But Don Rickles Isn’t Funny

I am no expert on comedy and I’m certainly not a historian of comedy. My experience with Don Rickles is that he made me laugh when I was less than ten years old by telling off-color jokes about people’s race and ethnicity. And then he mostly disappeared, except maybe he would turn up to do a cameo on Newhart or something. Every once in a while, I’d see him doing a roast where he was still making racist and ethnic jokes that I no longer found remotely amusing. Whenever I devoted a moment’s time to thinking about him, it was always to ponder briefly why he insisted on not changing with the times. The one thing no one should be surprised about is that Rickles would tell a joke about the president coming over to mop his house. That’s his level of humor. What he seems to miss is that you can make a funny joke by mildly playing on racial or ethnic stereotypes if those stereotypes are kind of accurate. The reason polack jokes aren’t very funny is that, in most people’s experience, Poles aren’t especially stupid. The reason that a joke about the president mopping floors isn’t funny is because the president is an extremely smart and talented man. Rickles was warmer a few years ago when he attempted to make people laugh by making a joke about the president playing basketball during a national security emergency. It might have worked if the president wasn’t also an avid golfer.

Obviously, racial and ethnic jokes are best-told by members of the group that is being spoofed. But that’s not mandatory. What matters is that your joke strike people as both essentially true and not meant in any kind of mean-spirited way. Rickles, is seems to me, totally forgets the first part of this formula and goes out of his way to violate the second part. He relies on his jovial personality and a few comedy techniques to try to take the sting out of his meanness. But it rarely works.

One thing I think Poppy Bush shares with Barack Obama is that he was hard to ridicule. Dana Carvey had some success mocking Poppy’s syntax, but he was basically alone in making any headway. Poppy’s sins were too serious and his personal traits too muted to make him easy to parody. The president is so even-keeled and competent that almost all jokes about him just fall flat. Basically, you’ve got those ears and not much else.

Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

47 thoughts on “But Don Rickles Isn’t Funny”

  1. I didn’t know Rickles was still alive. Not kidding.
    I remember when he was popular. He was mean.
    Obama also has a good sense of humor and that’s hard to deal with if you want to make fun of someone.

  2. Don Rickles was relevant when Jack Parr hosted the Tonight Show. He is a relic of an era when “comedy” on late night TV was WASPy white guys openly laughing with other WASPy white guys about the shortcomings of everyone else, and Phyllis Diller was their idea of an alternative voice.

    Obviously there’s still an audience for a worldview like that – one of its practitioners is about to be nominated for President of the United States.

  3. The president is so even-keeled and competent that almost all jokes about him just fall flat. Basically,you’ve got those ears and not much else.

    Not to mention that it’s hard to find a lot to joke about when one thinks he’s The Antichrist.  Though that doesn’t stop a lot of people from trying.  

  4. At least he’s honest…in a way, he embodies “integrity”, I.e. integrated..,I.e..,no contradiction…he’s the same now as he was then…despite political correctness…You Proggs don’t like integrity…it ‘s unbending…like the Constitution!!!

    1. So, I’d have more integrity if I still laughed at Polish jokes like I did when I was 8 years old and had no idea where Poland was or why its inhabitants were supposed to be unable to screw in a light bulb?  

    2. LfA, you’re smarter than to argue something so idiotic. Lester Maddux had “integrity,” too. He went to his death a proud segregationist. On the left, the Unabomber has “integrity”; he still thinks that murdering random people was a righteous thing to do. The fact that someone who was once morally repugnant is still morally repugnant is cause for revulsion and pity, not celebration.

    3. I think Emerson is right when he says that “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

      I hope that have have grown as a person in the last 30 years and am not the same sap I was at 15.  I hope that my son is not an overgrown teenager when he’s 30.

      1. Okay…Not defensible…but the the guy is, to quote my “spiritual advisor”, Frozen In Time,…can’t you have some compassion for him?

        1. I do, actually. Here’s a guy who’s 86 years old, has made his millions, need never work again, and will never again come close to reaching the heights of popularity he once achieved. And yet he still feels compelled to go out and bask in adulation he receives for his schtick of crudely insulting people. That’s really very sad.

          But compassion doesn’t mean I find him amusing. Nor does it excuse the very real (and wholly unnecessary) pain such a public persona can generate.

