With Paula Deen and George Zimmerman in the news so often lately, the American South is not exactly looking like a bastion of tolerance and acceptance. Luckily, and unexpectedly, Larry The Cable Guy has spoken his mind on an issue in a way that might (read: probably won’t) change our minds about the lower half of our country.
“It ain’t affecting my life,” the corpulent comedian said correctly about the gay community in a candid interview with Larry King. While the ribaldrous redneck continued on about how this is an extension of his libertarian politics (yikes!), it’s hard to be angry with him when he so succinctly summarizes a fairly reasonable position on a complex issue.
“Why can’t people mind their own business, you know what I mean?” The Cable Guy asked. “We live in America, lighten up!”
While it is hard to glean what his confederate compatriots that accompany him on the Blue Collar Comedy tour think about the issue, we can only hope that they have similar opinions. Comedians who certainly don’t agree with this stance would be the virulently homophobic Adam Corolla (who has previously stated that trans people are ruining his life and that the acronym L.G.B.T. should be changed to Y.U.C.K.) and Tracy Morgan (who had said that if his son turns out to be gay, he would kill him; although his homophobic statements were later recanted).
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While we might not see Larry the Cable Guy as a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race or on tour with LGBTQ+ comedians like Margaret Cho or Tig Notaro any time soon, this is certainly a step in the right direction.
Wilbready
I love Larry the Cable Guy! Yes, he is a conservative, but his views on this issue make him a humanitarian.
Mr. E. Jones
Ron White is pro-gay. And the funniest of the Blue Collar bunch.
ToxicLittleQueen
My bleeding little liberal heart loves the Blue Collar dudes.
boring
I prefer the awesome Tig shotout.
Will L
I’m not ashamed to support a guy who feels that way. As a result of this article, I’ve just ordered two of his DVD’s.
boring
Do not support mediocrity for someone who barely nodded and gave a half-hearted thumbs-up.
jwrappaport
@boring: Yeah, I’m inclined to agree. His response smacks of libertarians who are cool with the gays, but also cool with people discriminating against us. I also don’t respect the response that “it doesn’t affect my life so I don’t care” yadda yadda. Either you think that we should be equal before the law or you don’t – which one is it for him? As far as I’m concerned, his non-answer is an answer: he’s fine with us as long as we keep to ourselves and don’t agitate for, you know, dignity and legal protections.
I also don’t think for one minute that libertarians (in the frankly wrong, co-opted, American sense of the word) are our friends: they simply would replace public coercion with private coercion, which is a far more terrifying and savage proposition given that it is perpetrated by institutions that are, by definition (and in fact) unaccountable to the people.
jwrappaport
It’s kind of like Betty Draper’s reaction to the Civil Rights Movement in Mad Men: fine with blacks, but essentially clueless and blase because she has no dog in that fight.
A step in the right direction, perhaps, but a small one.
BJ McFrisky
Any thumbs-up is a thumbs-up in the right direction. Sure, there are die-hard liberals who will never accept the fact that they are indeed accepted by the so-called “intolerant Right,” but I’m grateful that Queerty posted this story as an antithesis to that ideology.
Thanks, Larry, for being fair-minded.
BJ McFrisky
@BJ McFrisky:
Oops. That “Thanks” was meant for Eric Shorey, the author of the story, not Larry the Cable Dude. Thanks, Eric, for being a fair-minded journalist.