Maxim's Worst Comedians of ALL-TIME List - Page 2

Are they deep-tissue Swedish (Miyagi) Massages?

No, I just try and rub the cunts.

You just described why Ellen DeGeneres is so popular.

There are thousands of female comedians out there, but the percentage that get national exposure is really slim. And it's not because they are bad at what they do. It could be promotors/clubs are not giving females as many opportunities as male comedians. Or that only the women who do extreme comedy get publicized (its an easy gimmick). Or maybe women like talking about things that women find familiar, so vagina jokes seem quite appropriate. There are a number of different reasons that you don't find women comedians funny, but it's not fair to stereotype a whole population of people based on a few observations that you've had.

Also, let's not forget that Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett are some of the funniest comedians (male or female) of all time.

Edited for spelling.

And let's not forget that they weren't stand-up comedians, which is the point of this thread.

They had variety shows in which they did do some stand up. My earliest memory of Burnett is her doing the bit about childbirth being akin to pulling your bottom lip over your head.

They had variety shows that had writing staffs coming up with jokes.

Yeah, there's a huge difference between doing stand-up and delivering the opening monologue on a variety show. Otherwise, anyone who has ever hosted SNL has stand-up experience.

The Fresh Prince: "I wanna be a comic. Sinbad is a great comic!"
Uncle Phil: "Of course Sinbad's a comic! His parents named him SINBAD! He had two options: pirate, or comic!"

But she has several gallons of testosterone coursing through her body!

Women are generally just less creative than men, and thus often less funny. But they don't need to be. The creativity stems from primitive man's desire to impress women. Women have many, many advantages over men. But cracking jokes isn't one of them.

That was Nora Ephron's theory, so you probably just cribbed from her. Then again, she's not funny. The smartest thing to come out of her mouth was Carl Bernstein's cock.

Hey-Oh!

*swings imaginary golf club*

Paula Poundstone definitely does not belong on that list. I'm sure her much publicized personal and legal troubles had nothing to do with her ranking.

I understand the backlash against Dane Cook- I too am sick of hearing he's the funniest comic ever- but he's not the worst, not by a longshot. Go spend a few nights in the clubs listening to some of what passes for a comedian these days and you'll be begging to hear some Cook material.

What's with this Jerry Lewis thinking that women can't be funny standups? Janeane Garafolo, Judy Gold, Kristen Schaal, Maria Bamford, Wanda Sykes, Laura Kightlinger, Sarah Silverman, these are just a few names off the top of my head, and all wonderful comedians.

I can't believe there was no room for Pauly Shore on this list. No, I'm not confusing his movies with his act, he put the un in unfunny either way.

Dane Cook is a performer, not a comedian. In order to be a comedian, your act needs to have actual jokes. And "I love movies. I don't even call them movies! I call them cinematic adventures!" doesn't fucking count.

I just saw him live a few weeks ago. The dude is funny. It's not just a problem with you. And his show (which was based off of his stand-up, sometimes even to the point of lifting whole jokes out of his act) was one of the highest rated on Fox when they pulled it. So, I'm thinking Maxim is either pandering or just plain wrong.

Probably. But it was also my wife's opinion. It has got to come down to exposure (and the fact that humor's subjective). Comedy Central plays it. Either I laugh or I don't. My generalizations came with disclaimers.

I find that most film-directors, cartoonists/comic book artists, comedians, etc are men. Is it a sexist & patriarchal society that dictates this? Or a god-complex inherent in men for the need to create in the arts (since women do it naturally with their bodies)? My art school had 100 guys and 5 women. Slim pickins. I sincerely doubt it was sexism that drove away the female money at the admissions office.

Not trying to offend.

All of the women on that list are funny to me to a certain extent except Judy Tenuta. The only one there that just flat out bothers me is Mencia.

How dare you, sir!

I think you have to realize that by and large there are still many hurdles to be overcome in terms of gender in our society. It wasn't until at least the mid-70s that women were really able to choose whatever career they wanted, and even still in NUMEROUS fields a woman is a rare exception.

Overall, my perception of woman comedians is that their good-to-heinous ratio is about the same as that of men.

George Lopez.

