“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. 
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.
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.
Gallagher
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.
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.
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.
I’m with all those who never thought he was funny to begin with. Does sound like he is a self-hating homosexual, though…
There are some comments from some silly young people here. Don’t you just love teenage conservatives? They’re like baby birds.
How can a guy who looks like an off-duty mime identify as a conservative? He used to wear a Frenchie-ass beret ferchrissakes…
@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…
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.
‘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.
I could barely understand your article it was written so poorly.
Hey, Lindy, you got called out by Michael McKean (in a good way). http://twitter.com/MJMcKean/status/17654… You can retire now.
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”
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.
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…
The above Hicks link seems to have been cut off. It should end like this: /watch?v=7YiPKy1NO3A
“If pro is the opposite of con, and progress means to move forward, what does congress mean?” – Gallagher
There’s no proof here that he’s actually right wing. Maybe he just wants to shock people
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.
Hooray for Lindy, brilliant witty woman! http://www.Salon.com picked up your Gallagher rant and ran with it for “This Week in Crazy”:
http://www.salon.com/life/this_week_in_c…
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.
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.
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.
Meh, but George Carlin was funny. This guy just sounds like my aging relatives.
“”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.
Bless you for mentioning Bill Hicks. 🙂
#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.
Who would have thought someone would Gallagher’s haircut would choose to stress that the body is God’s temple?
@4: +1
“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
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 “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.
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.
I stopped reading the milquetoast, easy-to-offend Stranger about a decade ago. I see not much has changed.
@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.
I always thought that he was a fag when I would see him on tv as a kid. And I’m a fag so I should know!
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??”
Horrifying. Just horrifying.
@ 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.
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.
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.
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.
This review totally sleeved me, but the millipede post and the “nuttier than a crap fight…” comment made my night. Great writing, great readers!
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.
I suppose you find King Shamir Shabazz hilarious, though…
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!
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.
@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.