Read an Excerpt
Rants from AM I CRAZY?: An Unapologetic Patriot Takes on the Insanity of Today’s Woke World by Chad Prather
COMEDY LOST
Democracy dies in a stale room filled with mouth-breathers who just got done killing comedy first. If not that, then what? What in the hell happened to the concept of “funny” in this country? It used to be that nothing was off limits – there were no limits, except those that you chose to put on yourself, when it came to comedy. I can remember a time – and it wasn’t that long ago – when you didn’t have to look left and right two or three times like you were about to cross a street, before telling a joke just to be sure you didn’t offend anybody. Hell, I can remember a time when the phrase “it’s just a joke” actually meant something.
Have you noticed that? Nothing can just be a joke anymore. We live in a world now that’s got a stick shoved so far up its own ass that the only recourse it has to anyone making jokes outside the very narrow paradigm of politically correct orthodoxy, is to ruin people’s careers and lives in a never-ending cancel-culture-fueled Stalinist purge.
Someone once said “the show must go on” though, and here’s the twisted part: it does. Despite the mental sickness that has raged through our cerebral network over the past decade or so, the show does go on. People still tell jokes – or at least, they think they do. In a lot of cases, what they actually do is virtue signal to a crowd, whose response is usually a kind of nervous laughter mixed with clapping for some damned reason. I mentioned Stalin a moment ago. Did you know that when Stalin was in power, the people who attended his speeches had to make sure that they clapped for the right amount of time before stopping? And you absolutely didn’t want to be seen stopping before everyone immediately around you stopped, because that might be a good way to end your day – and your life – in a back alley with some friendly Soviet fellow gently applying a fresh coating of lead to the back of your head.
The power of political correctness in our society leads to far more than just the death of comedy, but there’s a good reason why the death of comedy might be the most insidious of them all. You see, comedy is the last bastion of free speech when all else fails in the country.
That’s not hyperbole, I really mean it. The reason that free speech is so very important is because speech is an analog of thought. The more tightly you twist the screws on speech, the less opportunity for free thought there is. And why is that? Because ideas float from brain to brain across the medium of speech – it is perhaps the greatest thing (aside from Victoria’s Secret) that separates us from and puts us above the animals. No one can get inside your skull – at least yet – and check to make sure you’re thinking what they want you to think, but without the ability to share our ideas with one another through free speech, free thought slowly begins to choke to death. And this is especially true in a society that constantly seeks to replace free thought with a sweeping intellectual real estate fertilized primarily with ideological bullshit.
Folks, we desperately need to be able to laugh at things again. And I hate to say it, but that includes the ability to laugh at things which may seem inappropriate to you, or even to me (that’s a very short list of things). The great lie our society has swallowed is that comedy is only a vehicle to promote hatred in the world. I’m telling you, though, that it is a medium with a panoply of purposes, and that chief among them is to actually bring us closer together through shared laughter. Is that going to step on some people’s toes here and there? Yep. But at the end of the day, your feelings aren’t more important than my freedom, and vice versa.
But what do I know? I’m white, privileged, and I’m a funny son of a bitch. Of course, I’d say all that.
*****
WOMEN ARE GETTING REALLY WOKE!
I definitely must be crazy. This is the stuff I’m talking about. Let’s get down into the weeds with some modern examples of recent mainstream insanity. Quite honestly I tend to think that I’m a pretty good dude. I hold doors open for others, I take out the trash (sometimes without even being told to), I wipe the toilet seat after I pee on it in the middle of the night, and I went with my wife to every OB/GYN appointment she ever had. I mean when she was pregnant. Not when she was getting her Smear Papped or whatever you women do there. I felt like I had a responsibility to be there because I’m the one that put her in the whole pregnancy condition. I stretched her skin and body and vagina too unrealistic and unrepairable proportions by doing my part to put a human inside of her. Attending those appointments, I honestly felt as though I had smuggled her into a torture room on Guantanamo Bay. There she was in her paper gown and feet up in the stirrups while stainless steel instruments of anguish stared angrily from a steel pan. I kept wanting to ask her what information they were trying to get out of HER. What the hell were they planning to do with a shoe horn? I was responsible. A few moments of lust and passion and a little Jack Daniels had brought us to this place of unspeakable medical horror. Man, the things women get us into. Or Jack Daniels. Not sure I’d trade it though.