I like Titus a lot. His tv show was pretty great. The aforementioned Carrot Top, Mandel, Shore and Larry the Cable Guy should all be on this list before Titus is even thought of. In fact, all the 'blue collar' dipshits should take up the whole list.

I think there will be no disagreement when I say JOAN RIVERS.

I dunno, I think Ron White is freakin' hilarious.

Bill Engvall and Jeff Foxworthy are decent enough - part of the problem is that the mainstream audience LOVES a recognizable schtick, so funny guys like Foxworthy and Gallagher become slaves to "Ya might be a redneck if..." and smashing fruit.

Same here. I'm also a fan of Silverman, Bamford, and Sykes.

I dug the hell out of Sykes' last HBO special and Bamford killed in the Comedians Of Comedy doc.

I hate it when people suggest that an amateur comedian at an open mic night is 1000x worse than, say, Dane Cook. Like, the argument saying that "Dane Cook isn't the worst comic ever, go to Yuk Yuk's on open mic night 'cause they're worse." is stupid because I'm of the mind that something that has every advantage possible and all the exposure has no fucking right to be as bad as Dane Cook.

So what if some jerk-off who can't even memorize his material is literally worse at comedy than Dane Cook? What impact does he have? Dane Cook is fucking everywhere and there are a perverse many who think of him as genius, hence he's far fucking worse than the amateur in terms of actual effect.

Not trying to attack anybody, just explaining how I personally qualify these things. I mean, clearly Manos: The Hands of Fate is worse as a film than Crash, but Manos has far more reasons to be as shitty as it is. Crash is a fucking major studio film with every possible advantage of budget, cast, distribution etc. but it's still perhaps one of the most abominable things ever put to film.

Wanda Sykes is funny.

Replace Titus with Ellen Degenerres. Never been funny, only vaguely quirky. The reason she got picked to do the Oscars is 'cause she's a kiss up and won't offend the stars like Rock and Stewart did.

Gottfried is hilarious. His impressions of other comedians - the guy was making people laugh at his dead-on Seinfeld impression back when Seinfeld was just another guy on the club circuit ("Whyyyyyyy do people WEAR shoes? Is it to PROtect their feeeeet? Whaaaaaat is the deaal with this shoe thing?") and oh man, that bit he did a long while back about what the Honeymooners would be like if it had starred James Mason and Richard Burton - who does impressions of Mason or Burton these days if at all and makes it work?

I agree that Sinbad's a bit hacky but he's harmless.

A few of those who should be on a list of worst comedians, eschewing the mildly annoying hacks and easy targets:

Dat Phan - Unfunny and alleged joke thief. That is, what little material he has that isn't his "OH DAT PHAN I YOUR MOTHER I TALK ALL FUNNY LIKE THIS HAW HAW HAW oh hey did I mention I, Dat Phan, am Vietnamese" shit.

Dustin 'Screech' Diamond - if only to serve as an example of one of the worst types of stand-ups: the has been from another field trading in on what noteriety they have left to make it in comedy. There have been too many billings over the years at comedy clubs featuring sitcom has-beens, burnout ex-morning zoo DJ's and 15 minutes of fame freakos. That and he's horribly unfunny and again an alleged shameless joke thief who has accused others of ripping off his jokes.

Lizzzzz Winstead - not unfunny because she's a lady, but because her act consists of the worst sort of political humor, comfort food for hardline partisans - in her case people who think having a subscription to Mother Jones is bold act of dissent - and the parts that don't are hackneyed bullshit that'll make you think you're listening to some forgotten hack's mid-90's half-hour special in the vein of HEY HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS OLESTRA STUFF PEOPLE IT MIGHT MAKE YOU POOP I MEAN WHAT'S UP WITH THAT AND DON'T LET ME GET STARTED ON AIRLINE PEANUTS...

Pablo Francisco - Once you strip him of his "funny" voices and "wacky" songs and other gimmicks you're left with a sweaty, talentless hack wriggling around the stage who makes guys still doing lame Shatner and Mr. T impressions look like Lenny Bruce. The impressionist hack is a tenacious creature, clinging desparately to what few voices they can sort of do and unable to come up with anything new or on the fly.

