Credit: Keat Teoh

“You have your hat backward,” Gallagher sneers at a twentysomething man in the front row. “Are you a homosexual? Because it seems you have a problem figuring out the front from the back.” Big laugh. “I see people every day I can’t figger out what sex they are,” he continues. Even bigger laugh. The old man—1980s fixture, incessant smasher of fruit, and “comedy legend,” according to the marquee outside—is onstage in front of a sold-out Admiral Theatre in Bremerton, Washington. An hour earlier, my friend and I had disembarked the packed rush-hour ferry in downtown Bremerton and wandered uphill through oddly deserted streets (our hundreds of fellow passengers seemed to have vaporized when they reached land) until we found the Admiral. Gallagher stood on the sidewalk. He was small and old—his back bent a bit, his trademark dark curls faded to a dank grayish-­blond. He scuttled around the corner and through a side door.

It’s cocktail seating inside the Admiral—small tables of four—and we are placed at #B32 with a largish lady in pink and her mustachioed gentleman friend. “Oh, you’re sitting with my daughter!” the elderly usher crows. “This is my daughter!” We aren’t sure how to respond, so we say, “Cool!” Things are immediately awkward. They would only get worse.

My memories of watching Gallagher during my 1980s childhood (Comedy Central was my third parent) were pretty much apolitical—silly props, innocuous puns, and, of course, all the smashing, smashing, smashing. Tonight, we’re expecting much of the same, only older, sadder. We are smug and a little bored. “Gallagher’s gotta be, like, 90 now, right?” I joke. “Because he was, you know…” “Bald?” my friend offers. “In the ’70s?” “Right.” The stage is swathed in thousands of yards of black plastic sheeting. Spray-painted on the back wall is a banner (created, if the internet is any indication, by Gallagher himself before each show) that says: “G-[watermelon]-L-L-[space]-[watermelon]-R-R-R.” It is… sad. We were right about that much.

Then Gallagher gets going. And fuck. Bremerton is a military town and a conservative one: It’s more than just a slide into obscurity that delivered Gallagher to the Admiral rather than, say, the Moore in Seattle. You see, Gallagher is—how best to put this?—a paranoid, delusional, right-wing religious maniac. I HAD NO IDEA.

“Hey, President Obama,” he spits out the name like a mouthful of burning hair. “You ain’t black. I don’t care what you say—you’re a latte. You’re half whole-milk. It could be goat milk—you could be a terrorist!” I am too busy losing my mind to catch the next joke, which is about Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer. Aaaaand we’re off.

Gallagher is upset about a lot of things. Young people with their sagging pants (in faintly coded racist terms, he explains that this is why the jails are overcrowded—because “their” baggy pants make it too hard for “them” to run from the cops). Tattoos: “That ink goes through to your soul—if you read your Bible, your body is a sacred temple, YOU DIPSHIT.” People naming their girl-children Sam and Toni instead of acceptable names like Evelyn and Betty: “Just give her some little lesbian tendencies!” Guantánamo Bay: “We weren’t even allowed to torture all the way. We had to half-torture—that’s nothin’ compared to what Saddam and his two sons OOFAY and GOOFAY did.” Lesbians: “There’s two types—the ugly ones and the pretty ones.” (Um, like all people?) Obama again: “If Obama was really black, he’d act like a black guy and get a white wife.” Michael Vick: “Poor Michael Vick.” Women’s lib: “These women told you they wanna be equal—they DON’T.” Trans people: “People like Cher’s daughter—figure that out. She wants a penis, but she has a big belly. If you can’t see your dick, you don’t get one.” The Rice Krispies elves: “All three of those guys are gay. Look at ’em!” The Mexicans: “Look around—see any Mexicans? Nope. They’ll be here later for the cleanup.” The French: “They ruin our language with their faggy words.”

Above all, everything is gay, gay, gay to Gallagher. He leans into it with the borderline-­nonsensical, icked-out, ignorant glee of a boy—or the protest-too-much vigor of a GOP senator. Gallagher delivers your Bible verse for the day: “Without God, we are nothing but dust. What is butt dust? Is that what you get if your homosexual isn’t properly lubricated?” He relates a story about spilling mouthwash onto his crotch during a show: “Lucky for me, there was no homosexuals in the area—’cause my balls was minty fresh.” At other points during the show, Gallagher says, “Men and women can’t live in the same house” and “There’s no way men and women can have a relationship.” He says he can’t remember why he used to feel pleasure in looking at a woman. And, “There’s only one kind of homosexual guy, and that’s the pretty ones—why do homosexual men have to be so good-looking?” Gallagher. Listen. Is there something you want to share with us?

Gallagher commands the stage with the weary, sure hand of a touring comic closing out his third decade on the road. He knows what he’s doing, and even I’m not a big enough dick to dispute the “comedy legend” designation on the sign outside. The people of Bremerton eat it up, and despite the discomfort of sitting in a room full of rabid, frothing conservative dickwads (especially when the “comedy” veers creepily close to white-power rhetoric: “We’re descended from an Anglo-Saxon Viking tradition!”), it’s a relief to have them there. Gallagher needs them, and I need to not witness the complete mental breakdown of Gallagher.

“This is why I’m not on TV,” he keeps repeating. “I am powerful. They can tell. I’m an American and I’m gonna speak my mind.” He tells the truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, and everyone else is afraid. The TV talk-show hosts are afraid, the network executives are afraid, the American people are afraid. It’s our fault that he’s not a superstar—not his—and he needs us to know it. We owe him. “Dave Letterman ain’t comin’ here. Robin Williams ain’t comin’ out here. You gotta say, you know, Gallagher came here, and he did two hours.”

In a section entitled “Additional Facts,” the program describes, with heartbreaking false bravado, a 2008 interview that Gallagher seems to regard as his big comeback: “The Howard Stern Show. The interview lasted at least 1 hour and the callbacks were amazing. It was a chance for everyone to see and hear Gallagher in a new light.” I couldn’t track down an audio file of the Stern interview, but the show’s website maintains detailed recaps of each episode:

Howard welcomed watermelon smashing comedian Gallagher to the studio and was surprised that he was wearing a suit… Gallagher then railed against the late night hosts; Jay Leno is impersonal, Conan isn’t funny, and Letterman used his watermelon-­dropping bit. Gallagher said, “I’m an authority on comedy. I was a comedian in another life,” and listed some of his lesser-known credits, like random parody songs… Gallagher then continued to list his crazy ideas; fart ring tones, a face-paint-focused environmental presentation for Al Gore, and something about photons and electrons.

