by When you think of blue-collar comedians, well, first off, you think of cowboys and not actual blue-collar workers. Thanks, Larry the Cable Guy and Jeff Foxworthy.
But when you think of cowboy comedians, you might not think of Rodney Carrington — despite the fact that he’s sold enough albums to go Gold and Platinum. That’s perhaps because Carrington has been known as much for singing short witty ditties as he has for telling jokes. Nevertheless, Carrington remains a big enough deal to sell out his hometown arena in Tulsa, and have his own Netflix comedy special in the unofficial Year of Netflix Comedy.
From my review of Rodney Carrington: Here Comes The Truth, published in Decider, I wrote about how Carrington isn’t as clean or as subtle as the so-called Blue Collar crew:
No one in the history of live comedy performance has ever underestimated the effectiveness of a well-delivered dick joke.
The camera occasionally cuts or pans to an angle from a distance to remind you just how many fans Carrington has, as he jokes about watching his ex-wife deliver one of their children, or how watching porn affects your particular kinks, or how he has to counter his medications with sexual enhancers so he can still remain active in bed. He’s neither a complicated man nor a complicated comedian. Carrington’s comedy viewpoint espouses that women can use their sexual organs for bargaining power, while men can lie to them to trick them into sex.
In case this offends you, Carrington is quick with a retort: “These are jokes. If you learn anything, it’s a goddamn accident.”
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