George Gallo - If you've never heard of this guy, count yourself lucky. He has managed to survive over a decade in the biz, still does openings for actual humorous comics at big clubs, even though his schtick consists mostly of spastic flailing, like a 1344569569th rate Jim Carrey wannabe.

Russell Peters - in the same anti-humor vein as Mencia but he's all HEY YOU GUYS I'M INDIAN HOW ABOUT THAT AND NOW SOME HILARIOUS OUTSOURCING OR ACCENT JOKES instead of using the word 'beaner' every 4 seconds.

Jay Davis - this barnacle on Cook's backside is yet another loser who's been treading water in the biz for about a decade and has successfully avoided humor in his routine, which apparently revolves around being an overly senistive little neurotic putz. Boy I hate him.

Jimmy Tingle. Suppose to be a "Political Humorist", but when he came to my college a dozen years or so ago, he must have left his sense of humor behind. Terrible. Lame jokes, obvious political observations. Painful.

Paul Riser.

Phyllis Diller. The bitch is still alive, barely.

Dat Phan sucked from what I've seen, but there was a lot of satisfaction to be had when all the other comics got their asses kicked (especially Ralphie May in the final round) by him in the first season of 'Last Comic Standing'. It was so great 'cause all they'd do is posture like they were so much fucking funnier and smarter and shit, and he just kept to himself blocking out their bullshit and then he just won it all. So fuckin' funny. If they had been funny themselves, it would be more of a tragedy they didn't win 'cause he's so lame, but as it stands it's just sort of a poetic justice he won.

Bullshit. Back in her prime, DeGeneres killed. Unique perspective and an awesome sense of timing.

I hope you don't think this was my argument- I meant Cook is better than most of the tripe you see from so called professional comics, the crap that litters Comedy Central all day and night. But this is no ringing endorsement- I find him mildly amusing at best. But you know, give it another week and I might hate him as much as some of you do, I find his schtick growing incredibly tired very rapidly.

I've heard this argument before and it doesn't hold water. Bill Cosby and Eddie Izzard rarely if ever tell a "joke" in their sets. I'm not saying Cook doesn't suck, I'm just saying that's not why.

The picture they have to accompany this is pretty great too.

I dare because I've got these brass balls Alec Baldwin gave me. And because I just saw the guy, and Maxim is obviously wrong.

Again, bullshit. Cosby might not be telling "So a horse walked into a bar..." stories, but his routines are packed with jokes. Hell, his books are basically just transcribed routines, and even without Cosby's impressions and expressions, it's still funny stuff.

You couldn't turn Cook's routine into a book, because without his mugging, there's just nothing there. No insight, no digressions, no observations, no jokes.

She's still funny. Her Emmy hostings were great and the rare ocassion I get to see her talk show, I enjoy it.

Ellen DeGeneres is an excellent stand up. at times her style actually reminds me of the funniest man in the world, Steve Coogan (I always thought she'd make an excellent Ellen Partridge, if they made that character yank and female). no, she's very far apart from fucking awful ones like Titus and Gottfried and Cook.

Sorry for responding so late, but as you may have read from this thread, I've been having computer problems.

To answer your question, in a word -- yes. A number of factors work to disadvantage women (and other minorities) in our society and many of them are not overt. All people have certain notions about gender roles and these notions influence our expectations and evaluations of others. It's a part of just living in this society, we are socialized to think certain things are "masculine" and others are "feminine". Research has shown that men and women have the same notions of gender to the same degree. So when you say, "My wife thinks the same thing too", you're right. She probably does. We all do.

There are certain traits that people consider masculine and others that are considered feminine. And when someone of the opposite sex has those traits, they are evaluated negatively. So for example, a man who is agressive at work is usually considered favorably, a women who does the same is not -- and is often further denegrated by being called names (e.g., bitch).

Further professions are often assigned gender values, largely based on the perceived number of men and women within the profession. Think of the classic conundrum about a doctor refusing to operate on a patient because "he's my son". The father is ruled out, and most people can't figure out that the doctor is the patient's mother because women just aren't associated with being doctors. On the flip side, Meet the Fockers carried a "joke" throughout the entire length of its movie regarding male nurses.