Ugh. Devastating. It sounds just like the Gallagher show I watched—less a triumphant comeback and more the perversely fascinating but ultimately insignificant ramblings of a desperate has-been.

At last, after two hours of his tedious, hacky, right-wing manifesto, Gallagher gets to the part his (willing) hostages have been waiting for. It’s time to smash some shit. There are the watermelons, there is some cottage cheese (“It’s got the curds that blow up, just like on the news!”), there is sauerkraut and syrup and honey. Then Gallagher gets a tin pie plate. He opens a giant can of fruit cocktail and pours it in. He opens a can of some Asian vegetable—water chestnuts, maybe—and pours that in, too. “This is the China people and queers!!!” he screams and takes his sledgehammer to the thing with a fury that is no fun at all. Wet chunks of China people and queers fly everywhere. The hateful, bitter old man laughs. I cannot believe Bill Hicks is dead and this motherfucker is still touring.

On our way out the door, my friend says to me, “Hey—do you want to go beat up some queers? I heard they’re really faggy.” We laugh. But it isn’t really funny. recommended

Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more....

176 replies on “Gallagher Is a Paranoid, Right-Wing, Watermelon-Smashing Maniac”

  6. Ewww. Glad I didn’t even know about it. The Bachelorette all of a sudden doesn’t seem like such a pathetic entertainment option.

  7. I’d never seen his act on TV or in person but I remember all of his videos cluttering up the comedy section of the local video store. I always wondered who his audience was…glad I’m not part of it.

  8. My mouth was hanging open in disbelief throughout the entirety of this article. My coworkers probably now think I’m having some sort of seizure. Thanks a lot, West.

  10. I’ve always wondered what his appeal was, as I’ve never liked him to begin with. This just confirms what I’ve always known, that he’s a douche bag.

  12. Wow. I thought he’d just become irrelevant because he refused to give up the watermelon-smashing bit. This is far, far creepier.

  15. Before I read this review, I didn’t even know Gallagher had a regular stand-up routine… I thought all he did was get up there and smash things.

  17. I sorta liked his giant couch trampoline, that was kinda awesome. I think I saw that on Comedy Central in the 90s. (PS Lindy, Comedy Central became Comedy Central and not the Comedy channel sometime in the mid-90s).

  18. Man, that sucks. I never really loved the guy, but neither did I abhor him as I do now. And he did have that sort of 80’s era nostalgic icon thing going for him that I appreciated on some level and now need to disavow myself from. What an asshole.

  20. I remember seeing a tape of him on my sister’s VCR back in the late ’80s. I was absolutely amazed – I’d never seen anything more aggressively, relentlessly stupid. Sounds like he hasn’t changed much, just gotten a little edgier now that he’s playing smaller rooms.

  23. Does he scream all this as he’s tramping around onstage? Because in my mind, it was coming out of Gallagher’s mouth, but all at maximum volume, like Sam Kinison’s ghost has inhabited his body.

  24. I heard recently that there’s no such thing as an apolitical comedian anymore, and this is going some way toward convincing me.

  26. Did you see that interview he gave with the AV Club? http://www.avclub.com/articles/gallagher…

    It’s CRAZY, but pretty much right in line with what Lindy’s seen. And can’t unsee.

    I used to love him too, when I was like, 10 — even not just the smashing shit part, but the bit about, say, how “comb” and “tomb” and “bomb” etc. don’t rhyme. “Comb. C. O. M. B. Change that C to a T. Tom-B? NO TOOOOOMB! Change it to a B? BOOOOOM? No, that’s what they go, but it’s a BOMB….”

  27. Fantastic writing. I was a child of the 80s and remember Gallagher. I have no words. Wow. The size of the audience enjoying a show that is SCARY-racist(!!) is evidence that we are not post-race. A whole room full of homophobes and racists/white supremacists in one place. That is a damn scary thought.

  28. Actually, the racism in Gallagher’s stand-up routing puts his WATERMELON smashing bit into a whole new and wicked scary light.

    And why the freak is he so obsessed with gays?

    One badly messed-up dude, all in all.

  29. I wonder if you saw the original Gallagher, or his brother – and this is not a joke.

    Apparently, the original guy’s brother has co-opted the act, and can do everything but smash watermellons. Sounds like Lindy might have seen the Evil Twin Gallagher.

  31. i’m so sorry that we are not friends, because i could have warned you.

    i commented on the slog post yesterday with a link to an account of a new york show of his that i “experienced” a couple years ago.

    my friends and i all felt like we had PTSD afterward.

    it still hurts to eat watermelon.

  32. Was that the “real” dude or not.

    I suspect it was. Made me laugh when I was a kid. And I remember this one joke:

    “Texas should be it’s own country so it could just invade Cuba… they’d be like “We got down here looking for some beach front property and all we found was the help”.

    Well, that was funny and all at the time but I guess I didn’t know how deep that joke lived in his soul.

    I’m sure he’ll be out our redneck conservative way next. I’ll be sure and pass.

  35. “I cannot believe Bill Hicks is dead and this motherfucker is still touring.”

    That part actually stung, a bit. Bill Hicks had some rants, too, (The NKOTB as Nazi Youth rant was kinda disturbing the first time I saw it) but at least he was funny. It sucks to think that I’ve already seen everything he’ll ever do, while this guy has spent the better part of four decades traveling around spewing shit across the country.

    Well, him and Lisa Lampanelli. Two people who defile the name “comedian”.

  36. Wow, I never really thought Gallagher’s watermelon-smashing act was all that funny (this is comedy?) but I had no idea how awful he truly is. Thank you, Lindy: I usually read you to get a good laugh, but this story had me feeling angry, sad, repulsed…and grateful that you wrote about this pathetic waste of a man. Hopefully others will read your review and avoid him the next time he crawls into their town.

