WashPost Prints Review Trashing Adam Carolla's New Book and His 'Ugly Philosophy' of Greed

Tim Graham
May 25th, 2014 5:07 PM
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The Washington Post slammed Adam Carolla’s new book. John Wilwol was the reviewer in Sunday’s Arts & Style section “President Me: The America That’s in My Head is Carolla’s silly, vulgar manifesto....a swaggering diatribe against ineptitude, narcissism and political correctness.”

Wilwol added on Twitter that the book “doesn't deserve a spot on your summer reading list. Or on your ever reading list.”

 

 

Post deputy book editor Ron Charles also tweeted it was "tedious and unfunny." Why don't you tell us what you really think, Wilwol?

Carolla believes that “the essence of comedy is taking an uncomfortable truth and finding humor in it. Taking something horrible like crime, war, poverty, or divorce, and making it funny.” But he doesn’t do that in President Me. He takes things that aren’t horrible, such as differences in race, ethnicity and gender, and makes really bad jokes about them. Pick a page at random and you’re likely to come across a line such as, “In my America, we will bring back the dumbwaiter, a little elevator in the wall in the middle of the hallway where you put your tray and send it down to the Mexicans in the basement.”

Throughout the book, Carolla feebly argues for what he believes are common-sense solutions to big-government problems, and he positions himself as someone who has risen from the 99 percent through “hard work, innovation, and captured opportunity.”These traits are presumably intended to earn favor with common men. Or at least white men. “And as far as ‘white privilege,’ speaking as a honky, I got none,” the author writes. “In fact, if I had been black or Hispanic I might have done better.”

Late in President Me, the author vows that he wouldn’t raise the minimum wage. “Greed is motivation,” he writes. “We can pretend that there’s no such thing as human nature and that we’re all not just shaved apes competing for resources, but that’s ignorance.”

Perhaps that ugly philosophy is the secret to his success. But if that’s the America in Carolla’s head, let’s hope it stays there.

In a related video at the Post's TV channel, Carolla says he would never have a vice president -- doesn't need someone wishing he would die every ten seconds -- and when asked what he would say to President Obama, he suggests his next Los Angeles fundraiser should be an Air Force One tour that stays at the airport and spare him the traffic jam.

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