          1. Let’s agree…I do not know your Metaphysical beliefs…I pray he is at peace with the Universe…his Maker…What Is…

        2. Where do you see that I lack compassion?  I simply mentioned that he hasn’t grown – indeed “frozen in time.”  That’s kind of sad.

          I know musicians whose heydays were in the 80s and whose audiences want them frozen in time. That’s frustrating for them.

          2. I believe that’s a rhetorical question on your part 🙂  But yes.  Play everything on the Singles: 45’s and Under and don’t vary. Ever. I’m not in that camp, lots of people standing around me at shows are.

    1. And IIRC, there was a documentary on IFC or something a few years ago about Rickles.  It was called Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project.  I guess the point was that he ripped on any and every one.  As Boo said, he might have been funny 40 or 50 years ago.  Not any more.

    2. I always found him more stupid and pathetic than mean or funny. The fact that he was more or less indiscriminate in his targets suggested hate for the sake of hate, which said far more about Rickles than it did any of his targets. It’s also the mark of lazy comedy. Spewing hate is easy; finding and celebrating points of empathy in human foibles (which includes the ability to laugh at oneself) is a lot harder.

  6. Per Wikipedia:

    Rickles was born in the New York City borough of Queens to Max Rickles, who had emigrated in 1902 with his parents Joseph and Frances Rickles (Rikhters) from Kaunas, Lithuania[5] (then in the Russian Empire), and Etta (Feldman) Rickles, born in New York to immigrant parents from the Austrian Empire. His family was Jewish and spoke Yiddish at home. Rickles grew up in the Jackson Heights area.

    After graduating from Newtown High School, Rickles enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served during World War II on the USS Cyrene as a seaman first class. He was honorably discharged in 1946. Two years later, he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and then played bit parts on television. Frustrated by a lack of acting work, Rickles began doing stand-up comedy. He became known as an insult comedian by responding to his hecklers. The audience enjoyed these insults more than his prepared material, and he incorporated them into his act.

    I think it’s the change in what is considered humorous and what is considered offensive.

    Did he ever tell any WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) jokes?

    1. Slow news day, at the Tribune, eh?

      Anyway, Rickles constantly pokes fun at WASPS and anyone ese he sets his sights on.  He makes lots of fun of the goys.

      Getting upset by a Don Rickles routine indicated to me that your underwear is way too tight, and you probably have a stick jammed so far up your ass your breath smells like knotty pine.

      What a pathetic, crybaby post.

      1. The diarest again proves that in progressive Bloggo world, it’s all about pointless partisanship.

        Rickles pops up on the radar, only because he made a few jokes about Slim.

        The larger fact is our entire system is a joke, and is fair game for comedians, satirists, etc.

        Anyone considering Rickles a problem should feel fortunate George Carlin is gone and there’s nobody out there like Lenny Bruce.

          4. Didn’t see the show last Friday; but am reading Maher took the OWS movement to task fairly brutally, more or less saying it’s time to leave fantasy land and start working to get some decent people elected.

            Can’t wait until he goes after progressive Bloggo world in the same manner.

          5. Comparing Don Rickles to Richard Pryor or Louis C.K. is ridiculous and an insult to both and people should know better.

            Pryor did not base his comedy on racist or bigotted or just mean hate against all.  Their was intelligence and thought to Pryors comedy.  Pryor never went the easy route of just insulting people for either race, gender, or whatever.

            Don Rickles is not on the level as Pryor.  Maybe he is in the hierarchy of “insult comics” fine, but Rickles should stick to the roast format which is the haven for most insult comics.

          6. The internet has really injected a megadose of adrenaline into our culture of feigned outrage. It’s embarrassing.

            It’s also redundant, just like the constant whining from progressive Bloggo world regarding the “lying mainstream media”.

            Meanwhile, the “democrats” are getting their asses handed to them by the more effective repuglicans, who actually have a plan.

            If winning is the only thing, paraphasing Knute Rockne, undecided voters (all 100,000 of them) have to be looking at the dems thinking, “why would I vote for them?”
             

          7. they have to be looking at the repugnants and saying the same thing.

            The GOP doesn’t have a plan. They have a strategy for winning an election, and nothing else. And that strategy is wholly unpatriotic, and put party before country AS ALWAYS.