  39. As a gay man, I’ve gotta say… I don’t see what the big deal is. He sounds like he was doing what comedians are expected do: Peddling (admittedly lame) jokes. I’m not seeing how he’s doing anything demonstrably different from any other comedian.

    He definitely sounds like he’s got an agenda that informs his comedy (which is certainly not unique to him), so I can certainly understand if someone feels differently than me. But c’mon, it’s Gallagher. Who’s he gonna influence? He’s probably pretty sad most of the time. Leave the poor old fart alone 😛

  40. Yeah, I saw him at The R.O.T. Rally. He definitely was an over-bittered person. He still had some good lines but he just didn’t seem to be enthusiastic anymore. Just… tired. I did get some good shots of food stuffs going flying and of his hammer breaking though.

  42. Its funny when other “comedians” make fun of Palin, Bush, Limbaugh, etc…. It’s entertainment.

  43. It’s a comedian. They are all non-funny douches, who cares what the political party is. He’s just going for a reaction.

  44. That’s the point it IS funny when other comedians make fun of Palin, Bush, Limbaugh (especially Limbaugh).

    When conservatives try the same thing, it invariably devolves into the venom-spewing hatefulness that Lindy witnessed.

    They lack good humor, on a number of levels.

  45. @30 – How sad I found the time to look into that!! His brother is no longer allowed to perform using any of the sledgie stuff. Wiki lists Gallgher’s routine for 2010 pretty accurately as described by Lindy.

  47. Ew. So this guy was the dude hosting the kid’s cartoon shows when I was a kid. I never saw his show, but it creeps the hell out of me that the smiley friendly goofy guy introducing He-Man or whatever was this warped and twisted.

    Though I guess the argument could be made that He-Man is also warped and twisted when viewed as an adult. Sigh.

  48. I-I went to see a shabby blue collar cable TV comedian and I was offended!!!

    Then you apparently sat there for an hour and took notes.

    You are the very definition of a Seattle Douchebag.

  49. It’s sad to see my childhood hero turn into someone like this. I grew up watching his specials, I still have his leap year marathon from 1988 on a VHS tape. I saw his show in 2005 and he was simply awesome. However, reading this just days away from him being in Syracuse [and about to buy tickets for it] I elected not to go.

    Some don’t find him funny, but I found him absolutely hilarious, and what was so hilarious about it was the truth in his comedy. He was not always like this and if anything, he poked a little fun at God [“I wonder why God didn’t make us wheels? He must’ve known we’d get skates for christmas” and “God made flying squirrels so they could swoop down and surprise the acorns”]

    For those of you asking how the sledge-o-matic was funny, I don’t think it was ever MEANT to be funny. It was something different, something other comedians didn’t do. What other comedian smashed a watermelon or any foods? That sketch is what set him apart from all others. His jokes were funny, the sledge-o-matic just added fun interaction between him and the audience, and the audiences LOVED it. Hell, it was awesome for me to get up on stage and smash something with his sledge-o-matic, and he was so awesome about it too. We met him after the show, and I had an old Gallagher t-shirt of my dad’s, and he remarked that he hadn’t seen it in many years, even a decade, and signed it for me.

    I have no idea what happened in the past five years, but all I know is that I don’t want my memories of his Showtime specials, and the memory of my FINALLY meeting my childhood hero to be tarnished and ruined in one night. So I’m not going to go see him.

    I can understand some of his reasoning with the young comedians, and with the couple in NY that he had removed, as comedy now is a MUCH different thing than it was back then. He has performed for decades and knows the art form of prop comedy. However, something about him as changed, and to be honest, he’s right. The audiences have changed. People now are completely different from what they were back in his prime. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be accepting it too well nowadays.

    But back in 2005, he was absolutely amazing, not only to witness on stage, but to meet afterwards. He was so friendly and accomodating. Now….I’m just speechless and saddened by it.

    I can only hope that he ditches this new outlook and goes back to the Gallagher that I remember watching throughout the years. =(

  50. Sweet Holy Jesus! I just checked Gallagher’s website, and he is playing at the “Gathering of the Juggalos” this summer. Is that his fan base now?

  51. Is he a right-wing nutjob, or does he just pick on whatever political party is in power? Yes, he was political back in the 80’s, but then he was giving it to the Reagan administration. Perhaps he’s gotten conservative with age; more likely he just says what people want to hear.

  52. poor delusional libtard, so butthurt because someone wasn’t PC? I don’t understand how your insane little world works, but I know how the real world works. Real people aren’t politically correct, and yes, they give and take jokes about others, based on their race or what have you with good humor. Only a braindead sheeple libtard would be so insulted by someone else saying these things…I bet you’d just love to silence him. Hmm? Maybe he shouldn’t have freedom of speech…well this was a free country, and because people who think like you have freedom of speech, the rest of it have to watch it burn.

  54. Oops, that posted before I was ready.

    What’s weird about this is that, when I was 12, I understood Gallagher as a harmless pot-smoking old hippie. Not just because of his look, but because of his show “Stuck in the 60s,” which pretty much endorsed all the peace-and-love-and-dope mantras of the era.

    Hell, the theme song even went “My hair is still long/the New Right/is still wrong.”

    Just look at the cover: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/19125/Ga…

    Do old comedians just go crazy sometimes? It happened to Dennis Miller.

  55. I saw him like 15 years ago…and while I was delighted with the fact that it took me three washes to get all of the smashed food out of my hair, I do recall being pretty disappointed that his comedy was more political than funny. I don’t remember politics creeping into his stand-up routines when I was a kid. I agree with Djeph…I think maybe old comedians do sometimes slide into that abyss of crazy.

  56. As a kid I remember watching him on TV as he trotted around the stage in these oversized high heeled shoes. It kinds makes sense now after reading this article. He’s nuttier than a crap fight in a monkey house.

  57. I’m with all those who never thought he was funny to begin with. Does sound like he is a self-hating homosexual, though…

  58. There are some comments from some silly young people here. Don’t you just love teenage conservatives? They’re like baby birds.