I am reminded how pervasive these messages by an incident that happened while watching a football game at a friend's house recently and their 3-year old daughter said, "Mommy, how come there aren't any girls playing?" Kids pick up on this stuff very early on. I am tempted to go into a whole spiel about Affirmative Action and how 90% of people have no understanding of what it really is and why its important, but I will just say that numbers matter.

Another issue is what is called a "pipeline issue". I'm more familiar with literature regarding academe -- specifically why there is a lack of women and minorities in the science and technology fields -- but there is a ton of information about how this works similarly in other professions. In the beginning phases of academe (undergrad), there is a good percentage of women entering these fields. But along the way (grad school, post-doc fellowships, tenured faculty), the numbers keep decreasing. Why? There's too much to describe here, but some examples of things that influence whether a woman makes it in academe are an unfriendly climate, lack of mentoring, institutional policies that value certain types of work over others (e.g., research over teaching), etc.

Additionally, women and minorites often are saddled with extra responsibilities that men aren't saddled with, which take away time for them to do their own work. For example, women and minorities usually have more mentorship responsibilities than men as they are asked to mentor women and minority students or they are asked to sit on service committies to represent their respective groups. In addition, married women often have an unfair portion of family responsibilities that married men don't.

While all these things seperately don't seem so bad, when you put them all together they add up to a lot. My boss wrote a great book about this called, "Why so slow?: The advancement of women". It's worth glancing through the next time you are at Barnes & Noble or some other bookstore.

So to bring this all back to the topic at hand, there can be a lot of reasons why there aren't many women standups in general, and why the few that are mainstream have mostly the same material. Some women may sense an unfriendly atmosphere -- the old boys's club -- and drop out. Those that make it through may do so because they have "masculine" styles of comedy (i.e., very aggressive, foul language, etc) or have a very "feminine" style (i.e., vagina talk; women's issues). And because there are way more male comedians than female, female comedians stand out -- they look like they don't belong.

There's just so much more information, such as women are deemed less competant than men and thus have to do twice as good a job as men to prove their worth. So female comedians can't just be status quo, they have to have exceptionally material to stand out, whereas there are dozens of just mediocre male stand ups that make it through. In addition, because female standups stand out due to their relatively small numbers in the profession, people tend to remember bad female comedians much more vividly than a bad male comedian.

Anyway, this post is long enough. If anyone wants more information on gender issues in society, feel free to check out my job's website: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/genderequity/

As for funny female stand ups, I think Ellen, Cho, Sykes are great.

Thanks for taking the time to respond in such a thought out way and not simply resorting to "You Sexist Pig" short-hand (or typical CHUD MB snark).

These reasons all make some sense, but I still find it strange that the visual/performing and culinary arts (seen by many ignorant people as "sissy occupations"... not my words) are mostly male-dominated. Do women make up a vastly smaller percentage of the "doodlers" in high school that there was such a tiny amount of women at my art school (cartooning/comics/animation)? Or do the more artistic younger girls pursue more "aesthetic" and finer arts like painting, sculpture, and children's book illustration? You know what... after considering the amount of material available to just females in the areas of cartoons and comic books, it's no wonder there's a small number that are in turn inspired to pursue a career in the field/s.

I can't fathom the reversed-sexist reasoning behind male VS female chefs. Is it the idea that women shouldn't hold a professional position or be experts in anything that are holding them back in the culinary arts? "You should spend your time in the kitchen, just not the best kitchens."

And I believe the term is Murse (according to Scrubs).

EDIT: Sorry to derail, back to those un-comedians...

I don't know the history behind the culinary or art worlds, but just off the top of my head I'd say when we look back historically, it's a man's world. When I think of the famous artists taught to me in high school, it's Picasso, Dali, Davinci, Monet, Van Gogh... I can't think of one female artist. It's not because there weren't women painters back then, they just weren't valued enough to have their legacy passed on to later generations. I'd imagine it's the same with the culinary arts. There was a time when women weren't allowed to act, so men dressed in drag to play the women's roles. A woman's place was in the home. Men were the professionals. We've come along way with gender equality, but at the same time we haven't come that far.