            Frankly, the GOP and their supporters should be shipped off to those FEMA camps they’re always pretending exist.  Frankly part 2, Obama could have saved himself a whole lot of trouble by using the powers Bush left him to arrest all of the GOP’s base en masse and shipping them off to Gitmo as potential terrorists.

      2. I’m not whining.  I’m saying that he’s not funny and no one should be surprised when he says something stupid and offensive and unfunny about the president.

      3. Got some Rickles jokes about straight WASPs?

        My sense is that the dominant majority was rarely the butt of ethnic jokes during the mass media age.

  10. Rickles is not everyone’s cup of tea, no question about that. As a kid I thought he was hilarious. He got to say outrageous things, insult strangers, and he didn’t get in trouble! My uncles also engaged in this kind of insult kidding with each other, sitting around the kitchen table, but Rickles took it much farther. I loved it. I never thought he was mean-spirited. Its just a schtick.

  11. Maybe it’s fair to say the Rickles isn’t funny anymore.  Comedy doesn’t seem to hold up in the long run, for the most part.  Lenny Bruce is almost unwatchable now.  Even Bill Hicks isn’t so much funny anymore as he is admirable as a pioneer of the art.

    Maybe the jokes have been told so many times that they’ve lost all their punch, and maybe the culture has just moved on since then, but whatever it is, when you revisit comedy from more than about 20 years out it’s often disappointing.  

    I suspect Richard Pryor’s standup is still funny, but if I watch Carlin from more than about 15 years ago, it’s mostly not so good.  I wonder how acts like Cheech and Chong have worn; I haven’t seen any of that stuff in decades.

    And Don Rickles’ schtick seemed dated to me 30 years ago when I was a kid.  Some of it was punchy and funny, but only rarely.  Mostly it seemed to me that people were just showing him respect for a career height reached long before.  

    And, as has been noted, insult comedy is one of those niche areas that lots of people never appreciate in the first place.  I’ve been laid low by lots of Triumph jokes, years ago, but in another 10 years I’ll probably wonder what was so funny about that.

    I don’t know what Rickles is supposed to do.  Telling an 86 year old man that he’s no longer relevant and that he should just stay out of the spotlight is essentially telling him he should go home and die–or that’s what I imagine it would feel like if I were in his position.  Ideally someone could gently persuade him that he’s not good at the racial stuff and should confine his act to just being mean to people, I suppose.  

    1. when i was out in L.A. last year with the band, we met this incredibly talented piano player named Brian -the dude would do tricks like playing “Take 5” with his left hand while playing “Blue Rondo a la Turk” with his right- who told us a story about playing a party at Rickles’ house.  Brian was packing up after playing a couple of sets and got a chance to thank Don. “Thanks for having me, I had a great time, I’m glad I had this opportunity, etc.”

      Rickles looks at him and deadpans, “Brian, I never liked you.”

      1. I haven’t heard the bit in question, so I can’t comment on it directly, but I take Booman’s point that certain types of humor such as racial stuff has to be done exactly right or best left alone.  And to my sensibilities, a lot of what Rickles has made his name doing seems to belong to a previous age.  

        But having said that, I did just hear comedians Joe Rogan and Brian Callen in a podcasted conversation not a month ago both stating that in their opinions he still “has it,” so for those wondering how contemporary comedians receive Rickles, there’s that.  

        1. Two of my bandmates saw him when he was at Atlantic City.  I think around New Years.  They said he was a riot.

          But then, you know what you’re getting with Rickles, and have known for more than 50 years. Anyone who’s all up in arms about Don Rickles saying something rude is doing some serious concern trolling.

    2. Richard Pryor’s comedy is STILL funny. Go back and watch The Sunset Strip I think that’s the one that included his rif on his brush with setting himself on fire and how he heard the jokes people would make, i.e. Pryor holds up a match and moves it from left to right… “what do you call this?  Richard Pryor running down the street”

      I alos think the Sunset Strip is where he talked about visiting Africa for the first time.

      Also not a stand-up bit, but a skit he did called “first Black President” for the Richard Pryor show…still funny.

      http://youtu.be/yssYKoZRQRs

  13. As to Rickles schidt, there is an intelligent way to joke about race and not just come off as someone who telling insult after insult to see what sticks, without alienating your audience

    See: Chris Rock & Louis CK

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