  59. How can a guy who looks like an off-duty mime identify as a conservative? He used to wear a Frenchie-ass beret ferchrissakes…

  60. @53

    If you keep slummin at these leftist interweb places, you’ll never have enough time to butt rape the city slickers who come canoeing through yer backwater…

  61. Man. As far as the category “Things that retrospectively ruin my memories of the ’80s” goes, this isn’t quite up there with Steve Largent.
    But it’s close. Real close.

  62. ‘I cannot believe Bill Hicks is dead and this motherfucker is still touring.’

    Are you referring to the same Bill Hicks that compared people who like New Kids on The Block to the Nazis? The Bill Hicks of ‘Goatboy’ fame? Sounds to me like Hicks and Gallagher were pretty much on the same level, it just that one was left wing, the other right wing.

  65. Oh Lindy, I love your articles. It’s too bad that you had to suffer the fucking hack that is Gallagher, in order to write about it. Also, thank you for acknowledging bill hicks.. i believe at one point bill hicks actually talked about what a no-talent ass clown gallagher was – along w/carrot top- and it is very, very sad that his words are hauntingly true in this case: “good men die every day, while talentless hacks thrive and proliferate”

  66. Gallagher was on Opie and Anthony’s Sirius-XM show a few months back. They called him a racist (somewhat jokingly), he got pretty angry and left angry. It was great radio that’s for sure, it helps that he’s both very bitter and about as nutty as a fruitcake. Of course he panders to the same Red-State audience as the Cable Guy and the “you’re a redneck if…” bunch.

    On the other hand I’d pay to see the discomfort of a couple of arrogant Seattle Douchebags sitting among a bunch of military guys having to listen to him.

  67. In a comment above, “Rubble” takes issues with a positive mention of Bill Hicks, suggesting that Hicks and Gallagher were the yin and yang of the same comedy ethos. I have no problem with Rubble’s comparison (it’s his opinion; no big whoop), but it behooves me to correct a slight misrepresentation in his post: Hicks was not in essence comparing fans of NKOTB to Nazis. He was comparing America’s obsession with conformity, surface beauty, safety and banality at the expense of honesty – things “played from the heart”. Messy and ugly to be sure, but (to Hicks’ mind) true and honest and real. In other words, Hicks was referring to America – not necessarily boy band fans – a subtle but important distinction. Decide for yourselves:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YiPKy1NO…

  71. He’s obviously lost his pre-frontal lobe.

    Early in his career, ( I’m going back to the mid-eighties at least) he had a great act, before all the watermelon smashing bullshit. I remember a great line that went: “Don’t smoke pot… when you’re already stoned. Because you don’t get more stoned. You just get less pot.”
    One of my favorites, but no doubt a line he’d like to disavow now in his right-wing hate-haze.

  73. I’m with you, Lindy. Thank you for such an accurate article that touched on everything I felt. I was at the show because it was so close to my place of residence. It was a mistake. A big fucking mistake.

    I would have walked out if I didn’t bring company with me. It would have been great to heckle him on my way out. I really missed my shot. How unfortunate.

  74. Meh.

    How many fucking times can you repeat “right wing?” Too bad his comedy isn’t as sad as yours, maybe then you’d have enjoyed the show.

  75. It’s called comedy people. Go listen to some George Carlin and see if it’s not more offensive than this. You praise and herald George Carlin for you call it “telling it like it is”, but when Gallagher does it from his own perspective, he’s not a comedian; he’s a right wing religious nut case. Pretty hypocritical.

  77. “”If pro is the opposite of con, and progress means to move forward, what does congress mean?”

    Gallagher may have used it too, but I’m pretty sure it was Nipsy Russell who first said it. I can’t imagine Gallagher being that witty.

  79. #72 – That quote of his was actually during a show which featured the “watermelon smashing bullshit” and the actual quote went “Don’t smoke dope when you’re stoned. You don’t get any higher, just lower on dope.”

    He has ALWAYS smashed Watermelons in any televised show. His very first special which was in….79 maybe? He smashed one. All his specials following, he smashed one. There may have been a small portion of shows that weren’t televised or recorded or made into specials that didn’t feature watermelon smashing, but I can assure you, in the mid 80s (at the time of The Maddest & Melon Crazy), he WAS smashing them, and he still had great acts.

    That seems to have changed, he seems to have gone senile and it’s disappointing, because once upon a time, he was a fantastic entertainer, and I’m sure he could be if he left the hate out of his acts as he did in the 80s. There was dislike, yes, but now it’s gone straight to flat out HATE.

    And people can defend it all they want, but I can tell you, there’s a definite difference between the Gallagher now, and the Gallagher then. At the same time, there is a difference between the audience now and the audience then. The audience int he 80s didn’t give a shit if their clothes got ruined, and they laughed with all the jokes. Now, there seems to be too much taking offense at jokes. However, as I said, there is a difference between a joke and being downright hateful and disrespectful towards those who hand you a paycheck.

  82. “Only America could produce a comic named Gallagher who ends his show by destroying good food with a sledgehammer. Gee, I wonder why we’re hated the world over?” – Bill Hicks

  83. So we have an article by our alternative to the MSM here in Seattle that is talking about the ravings of a has been comic whose career peaked around 1986?

    WOW!! That’s powerful reporting for ya!!

  84. @84 “WOW!! That’s powerful reporting for ya!!”

    Hehindeedy. An entertainment reporter reporting on ENTERTAINMENT! THE NERVE OF THAT LINDY.

    I’m up for the collapse of the “MSM” as much as anybody, but you should probably take Alex Jones’ diamond gusset jeans out of your mouth.

  85. What a complete, total and utter piece of shit. He is a completely worthless human being, and anyone who pays money to watch this asshole is just as bad.

  87. @53:

    What is it that you right wing loons don’t understand about freedom of speech? No one is saying that Gallagher can’t say what he says. He has every right to spew racist and homophobic nonsense on stage. Just as Lindsay has every right to report on what a washed-up ignorant fool he is.

    Every time some Republican asshat says something racist and gets called out they scream that their free speech is being stifled. You goose steppers are clearly confused as to what free speech actually is. But then you’re confused about pretty much everything else, so I’m not surprised.

