Yesterday evening (February 3, 2011) I had the amazing opportunity to be a backstage guest of Forbes Anchor Kym McNicholas to see the famed ventriloquist and comedian, Jeff Dunham perform live in San Jose, California. I don’t get down to San Jose much. Though only an hour drive from San Francisco, it seems a world apart. Yesterday was a keen and stark reminder of that reality.
Jeff Dunham is an amazing performer, and unequivocally one of the greatest ventriloquists of all time. With his suitcases full of talking dolls, Jeff Dunham is downright hilarious. My favorite was Peanut, a bouncing purple monkey who is goofy and giddy and just a hoot. Dunham’s ability to create vivacious personalities for each of his dolls make you forget that the sounds coming out of the dolls mouth are of course, those of Dunham himself. I was in awe at his expert ability and stunning performance.
And yet I sit here today with a slight shudder at thought of the content of the show I saw. Jeff Dunham told jokes walking the fine line of acceptable, jokes that you oft don’t hear in public. Yet because Dunham’s most blatant jokes come from the mouth of the doll, often a very goofy looking one, he has been able to stretch the limits of appropriate to a much more blurry realm of just straight wrong. The jokes oft made me cringe, look at the floor and just shake my head. But Jeff Dunham wasn’t speaking to me, he was speaking to his ardent fans and admirers; from race to sex to politics Jeff Dunham spoke to his audience. He won his audience and took the show further and further right as the crowded hooted, and hollered, and cheered. He was an amazing performer and he captured the night.
But for me, by the end the performance, I was to often cringing instead of laughs and smiles. Using punch lines that lifted the audience up, Jeff Dunham and his masterful crew of dolls made this crowd of San Jose laugh away their worries without ever having to laugh at themselves. When he spoke of Ireland and Obama and a missing birth certificate the obese family in front of us hooted and hollered. They jumped up and down when he spoke of Mexicans night jobs of clipping barbed wire at the border. When Peanut butchered Taste of China into Taste of Vagina the 9 old a few seats over was giddy. And still my favorite members of the audience were far more fascinating. Like the woman a few rows back not too much older then myself that was so overweight she had to be connected to an oxygen machine. Or the young women over my right shoulder that got so drunk in the pre-show that the medic had to come attend to her halfway through.
I left the arena sad. I had just seeing a masterful performance, full of laughter and apparent joy. But my gut knew that wasn’t accurate. Instead it reminded me the my country continues to fail so many of our citizens. Giving them glimpses into the personal life and mansion of the comedian while depriving them of the education, opportunity and foundation necessary to obtain it. Keep them in their arenas where they can laugh at politically incorrect jokes. But lets not mention the obesity epidemic ravishing their communities, or the meth habits that so clearly clung to at least a small minority of their faces. Let’s not discuss the drinking habits, or credit card debt. Instead, lets keep them laughing, and keep them in their place.
I watched a master perform, and somehow, I walked away from my night with a heavy heart and a hope deep inside myself. I pray that someday I’ll have the means, and the willingness, to give back to this great nation by doing my part to help take on some our nations most ravishing battles. The battles I saw fought in the faces of so many of my fellow Californians last night. The faces that laughed at the jokes I didn’t like, but really aren’t so different from me in taking a break from their lives to seek a good laugh, and a great time.