Women are quite the adventure for us all. How dare I publicly express such things about a woman, much less my wife. Now before you cast me into the misogynistic and sexist patriarchal hell fires of judgment let me explain a few things to you about guys and gals. I’m a red-blooded American male that used to look forward to the quarterly arrival of the J.C. PENNY Catalogs mostly because I got bored sitting on the toilet and reading the shampoo bottles.Oh… and because I have always been a fan of what women look like. Bear with me. Do you remember the good old days when you could look at the four full color pages of bras and panties right in the heart of the catalog and imagine what it must be like to be around a REAL woman? Every now and again I might’ve stumbled across a Playboy magazine my brothers kept hidden in the woods behind my house. There was nothing better than those rain soaked, matted pages of fantasy filth for a 13-year-old boy to peruse at provocative leisure. But alas it is the 21st Century. We are civilized now and politically correct. How dare a man admire the beauty and allure of a woman? Remember kids, this was the pre-woke days. You know – the 80’s – when Madonna was “striking a pose” in semi-nude outfits, telling papa not to preach, and discussing her orgies on MTV. This was long before she developed a gap in her teeth and threatened to blow up the White House. Apparently, Madonna got woke enough (or ugly enough) to now lecture “nasty” women about misogyny. Women!
This is how crazy the world has gotten: I recently read an article from Slate that said women’s deodorant is a tool of the patriarchy. I mean… what isn’t these days. I’ve got an idea, girls: how bout you just stop wearing it and no man will ever bother you again. Problem freaking solved! No seriously... the article stated that early marketing campaigns for deodorant were designed to make women feel “embarrassed by the entire concept of perspiration.” And I quote “If you long for romance don’t let your dress offend with ‘armhole odor.” Good Lord! That’s right folks. Deodorant is a symbol of ongoing systemic patriarchal oppression. Somebody needs to call the Miss America people since not only have they done away with the swimsuit competition, but now they need to get woke enough to realize women should stink as well. Blame the patriarchy. Liberate your femininity and tell the world that girls to have a stench. Listen Napoleon Bonaparte – a little dictator that apparently was turned on by women’s body odor – that’s just nasty. And you know you’re nasty too. Stop normalizing your nasty.
Let’s take it a step further. How about stop brushing your teeth too. Let the gingivitis rot your mouth out so we can smell your periodontal funk from across the street. Don’t brush! That’s something only men want you to do anyway. Fight the patriarchy. Don’t shave those legs or your armpits. Look and feel like a porcupine mated with a hedgehog. Come on Sasquatch nobody wants you to live underneath the subjugation of men and their oppressive desire to make you pretty and odorless. Hell, now you can just be a man yourself. Grow out that gut girls. Belch, fart, sweat, spit, chew tobacco, dig in your butt, make obnoxious sounds at the dinner table with your hand under your armpit. In fact, don’t sit at the dinner table anymore. That’s where the patriarchy wants you. Sitting near the kitchen to wait on his every need!!! Liberate thy self oh Independent swamp ass woman! Sit in your Barcalounger behind your folding TV tray and eat your hungry man Salisbury steak creamed corn and potatoes like the hairy stinky calloused sweaty non-oppressed liberated lady beast you are. I’m here to demand that we shut down the sexist patriarchal beauty aisle of the local box store. Be gone beauty counter at Nieman’s; cast thyself down oh man oppressed sellers of eau de toilette. Set thyself free from the patriarchy. Let the saline juices of hyperhidrosis of thy apocrine armpit glands flow like the Nile before the independent tyrannical eyes of Cleopatra. There shall be no patriarchy in thine arm holes! Repeat after me... if it smells like cologne... leave it alone. If it smells like cologne... leave it alone. Put on your patchouli and let the world know that you have progressed beyond the patriarchy and their olfactory expectations. May your bedroom be a man free zone. It stands to reason that toilet paper must also be patriarchal in nature. It certainly isn’t environmentally friendly to an earth that has less than 12 years to live. Thanks to men of course. Why are you clogging up the streams and oceans with paper waste and fast bringing about a sewage apocalypse? A full-blown angel soft Armageddon. Use your un-manicured man claws and unmoisturized gorilla palms to wipe your formerly Brazilianed beastly backside. Let your ass look like Jumanji. I’m done caring. May you spend your days smelling like a construction worker on the roof of a ten-story building in July. May you enter every room just to have people wonder who brought the steamed cabbage. Smelling like a plumber’s butt crack is indeed gender neutral. Or so I’m told. Ladies please let your inner outhouse free. Soap is for losers… male oppressed losers. I appeal to your inner Neanderthal to be free from the rule of men and their desire to exploit your beauty and essence with their ogling eyes and their oversensitive olfactory receptors. Come on you liberated landfill. Be free from the patriarchy. Forget progress, and refinement be damned.