  89. Sad.

    My favorite aspect of his comedy was his observation on language. For example, “why do we park on a DRIVEway, and drive on a PARKway??”

  91. @ Nom DeGuerre^^ That’s a Nipsey Russell quote….stolen by Gallagher…just like the parkway/driveway quote….way older than the 80’s comedy special where that jackass used it.
    Outside of smashing shit, that puke’s stand-up was mostly bought, borrowed or stolen.

  92. I sat in my car and listened to his Howard interview. (That funny guy from my childhood). He was out there but didn’t come across as the nut-job Lindy says. I’m not surprised though. I did a “Zen” dive in grammas pool on the 4th because I laughed alot at him in the 80s.

  93. Gallagher was never a respected nor relevant comedian. Children and adolescent minded pot heads liked him. He really never had any influence and still doesn’t. Anyone who agrees with his points of view are clearly all ready lost and have no clear insight into reality. Gallagher soon will die and no one will give a fuck. Let’s hope that day is tomorrow.

  94. Actually Gallagher’s early stuff was on Showtime or HBO – way before Comedy Central was born; before there was enough cable bandwidth to support the extra channels.

    His was the first oft-repeated comedy special, along with a great comedy show starring John Byner called “Bizarre”, where you could see BOOBIES and HEAR THE ‘F’ WORD coming out of YOUR TELEVISION!!!

    Lindy is too young to remember.

    Oh – and good review. Gallagher has become a real douchebag. You’d think that surviving cancer would build character – not prompt you to tear down others.

  95. This review totally sleeved me, but the millipede post and the “nuttier than a crap fight…” comment made my night. Great writing, great readers!

  96. Let’s see, Goerge Lopez can rant against George W. Bush and it’s all in the name of comedy. But when someone goes after a liberal like Obama, suddenly it’s hate. Lindy West is a hypocritical idiot.

  98. Gadzooks, you libs sure get your panties in a wad when the shoe is on the other foot. Okay to paint George Bush as the scum of the earth and all Republicans are evil, but when someone fires the same back, you fall into your normal rant. I’d laugh my ass off but it is already gone at watching your bumbing leaders in the White House and Congress walk around wothout any clothes! November’s payback is going to be a bitch!

  99. I see the teabaggers have arrived to deflect criticism away from their hero and saviour Gallagher and try to put it somewhere else. I guess we can all live safer now….NOT.

  100. @84rules,

    Actually “liberal” John Stewart and any number of others “go after” Obama all the time. The issue wasn’t the target of Gallagher’s “comedy” – it was his message. I don’t recall any racist messages made about Bush being white (i.e. “why doesn’t he act like a real white man and get himself a black wife”), nor do I recall Lopez assailing heterosexuals every other line.

    Want to see a “hypocritical idiot”? Look in a mirror. Clearl you didn’t even read Lindy’s article.

  101. A lot of comedians make jokes like this, and HAVE been making jokes like this for a looong time, he just rolls them all into one.
    I do hate all the stupid spiteful jokes that aren’t even jokes, but just snide remarks about society. It’s annoying. I paid to laugh, not cringe and feel awkward.
    Some of that stuff was overtly racist, though, and a little beyond what other comedians do.
    But he’s not, as you say, “a paranoid, delusional, right-wing religious maniac”… he’s pretty much homophobic and racist. That does not make one a right-wing religious maniac, it makes them bigoted. Right-wing does not mean “cruel” like people think it does these days.

  102. He seemed more liberal when I saw him in 2001. I think he plays the crowd and this time he was performing to a military audience. Still isn’t very funny though.

  103. What the hell happened to him? I also grew up watching his comedy specials Friday nights on VH1 then on Comedy Central. Even though the jokes now are outdated, their still pretty funny.

    I saw him preform maybe about 10 years ago at the Westberry Music Fair on Long Island and he was still doing outdated Bobbit and OJ Simpson jokes. Hell, he even pulled out the “Bat-Mobile” from one of the old 80s shows. Trying to watch him struggle with the sledge was pretty sad.

    Reading this and the other page with the “bonus jokes” made me sick. When I saw him he did make fun of people with backwards baseball caps, baggy pants and bib overalls, but not in a hate filled raciest tone. I think I would have walked out and demanded a refund after ten minutes of him spewing that garbage. What a has-bin.

  104. It’s a shame to read that someone who used to make people laugh and had real talent has basically fallen to this level. I never thought of Gallagher as a top-tier comic, but he could usually find odd and unique ways of looking at the world and seemed to have a zest for life. Yet I always had a vague sense of meanness lurking just under his surface, like a stranger in a bar who’ll buddy up to you and tell you dirty jokes all night then mug you in the parking lot afterwards.

    I don’t know what’s to blame for his turn to the dark side, but some folks are one-shot wonders who basically have no second act in them. Dennis Miller is an excellent example of someone who’s lost his way and slipped into political pandering as a substitute for being funny, but in Miller’s case I think 9/11 damaged his worldview and confidence so badly that he’ll never truly be able to find the abundant humor in everything around him anymore.

    For Gallagher’s sake, I hope he’s not aware of just how unfunny he is now. But something tells me he knows, and that’s why he’s given in to his bitterness. And oh yeah, long-term self-hating closet case–I thought that even back in the ’90s.

  107. Gallagher was one of my favorite comedians for a long time, not because he was that great, different, thought provoking or genius, but because he was entertaining and ridiculous.

    I saw his shows on Comedy Central as a kid, and finally went to his local show around 2004. I was probably his biggest fan at the show, and I was probably the most disappointed person there too. He signed an autograph (on a t-shirt I bought) in a very pissed off manner before the show. He seemed like the fans he came out to greet (why prior to the show, I didn’t understand) were bothersome to him, and he had better things to do. I found out later he meet and greets before the show because most people walk out. His show was an awful, 1.5 hour plus rant about this or that, stupid stuff that wasn’t funny. Then, he just basically said screw this, let’s do what everyone came here see, the Sledge-O-Matic. Everything was similar to the writer’s entry, appearing to be completely made by Gallagher in a last-minute effort, as if he only knew about the show an hour beforehand. Spray-painted background, black tarps, a table with various foodstuffs he would smash as soon as someone he invited up on stage would prepare it. Yes, someone from the crowd had to prepare it, he evidently had no stage hands. It wouldn’t even be an issue if he commanded the crowd like he could before, make them feel like a part of the show. Instead he seemed like Kaufman’s Tony Clifton, insulting the people coming to the stage. Some of them walked off before they helped with his fruit smashing.