But to theorize from the research that's out there, you are onto something regarding your question about wheteher women are allowed to be experts. In a sense they are not. Study after study shows that women are perceived to be less competant than men, even when they have the exact same credentials. One study sent the exact same resume to businesses, but with either a male or female name. Almost all of the men were asked in for an interview, while a much smaller percentage of women were. Again, the employers saw the exact same credentials.

Another study asked people to list qualities that make up a good leader. Then they were asked to list qualities that are associate with men. Then with women. You can guess the results. The qualities that people associate with "leader" are the same qualities that are associated with "men". Just by virtue of being a woman, she is already deemed not to have leadership abilities. And when she is in a leadership position, she seems out of place.

Yet another study showed participants a picture of people sitting around a rectangular office table. There were two people on each side and one at the head. There were no defining features of the people to mark them as any different than another. The study manipulated a few things: the sex of the person sitting at the head of table and the sex of people sitting around the table (all women, all men, half and half). The participants were asked to pick who they thought the leader was. When a male was at the head of the table, regardless of the sex composition of people around the table, 100% of the time he was designated the leader. When a woman was at the head of the table and the others were all women, again everybody said she was the leader. However, when a woman was at the head of the table and the group was all male or half and half, about 50% of particiapnts said she was the leader; the other 50% chose a man sitting with the larger group. Women just aren't afforded the same credibility for expertise that men are. And this is based on nothing more than her gender.

I guess discussions on the issue of gender are a "Pandora's Box" (no pun intended, or was it?) around here, considering your vocation.

Don't get me started on race and ethnicity issues. That's my real passion and what I'm getting my doctoral degree in.

I remember my lessons in the Blockbuster Racism thread.

Here's an interesting article from Vanity Fair:

The researchers found that men and women share much of the same humor-response system; both use to a similar degree the part of the brain responsible for semantic knowledge and juxtaposition and the part involved in language processing. But they also found that some brain regions were activated more in women. These included the left prefrontal cortex, suggesting a greater emphasis on language and executive processing in women, and the nucleus accumbens … which is part of the mesolimbic reward center.

This has all the charm and address of the learned Professor Scully's attempt to define a smile, as cited by Richard Usborne in his treatise on P. G. Wodehouse: "the drawing back and slight lifting of the corners of the mouth, which partially uncover the teeth; the curving of the naso-labial furrows … " But have no fear—it gets worse:

"Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon," said the report's author, Dr. Allan Reiss. "So when they got to the joke's punch line, they were more pleased about it." The report also found that "women were quicker at identifying material they considered unfunny."
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The article's implication seems to be that women are wired to have a stronger reaction to humor than men. It would stand to reason, then, that the ability to make people laugh would be more important to men than to women as, from a Darwinian perspective, it's all about pleasin' the opposite sex. Consequently, we might surmise that the dominance of male comedians is both biological and social: biological because nature selects funny men and social because young men learn that comedy is a route to social acceptance and / or sex.

Of course, this can sometimes backfire. We once set up a female friend with a very funny guy. She reported back that she could never see him again because he made her laugh so hard that she wet her pants. I suppose every rule has its exception.

Thanks for sharing that article. Interesting, indeed.

Telling...

A lot of male comics are hefty or Jewish, too. Or black. Basically, if you're in or descend from a traditionally oppressed or ostracized segment of the population, you're personally and/or culturally probably more likely to develop humor as a coping mechanism.

I think Hitchens has his blinders on a bit, because while he seems to be implying that a number of the great female comics are not traditionally attractive (and what that says about his opinions on Jewish people, I'll leave alone for now), he doesn't acknowledge the flipside, which is that a number of the great male comics are not traditionally attractive, either.

I think Hitchens found an interesting nugget of information and played it for laughs. Call me humorless, but I'm more interested in the nugget than the laughs.

See, I've already filled my Darwinian purpose.

The most attractive stand-ups seem to have emerged more recently (Dane Cook, Sarah Silverman), though I don't know if I'd go so far as to say Bob Hope- or for that matter Pryor or Murphy - are all that ugly. But, since so much of comedy is complaining for laughs, I imagine that attractive stand-ups would find it that much harder to find a receptive audience.