even if you go, ‘Hey, you know, Gutfeld’s got half the country, meanwhile you guys are dividing up the other half of the country 345 different ways. So why don’t you offer something to the other half that they’ll like?’ Their answer would be, ‘Why would we want to entertain racists?”
It’s a dynamic Carolla has dealt with his entire career as he’s tried to move from comedy clubs, radio, and podcasting — arenas much more open to varying points of view, provided they’re funny — to major, mainstream platforms like broadcast networks and streamers. While TV and streaming dealmakers are open to liberal comedians with some iconoclastic views like Dave Chappelle and Bill Maher, he says the establishment outlets have no interest in offering contracts to openly right-leaning performers. Even one like Carolla, with a proven track record of success with his own cable shows and bestselling humor books.
“You know, the last time I talked to one of the HBO executives, they were insulting and so was Netflix,” Carolla says. “They think they’ve got the market cornered on comedy. They think everyone who’s funny thinks like they think, and they think they get to be the puppet masters and decide who gets specials and who doesn’t get specials. They’re really pompous people.”
But he believes the success of shows like “Gutfeld,” which managed to beat every late-night broadcast show within a few months of debuting, and his own Daily Wire series, “Truth Yeller,” are finally shifting the game by offering alternatives.
“There is no place for me on Netflix. That just doesn’t exist,” Carolla laughs. “So I’m just happy that with The Daily Wire there’s a venue now that I can go do some comedy and share it with people and have them go, ‘Oh, I didn’t know they would do something like that — something that’s not just political but entertainment. I think it’s a good precedent.”
Carolla believes the competition is also good for the quality of American entertainment overall. “We are basically saying to HBO and Netflix, ‘You guys used to have a monopoly on where comedians could express themselves,’” he explains. “’You’ve leaned very hard to the left, and you would never accept someone like me on your precious network. But now there’s another place to go do comedy. So you can keep your money. We’ll go somewhere else.’” He argues that the free market is as important to quality comedy as it is to quality auto manufacturing. “Like, there can’t just be one manufacturer or the product suffers,” he says. “You need to have a diversity there.”
That’s something he thinks the comedy business as a whole is starting to wake up to, and it partially explains why he’s been able to draw big name guests like Jay Leno, Rob Riggle, and Patrick Warburton right out of the gate. They understand that they don’t have to agree with Carolla or his audience on everything in order to have a laugh together. “You can go on my show and my show can be on The Daily Wire. And that doesn’t mean that you endorse or agree with everything that’s connected to The Daily Wire,” he says. From a business standpoint, his guests are willing to broaden their fan base through new opportunities to reach Red State viewers. That’s something that’s true for him as well.
While Carolla acknowledges that he’s more conservative than most funnymen in his business, for him, comedy comes before politics. “Comedy traditionally liked to go after anyone who’s in charge, you know? And that’s what ‘Truth Yeller’ is. It’s comedy first. I don’t even know where the politics land because the whole idea is to be funny.” His guests, he says, respect that. And he believes the comedy industry in general is starting to recapture its dedication to funniness over tribalism.
When I ask him about Maher, Chappelle, Bill Burr and others bucking the cancel culture trend by tweaking woke noses, he says he sees the same backlash and it gives him hope.
“I hope it continues,” he says. “And I think now even the generals have sort of lost control of the troops on the super-woke Left side. I feel like they’ve lost the Bill Mahers of the world and they’re just starting to lose their Dave Chappelles. Like, they they’ve just lost a lot of their legacy members because they’re going too far. They just they don’t know when to stop.”
Carolla concludes with a chuckle, “The Daily Wire owes Netflix a debt of gratitude for creating this market.”
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.