    He made a little girl cry. I’m serious, a girl under the age of 8 he made cry as he was insulting her. I thought it was too crazy to be real, it was a set up, right? No, it was real. This guy was berating, belittling and insulting various small children throughout his show, all of whom he invited on stage. He didn’t even have a stage hand and was performing at a small local show, how could he have had so many people in on the act?

    Either he’s a Kaufman-esque genius, or the biggest a-hole that has ever lived. And according to personal experience, anecdotal evidence and past history of the guy, I believe the latter. No one cares about how offensive his jokes are, as there are many great comedians with “offensive” jokes about many groups; the focus should be on the comic himself, the amateur nature of the act and the alienation of his audience, all of which are so far removed from the incredibly successful Gallagher of the 1980s.

  108. I wonder if defunct 80’s comedians turning out to be tea-bagger nutjobs isn’t a growing trend. Two weeks ago I had my vaguely positive childhood memories of Ray Stephens destroyed by being shown one of his psycho youtube rants (look for it, its fascinatingly horrible). I feel like he would not like that my 8-year-old proto-homosexual mind found his naked cartoon streaker-man to be indescribably interesting.

  109. Wow. Seriously sorry to hear what an asshat he’s become. I first saw him before he began a comedy career. He used to be a roadie or the road manager for Jim Stafford (guy who had a couple of hits in the 70s for comic songs, probably best known for “Spiders and Snakes.”) Stafford filled in as host for a local talk show that my mother watched every day, which I hated. Stafford himself was so funny and fast on his feet in interacting with the audience that I watched the whole week that he filled it (the guy really should have had his own show). At one point during the week STafford brought Gallagher on, introing him as his (I’m thinking it was road manager) and saying he was really funny. He did the Sledge-O-Matic, and when you were unspoiled for it, it was even funnier. I don’t know when I’ve laughed so hard — and my mom, who has always hated comedy based on destruction of things, laughed her head off too.

    Such a shame that he’s turned into such a bitter, unfunny prick.

  110. I’m all for comedians and radio personalities and whatnot being able to speak their minds. Make fun of gays, do some racial stereotyping, get a few yucks by making people squirm, or play to the political leanings of your audience — whatever.

    But there is something really sinister and deranged about the sledgehammer bit with the “China people and queers.” One would think that, with acts of atrocity still a daily occurrence in our world, an American comedian performing for an audience in “the land of the free” could muster just the slightest bit of decency for his fellow man.

    Not only is this sad, hateful fucktard obviously a latent homosexual [not that there’s anything wrong with that — and wouldn’t he and the world be so much better off if he could just admit that?] he is probably also a closeted Chinese.

  111. Bummer. My sister and I went up onstage with this guy for a few minutes back when we were in high school. Share the same last name, slipped a security guy some goofy note before the show. Dude’s gone off the rails. Ah, whatever.

    By the way, can someone at The Stranger tell me if Bethany is still hot? I ran into her in BK a few years back and she was still hot then, so I’ma go ahead and guess yes. I do hope so. Hey Bethany, it’s John! Some long-distance pigtail-pullin’…

  112. Another hacking voice of a dying generation. His material is not only wrong is dated, so as it turns out, you can suck at life and at your trade. Double failure.

    The Glenn Beck’s of the world, on the other hand, scare the shit out of me.

    This one is just a bad joke.

  115. Odd that you claimed to be a child of the 80’s raised on comedy central when the channel wasn’t created until november of 1989.

  116. Awesome. I’m going to see the Nuge this August for what promises to be an equally depressing spectacle. Care to tag along?

    Oh, I may be a horrible person, but I did find this line kinda funny, seeing as I’m a guy with a big belly “She wants a penis, but she has a big belly. If you can’t see your dick, you don’t get one.”

  117. Weird, he used to seem like a hippie comic back in the ’80s; he seemed imaginative and good with words (“I wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There’s one that says ‘brightness’ but it didn’t do anything”). There’s one ‘uncensored’ video where he was smoking dope onstage. WTF happened?

  118. I never knew. I’ve got to go get some tickets so that I can support him and help him keep spreading the word. Thank goodness that there is still someone with the balls to speak out and tell it like it is.

  119. Hepcat @ #110:

    If I remember correctly, Jim Stafford did have his own comedy-variety show back in the ’70s, but I think it only lasted one season. He had a great personality for TV, that’s for sure.

  120. PLEASE don’t group this trash with tea party people. To do so would make you as bigoted as Gallagher. Any decent person, progressive or conservative, would have gotten up and left.

  121. PLEASE don’t group this trash with tea party people. To do so would make you as bigoted as Gallagher. Any decent person, progressive or conservative, would have gotten up and left.

  122. ouch! I didn’t realize that Gallagher was Ann Coulter’s alter ego…. or maybe he’s her puppet with her hand shoved up his ass… either way, really.

  126. Thanks a fucking lot, Lindy. It’s like the part of my childhood I never gave a shit about or actually even watched just died. And you’re right about Bill Hicks.

  128. Maybe he had a head injury. I remember that he was in some kind of accident and was seriously injured. The memory isn’t clear but I think he flew a watermelon blimp into light or radio tower.
    M

  129. I saw him in Arlington, VA in late 2009 and had the exact same experience, except he was down-right MEAN and insulting to the people he involved from the audience. The whole thing was pathetic, and I think people probably would have left except it was kind of a fascinating train wreck.

  131. the only hate I have heard is from the asswads in the comment section.He told the truth and you think it is hate. You spew hate and in your sick and twisted minds somehow think it is the truth

  132. We act like our world is Lakers vs. Celtics, Republican vs. Democrat, Left-wing vs. Right-wing when in reality we all play for or are fans of the Washington Generals, and we are getting the shit beat out of us by the Globetrotters. Gallagher just wears Nikes and hustles and Louis Black wears Reeboks and makes smooth passes; and we argue over the colors of the uniforms and the starting lineup and whether or not this star or that star should have the ball in his hands when the shot clock is winding down; and we forget that we are playing the Globetrotters, and we haven’t won in a long, long time.