Here we are folks. In the 21st century. The age of space travel and the internet. And we want to go back to being cavemen. Or cave women. I don’t know anymore. Go stink amongst yourselves. Me and the boys are headed down to our patriarchy club to see if we can devise more ways to subjugate women. As crazy as the world has gotten, trust me ladies, it’s still okay to be thought of as beautiful. Let culture’s opinions be damned. They gave a woman of the year award to a guy… so let’s not put a lot of stock in their ideas.
*****
TOXIC MASCULINITY
Perhaps this would be a good place to discuss this whole concept of masculinity and how it has apparently it has become more poisonous than a 1986 Chernobyl wind gust. Am I crazy or is it really that bad to be a man these days? There’s a term this being tossed around currently called toxic masculinity. Let’s talk about it because I don’t believe the toxic masculinity exists. There’s no such thing. It’s a fuzzy term. Our current society loves to throw around terms that contradict themselves and this description of so-called male behavior is becoming ridiculously detrimental to our culture at large. You may have issues with men, but falsely classifying and labeling them wrongly doesn’t do anything to help your cause. The bottom line is there is a movement among many today that is doing everything you can to undermine masculinity at all costs. The current phrase du jour of toxic masculinity is an oxymoron. We all know what oxymorons are. They are two words used in conjunction with one another although they imply a contradiction when used together. Here are a few examples: An open secret, seriously funny, military intelligence, Microsoft Works, Hells Angels, deafening silence, found missing, jumbo shrimp, President Obama. I think you get the point. Men can either be toxic, or they can be masculine. True masculinity can never and will never be toxic. Masculinity by its nature is not toxic. It is not mean, it is not cruel, it is not evil, it is not abusive, and it is not bad. Masculinity in its truest form is caring and strong and protective and in many ways even nurturing. Yes, I’ve seen men act like a jackass, and yes, I’ve acted like a jackass myself. But in order to do so, man has to step away from masculinity in order to be said jackass. What you call toxic masculinity is nothing more than Grade A choice jackassery. Call it what it is, but don’t call it masculine. Do you ever hear someone refer to toxic femininity? Of course not. We have a very specific word for her. And bitchy ain’t feminine. Third wave feminists that are angry and bitter and resentful are not demonstrating femininity, but we still don’t call them toxic. We call them what they are. But I digress. We are talking about dudes. There is a certain rule of thumb that I tend to remind people about whenever you encounter someone that is demonstrating traits of toxicity: Hurt people, hurt people. Doesn’t matter if they’re male or female. And just because someone does something bad to you doesn’t make everyone that shares that person’s same gender evil or even toxic. I’ve heard women say that they are swearing off men. No you’re swearing off jack asses. But, unfortunately for many, it seems that that’s all they attract. Do real man still exist? Yes they absolutely do. But the problem is we live in a world and a culture that wants to make all man villains and weak, evil, incompetent humans. Being a man is not bad. Those who have watched my shows or listened to my podcast have heard me say thousands of times (and as long as I hearing grossly negligent cultural biased misjudgments you’re going to hear me say it thousands more): We don’t need to re-define masculinity. We need to revive it. We need to reclaim it. We have too many boys out there claiming to be men. It’s time to pull the mask off and expose the disguise. Be a man. Take a risk. Be there for your family. Be there for your children. Be there for your community. Be there for your job. Masculinity is not about how hard you can beat your chest. It’s about how consistently you can show up and fill a void that no one else can. No one else can be your wife’s husband and no one else can be your children’s father. No one else regardless of gender can do the job you were created to do. Not show up and do it. Do it with vision, do with passion, do with discipline, and be willing to do it with risk. Embrace failure, embrace success, and treat both of those imposters just the same. Now do it. Go be a man. I’m giving you permission.
