Hotmail
By D.K. Holm
Special to MSN Entertainment
For the most part, stand-up comedians are a happy breed. Because they laugh a lot, they tend to live longer than the rest of us (outside of the odd car crash or drug overdose). And comedy turns out to be a gateway to other opportunities, such as sitcoms, movie roles and books. Professional comedy allows its practitioners to become almost anything they want, including sex symbols, political pundits or both. Because comedy is harder than it seems, most experienced comedians form forgiving alliances with one another, like battle-scarred D-Day veterans who speak a language outsiders can't understand.
Thus there are few feuds in the annals of comedy. One thinks of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, but that was a complicated situation that now requires whole books to explain it to interested observers. Back in the days of radio, Jack Benny and Fred Allen had a fake feud, but that served their marketing needs. Apparently, Dana Carvey and Paula Poundstone once had a falling-out, but it was a private situation and they don't harp on it in public.
Yes, comedy grudges are few and far between. That's why Joe Rogan's campaign against Carlos Mencia for plagiarism is so unusual in the history of stand-up humor.
Rogan is the stand-up comic who got his TV start as the handyman on "NewsRadio" and went on to host NBC's "Fear Factor" from 2001 to 2006. Carlos Mencia is the comic who rose to great success in the early 2000s, ultimately coming to host "Mind of Mencia," the Comedy Central show that succeeded Dave Chappelle's program in mixing sketch and stand-up comedy.
Rogan's charges against Mencia are extensive and detailed, captured most vividly in an episode of Rogan's Internet program "Joeshow," which can be found both on Rogan's site (http://blog.joerogan.net/) and on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsq1uTLBHBc&mode=related&search=). The bulk of the video shows Rogan and Mencia going at each other on stage at the Comedy Store on February 10, 2007, when Mencia, who had been in the audience, heard Rogan refer to him as "Menstealia" and joined Rogan on stage for a "debate." In the course of the foul-mouthed, insult-ridden discussion, Rogan charged Mencia with stealing from Ari Shaffir (who also eventually got on stage), D.L. Hughley, George Lopez (who once told Howard Stern that he punched Mencia for stealing 13 minutes of Lopez's material for an HBO performance), Sam Kinison (a 1986 bit about what life would have been like for Jesus if He were married, later used in a "Mind of Mencia" skit), Bobby Lee and the Reverend Bob Levy of "The Howard Stern Show." He doesn't even think that Mencia is really Latin American, maintaining that Mencia's birth name is Ned Holness (and it should also be pointed out that Rogan is a conspiracy buff who believes, among other things, that the Apollo moon landings were faked). The most damning case against Mencia, however, was made by a San Diego disc jockey, who caught Mencia in the on-air act doing a bit about "Stereotype Olympics" that actually originated with some Miami morning-zoo DJs.
George Bernard Shaw once wrote of Shakespeare that he could tell a good story as long as someone else told it to him first. And stand-up comedy has a long history of borrowing and mutual influence. In the early days of his career as a writer and aspiring stand-up, Woody Allen was known as "Allen Woody" for his practice of taking existing jokes and changing the core elements to make a "new" joke. And then there is the famously manic comic who was known for his spongelike consciousness; when challenged by comics from whom he borrowed, the comedian simply bought the material from them.
In fact, there is one joke that passes from comic to comic as a badge of honor, a standard by which one's abilities are measured. "The Aristocrats" is used as something of an acid test for a comedian's sick sensibility. According to the movie of the same name, Chevy Chase and Michael O'Donoghue even formed a secret club, admission to which depended on lengthy and imaginative renditions of the joke (which, by the way, is a story joke, and not the kind of material that stand-up comics customarily use in their acts, where the standards for originality are even higher). Apparently, the record length was 40 minutes.
It's actually quite easy to get mixed up and, given time and distance, come to believe that you made up a common joke yourself. Look how quickly dirty jokes sweep the nation from water cooler to water cooler, the anonymity of authorship giving each teller temporary ownership. Plus, some jokes are just "in the air," and because most comedians draw from the same public pool, their responses to current events might end up being similar. In fact, it's a lesson in differing comedic sensibilities to watch Bill Maher, Jay Leno and Jon Stewart on the same night covering the same news of the day. Subtle differences among the comedians (and their writers) become evident.
Thanks to the numerous YouTube postings, it's now possible to compare and contrast Mencia's delivery of communal jokes against those of Shaffir, Lopez, Kinison and others. Most telling is the gag about a proposed wall separating Mexico from the United States (the punch line being that illegal Mexican laborers would have to do all the work). It's a joke that was so in the air that three different comics told variations on it, and the witticism even found its way into a folk song. But while the other comics come across as men of bemused reason disturbed at the rest of the world's idiocy, Mencia comes forward as an amiable schlub, a bashful, hesitant man unwillingly speaking up for the silent majority. His delivery is unpolished and his material essentially archaic in nature (marital woes, racial stereotypes). While his competition tends to be more glamorous and acerbic, Mencia is happy to remain the comic everyman who just happens to find himself the center of attention. This may be the source of his popularity.
Though the case against Mencia seems solid on the surface, it is Rogan who
has suffered for his tenacity. He is banned from the Comedy Store, ostensibly
for shooting his "Joeshow" there against management's wishes, and lost his agent
and publicity manager over the matter. Meanwhile, Mencia remains a wildly
popular comic. "Mind of Mencia" is Comedy Central's second-highest-rated program
(after "South
Park") and returns to the air July 8 for a third season. He may be known to
insiders as Carlos Mendacious, but to the mass of Comedy Central viewers, he's
the king of comedy.