  133. I saw his show last night at the Snoqualmie Casino and I came away with the EXACT same impression that you did. Today on my Facebook page my status reads “I don’t remember Gallagher being racist and homophobic” The whole show felt eerily like being at a Tea Party rally (bearing in mind that I would never go to one). He kept pointing out ALL politicians will lie to you, but I couldn’t help noticing that though he had 8 years from which to draw, there were no jokes about George W. Bush. Where was the joke about Cheney shooting a man in the face? I mean if you’re going to do a show about “being smart and thinking for yourself” there really is no better example of what NOT to do than the George W. Bush and Dick Cheney!

  134. #132 Let me get this straight, Gallagher says “If Obama was really black, he’d act like a black guy and get a white wife.” and you don’t hear hate? Somehow that is him telling “the truth”?

    “This is the china people and queers – SMASH” somehow that’s not hate either?

    I ridiculed bush for years because he’s a moron, not because he’s white. I continue to ridicule wingnuts and teabaggers because they’re idiots, not because they’re (overwhelmingly) white.

  136. interesting review. i remember liking gallagher years ago. (and he’s 64 years old. i swear, 4 years older than i. (than me?)) anyway, i’m sorry to hear about how ‘sorry’ he’s become. i’m a gay man since the 60’s and he never once offended me, but i haven’t seen him in many years so…..shit happens. look at michael richards. (never knew the truth til the outburst). so keep up the good work. i love your blog…….
    if you get a minute……

    http://davidkron.blogspot.com/

    david

  138. Wow, from the wiki it sounds like he was kind of a huge douche to his brother, Gallagher Two, who was the poor man’s Gallagher, playing small venues that couldn’t afford the regular Gallagher. I suppose he wouldn’t really be needed now, though, as Gallagher is playing small venues.

  139. Oh. Oh God. Oh my dear sweet non-existent Lord. This… this article made me want to die inside to find out that somehow this counts as comedy somewhere in the world, that some bitter, balding old creeper can go up onstage and slur the whole world and get paid. Granted, it’s redneck money, but still. That’s no way to live.

  140. I kinda wonder if this isn’t mental illness masquerading as politics. Seriously. There was a prof once at my college who went off the deep end and (totally out of character) started popping really offensive racist shit into his lectures. Turns out he wasn’t just a right-wing asshole, he was a schizophrenic — though people didn’t realize it till he disappeared and was found weeks later wandering the streets.
    I actually really liked him as a kid, and as many hear have noted, he seemed more like a vaguely lefty counter-cultural type back then. The smashing stuff was brilliant at first and then quickly got old, but he had this pair of… not sure what to call them, one skate and one shoe with giant springs on it, so he’d BOING and glide, BOING and glide… pure genius. I’ve wanted some my whole life.

  141. Don’t know if you know it or not, but there are/were two Gallaghers, Leo, the original, and his brother Ron. Not sure which one you saw, but I suspect it was Leo.

  143. The sad thing? Like you, I remember him from the 80s. No politics. Just weird-assed one-liners and the “sledge-o-matic.” He was funny at the time.

    Now? He’s just gotten pathetic. It’s sad, really. and, worse still, he gives (well, he and several others) legitimate conservatives a bad name.

  145. I’m a Republican and I would feel the same way the author did. Gallagher sucks. Racism and hack comedy are not based on party.

  146. “You see, Gallagher is—how best to put this?—a paranoid, delusional, right-wing religious maniac.”

    Replace “Right” with “Left” and add “smoker” after the word “religious” and you’ve pretty much described the unfunny Angry Idiot stylings of your beloved Bill Hicks.

  147. I was aware of Gallagher and his shtick with the sledgehammer without ever seeing more than a few minutes of his act in passing while switching channels. When he played recently in a local rural upstate NY college venue (SUNY Delhi) I said to myself it’s a cheap ticket, I’ve got nothing to do that night, let me finally check out the watermelon man and see first hand what he’s like. I didn’t expect much.

    Gallagher is like an old whore, going through the motions, with not much enthusiasm or freshness, but using the professional skills he has accumulated over the years to deliver an adequately crowd pleasing performance.

    The first 15 minutes of his show consisted of him feeling out the audience with some town/gown stuff, some rural farmer/pickup truck material, and some right wing pleasing gay/political/God stuff.

    None of what Gallagher says is terribly original or terribly funny. He seems to have absorbed and reworked things that others have done better and adapted them to a kind of comedy hash which is generally mildly amusing, but never particularly outstanding. I think he knows he’s a has-been and his bitterness shows through.

    He does a meet and greet before the show and is a somewhat sad looking figure with a slight potbelly, sagging shoulders, scraggly hair, and a weary demeanor.

    While not impressed by his humor I was impressed by his professional skill. He read his audience well, strung together routines tailored to that particular crowd, paced his performance, and built to a big debris filled food smashing finale.

    I don’t like his politics, and am unamused by his material. Some of it is pandering and distasteful. I did find myself looking back on his show and appreciating the experience and skill with which he constructed and tailored a show, on the fly, uniquely suited to that audience.

    Gallagher is a strange contradiction, a skilled comedian who is not very funny.

    OK, the hot dog in his pants, that was funny.

  148. Al who are biased or prejudiced against Gallagher enough to type shit about him are deluded liars. And you, Lindy, are one of them.

    If you people hate Gallagher so much, leave him the hell alone and get on with your damn lives. You’re just wasting your times when you crap on him.

  149. I’ve always hated his act, as I do the acts of virtually all prop comics (the Amazing Jonathan has one or two bits that make me smile, but that’s it). Now he’s given me even more reason. I know this performance was in a Crewcutville, but I can’t believe that even one or two people didn’t walk out. I know I would have. The first few “jokes” repeated in this article made my stomach turn. What an absolute pig.

  151. the comedy shows were always on HBO, I think. we rented them alot when I was a kid and never in a million years would I imagine this is the road he’d take. maybe he had a stroke or something.

