On his podcast, Adam Carolla declared that some "retard fucking hack" at ESPN wouldn't allow the Sports Male to appear on his show. The rant is a thing of beauty that earns only a minor demerit for being totally untrue.
Carolla was under the impression that Simmons — along with something called Dave Dameshek — had been banned from his podcast; this, Carolla believed, had something to do with the Sports Fella's infamous February appearance, in which Simmons worked a light shade of blue and generally Dice Clayed himself all over the place and which Carolla's sidekick, Teresa Strasser, characterized as "a little too jizzy." A lengthy rant ensued. You can listen here (skip ahead to the 42-minute mark). Some highlights:
CAROLLA: Let me just say a little something to the retards who call themselves bosses over there, because we live in a fucking time where everyone does that, "good call, good call, good call." You're running a fucking business. This is one of the most popular podcasts on the Internet. Your two clients — Bill Simmons does a podcast, popular, probably not as a popular as this podcast but very popular, and Dave Dameshek does a podcast as well, not nearly as popular as Bill Simmons', but he still does a podcast. Now, you guys generate income via those podcasts. We share the same audience, essentially. White guys who don't have delicate sensibilities who are in their 30s and like to play fantasy football.
TERESA: There's no white guy in his 30s who does not read Bill Simmons.
CAROLLA: And doesn't like to make fun of a culture, of an ethnicity different than his own. So we share lots of the same audience. ... Bill Simmons came on this show and said something last time that may have pissed off way less than 1 fucking percent of his audience. Way less than 1 percent. ... I guarantee he didn't get one shitty letter for every 100 people that were listening to the podcast.
TERESA: Why does his audience care about jizz talk?
CAROLLA: That's the whole thing! They're a bunch of guys — they love beer, and the only thing they love more than beer is bone-crushing hits. They love it when LT's coming around the backside and there's a compound fracture of Theismann's shinbone.
TERESA: He's like the poet laureate.
CAROLLA: This is what fucking drives me nuts about these retards. And it's all sports. It's not just ESPN. They're so fucking sanctimonious. Look, your audience is predominantly made up of alcoholic gamblers who don't pay enough attention to their kids or their family and who would really prefer a night with Tom Brady over their own wife, sexually. Honestly. And who sit around all Sunday with their like-minded friends and get loaded and make racial jokes and off-color jokes and sexist jokes and misogynist jokes.
SOME GUY: It's a lot of fun.
CAROLLA: It's a lot of fun. That's what you do. That's your fucking audience. Stop pretending like they're not those people. No. 1, I guarantee everyone who reads Bill Simmons' column or who listens to his podcast or Dave Dameshek's podcast, column, whatever, are not what you'd call delicate — their sensibilities aren't delicate. They're not born-again Christians. They're not Jehovah's Witnesses. They're nothing of the sort. They're just regular guys, and the kind of guys we spend every Sunday with over at Kimmel's, watching games. You would literally have to lynch someone in front of them to offend them, and even then they'd probably shut up if you gave them a 12-pack.
[...]
CAROLLA: So they overcompensate and they don't want Bill Simmons coming on this show and then they banned Dave Dameshek from coming on this show, and then everyone applauds that executive. "Oh, that was a shrewd move." Not, it wasn't, you fucking retard. You just lost money. Because one guy wrote a shitty letter or five guys wrote a shitty letter, you have now alienated the thousands of people who enjoy Bill Simmons on this show and who are, possibly and potentially, new ears for his podcast and new eyeballs for his column and who can generate more income for your shitty company. So whoever it is who made that deciscion, you're a fucking retard. You're not a hero. You're a fucking idiot. Whoever your bosses are, they should be pissed off. Not happy about it. They should be pissed off. Because it's a fucking business. It's not a church. ... You've made a horrible fucking business decision. You made a shitty, fucked-up business decision. You have taken a couple of voices and put them above thousands of voices.
[...]
CAROLLA: Good luck. You're a pussy. You're a pussy. Do you like that? You like when you wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and you see a big fat fucking pussy staring back at you? Does your wife know she's married to a pussy? Does your kids know that daddy's a pussy? Awesome. Get a job and you just become a giant fucking fat fucking pussy.
[...]
CAROLLA: So there you go. Retard chicken pussy coward. You know what? I'm calling you yellow. We don't call men yellow very much anymore. But I'm calling you yellow.
End scene. You will note the expert deployment of the "retard" leitmotif. And somewhere between that first "retard" and that final, thumping "retard chicken pussy coward," Carolla even makes one or two good points, mostly about ESPN's corporate sanctimony. (He certainly has a better feel for the company than ESPN's own ombudsman.) The problem is that, well, no one actually banned Simmons from Carolla's show. We know this because Simmons told us so. He writes in an e-mail:
My pal Carolla can be prone to ranting exaggeration from time to time, especially when he hasn't had enough coffee. I am not banned from his podcast and nobody from ESPN ever said that I was. Hoping to make another appearance later this year.
So never mind all that. How retarded.
UPDATE: Dameshek e-mails to say he's not banned, either:
Hey man -
As far as I know, I'm not banned from Carolla's show. Really not sure where this came from.
- Something Called Dave Dameshek
The Adam Carolla Podcast [adamcarolla.com]