Nick DiPaolo isn’t your standard comedian.
Sure, he swears as much as any other comic and doesn’t shy away from raunchy material. But unlike many within the profession who lean left, DiPaolo is a registered Republican who voted for [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] in the primaries and likes much of what Donald Trump says.
He’s particularly annoyed by the way political correctness has come to hold sway over American society and even in comedy, an art form that’s supposed to push the envelope.
A frequent guest on the popular TV series “Louie,” DiPaolo now has his own podcast where he gets to broadcast his comedy to the world — without any fear of censorship.
He recently sat down with The Daily Caller to talk about the perils of political correctness and how it affects the comedy world.
“I don’t do it to be shocking,” DiPaolo said of his routine, which includes many jokes about race and other no-go areas. “Here’s the problem with a lot of comics … I call it ‘fake shock.'”
“A comic will come out and do something about people in wheelchairs or something and they consider that edgy. And they do something about race and it gets all quiet in the room, so it’s like fake edge. There’s a ton of comics doing it.”
One of the primary targets of this “fake edge” are conservatives, and outlets like “The Daily Show” supposedly demonstrate their “shock value” by mocking them, according to DiPaolo.
“‘The Daily Show is edgy’ people who have interviewed me before tell me. I say ‘Really?’ I go ‘Who’s their target?’ Republicans, right. And who makes up that group: white people 50 and older, that’s edgy! What are they going to do? Hit you with their fucking catheters? How is that fucking edgy?” he said.
“You can’t be liberal and be edgy. You can’t. Being white and being outspoken is being edgy. But no one will call you edgy — they’ll call you racist. But it makes it fun,” he added
The comic said that most of the people who have a problem with his comedy aren’t the various groups he’s making jokes about — it’s white liberals getting upset for them.
“I swear to God, in my 28 years [doing comedy] I have had a handful of black people walk out or be pissed at me, as opposed to hundreds and hundreds of white people who get offended for them,” DiPaolo told TheDC.
Not surprisingly, he doesn’t see much sense in how things in our society earn the racist label.
“Who gets to decide what’s hateful, what’s racist? I don’t like the word ‘hate.’ People should only say ‘racist’ when they have never said anything racist in their life. How come they have higher morals? I don’t know how to get around it. Nothing can be found to trump the race card,” he told TheDC. “It encourages people to be victimized.”
He says that one of the worst examples of this kind of hyper-sensitivity to authentically edgy comedy is the modern college campus. As pointed out last year by Jerry Seinfeld, many comics no longer want to perform before college audiences. (RELATED: The Left’s Outrage At Jerry Seinfeld Proves His Point)
DiPaolo is one of them.
“How fucking asinine, I mean Seinfeld?” he said in response to the Seinfeld’s remarks. “He makes jokes about women putting on makeup with cotton balls. I suppose cotton, slavery, it’s a buzzword? But I don’t do colleges. I haven’t for years.”
The comic then told TheDC about an ill-fated performance that left with him a bad impression of college audiences.
“I had been in the business maybe three years, and I did this college. I had been in the business maybe three years, and in my act I did some crack about Middle Easterners and some kid in the front went ‘holy shit that’s offensive. Why don’t you start talking about abortion?’ So I did like five abortion jokes and people started booing. So for the only time in my 29 years of doing this, I didn’t finish my set. Within about eight minutes I left, and that was my introduction to college.”
The comedian did say that his peers often veer away from “sensitive” topics not so much out of a lack of courage, but because they actually buy into the liberal orthodoxy. For example, he said that his friend, famed comic Louis C.K., says what he believes in his routine.
“Louis C.K., he’s a liberal. I don’t care, he’s a good friend of mine. He’s a lib in the good way. Like he listens to both sides and he doesn’t believe in shutting down, but he says some stuff that makes me blush. He knows how to play the road. He is a liberal, but he’s open minded about it,” DiPaolo explained.
One of Louis C.K.’s statements DiPaolo found stupid, though, was his friend comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler.
“I thought it was really stupid and over the top. But they’ve been doing this for years. Every Republican candidate is a Hitler. From Bush, Reagan, everybody. A Nazi, a fascist, now we see who the real fascists really are,” he said.
On Trump himself, DiPaolo has a different impression of the now presumptive Republican nominee.
“I like the message. I don’t really like him,” he told TheDC. “I like the balls on Trump. I like that he embodies everything that the left hates. I mean these kids hear ‘white privilege’ and that’s what they think when they see him. But that’s what they see. They don’t see a guy who worked his ass off and built an empire. Because they’be been brainwashed. He has blonde hair and blue eyes! He’s the fucking devil to them. And a billion dollars? It’s perfect! It’s all based in envy, all this fucking hate. I don’t know. He’s got my vote, unless Cruz pulls off a miracle.” (The interview took place before Cruz dropped out of the race.)
When asked what influenced him to hold conservative views, DiPaolo credits reading Robert Bork’s classic “Slouching Towards Gomorrah” and the works of Pat Buchanan for shaping his worldview.
“Judge Bork’s book confirmed all the shit I believe, that set me off.”
To see when DiPaolo will be performing near a city near you, check out his website for tour dates.
You can also check out his comedy specials on iTunes: 2015’s “Another Senseless Killing,” 2011’s “Raw Nerve,” 2008’s “Funny How?“, 2004’s “Road Rage” and 1999’s “Born This Way.”