  152. I just listened to the interview he did with Marc Maron on his WTF Podcast, famous underground podcast where Marc talks with comedians and actors about things. (http://wtfpod.libsyn.com/ , Episode 145 if you want to hear it.) I think his take on everything is that if Lisa Lampanelli and a bunch of shock-comics can have a career by ranting and raving about whatever they wanna say, then Gallagher’s new career must be somewhere out there for him, too. He talks about the protons and electrons thing, too, on the interview; there’s his claims that he’s a physicist and really worried about the people of modern society. That part reminds me of who I watched in HBO Specials a long time ago, the side of him that says how hard it is to appeal with general comedy…but this new direction is just wrong.

  153. This was a really great article. Gallagher really has always been this way (the gay jokes, differences between men and women, race jokes), but in the late 70 and 80s everybody was doing those kinds of jokes. He just never changed. On the aforementioned WTF Podcast, he says he doesn’t believe in God and says he’s just doing jokes, which I believe. He is crazy, clearly, but he knows his audience. He also thinks every comedian that goes on stage and talks about their own life (Marc Maron, Louis C.K. and the like) are hacks. Obviously, Gallagher is a hack. He is famous for smashing watermelons. You can’t get hackier than that.

    “I cannot believe Bill Hicks is dead and this motherfucker is still touring.” is the best line.

  154. This was a really great article. Gallagher really has always been this way (the gay jokes, differences between men and women, race jokes), but in the late 70 and 80s everybody was doing those kinds of jokes. He just never changed. On the aforementioned WTF Podcast, he says he doesn’t believe in God and says he’s just doing jokes, which I believe. He is crazy, clearly, but he knows his audience. He also thinks every comedian that goes on stage and talks about their own life (Marc Maron, Louis C.K. and the like) are hacks. Obviously, Gallagher is a hack. He is famous for smashing watermelons. You can’t get hackier than that.

    “I cannot believe Bill Hicks is dead and this motherfucker is still touring.” is the best line.

  155. If he hates it so bad why not use his own head as a melon and get out of here already? The world has left the unimaginative bigots behind.

  156. I think everyone should check themselves because I remember hearing the man use chinks, fags, and probably a few other choice derogatory names in the 80’s. Chances are most of you are now listening and not waiting for the Smash-O-Matic.

  157. Gallagher never made me even crack a smile when I used to see him on HBO as a child in the 80s. I always thought he was a boring hack, only back then I didn’t know what a hack was. He always tried so hard to connect with the counterculture asses of the 70s & is proof that if you give people enough alcohol & drugs anything is funny.

  158. The SOBs brother (Ron) performed here in charlotte last night (3/7/2011). What a joke. The true shit of Charlotte showed up. The racist jokes were not funny at all. There were many quiet moments even though these pricks saved up for 2 weeks to go to see this crap. The only reason I showed up was because my buddy begged me after another guy faked on him. It’s kinda like watching 2 girls one cup.. You won’t forget such a shitty performance even though you hated it (no pun intended). Long story short my buddy got sold 2 wolf tickets and they worked like a charm. Him and his brother suck!!!

  161. Saw Gallager years ago at a county fair in Bakersfield where he was doing a “bilingual” show even though he clearly didn’t speak Spanish. Odd, really odd. Maybe they’re right about the brain damage.

    I think he used to be funny, one-liner funny but he once had it…

  164. You can only see things from your own perspective. The world is your mirror. If you see Gallagher as a bitter old has been, thats what you are, not what he is. Gallagher is a good hearted man with a great sense of humor and he is hysterical. I was at his show last night and had the time of my life. The world needs to laugh and thats what Gallagher delivers. The world doesnt need sniveling and bitching. When is the last time any of you put a smile on anyones face, let alone hundreds of people ?

  165. There is a Gallager brother too, who, from what I’ve heard has even less talent than the “famous” Gallager. They even have had a falling out and court actions. He did (or does) much of the same schtick. I wonder which you got?

  166. You can only see things from your own perspective. The world is your mirror. If you see Gallagher as a bitter old has been, thats what you are, not what he is. Gallagher is a good hearted man with a great sense of humor and he is hysterical. I was at his show last night and had the time of my life. The world needs to laugh and thats what Gallagher delivers. The world doesnt need sniveling and bitching. When is the last time any of you put a smile on anyones face, let alone hundreds of people ?

  167. Too bad you guys just don’t get it. Gallagher is nuts I’ll agree ,but his show is all for fun and sarcasm. He takes no prisoners , he is never politically correct he says what others would never dream of saying in public and he doesn’t give a shit. It’s all in fun and comedy. If you don’t like what he says don’t see him. I saw him in New York City this month and had a ball. He was funny.The same day my son saw Charlie Sheen and learned what a real asshole is all about.
    So my point is ,lighten up enjoy the show for what it is and don’t try to make sense of it or pass judgment on him.

  168. Scope 1, there is a world of difference between someone doing intelligent satirical political/societal comedy and a creepy nutty old man feeling disenfranchised and left behind “TRYING” (though this is doubtful) to pull off satire, when he is not intelligent enough to pull it off, and is left sounding(and again HE IS MOST PROBOBALY, !!NOT!! being ironic!!) like the leftover remnants of a retarded disguisting mutant of right-wing cliche’s……HE REALLY JUST NEEDS TO GO AWAY……or rather “scuttle” …..away!!!!!!

  170. You and your friend HAD disembarked or you disembarked? Where did you get your journalism degree?? The land of past tense times two??

  171. Ever notice how when right-wing butt-corns try to defend their own, they talk about “the truth,” as in, “he speaks the truth and y’all (because it’s always “y’all,” not “you all”) just call it hate.”

    Further, the man smashed things with a sledgehammer (once he could lift it) and told the audience to imagine it was queers and Chinese. Sounds like fear to me. Maybe he doesn’t like the political power the former has gained (tough shit) and the economic power the latter has gained (God-fearin’ white Americans are just as guilty as anyone, as they keep buying and importing cheap shit made in China, so maybe he should be hitting himself with that hammer. From the sounds of it, he couldn’t do much more damage).

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