On Comedy Central, Carlos Mencia trades on outrageousness. He may not get Dave Chappelle level attention, but between feuding with Joe Rogan and calling Halloween "Dress Like a Whore Day," he fits in at the South Park network. He still does clubs too, and as it turns out, he has plenty of opinions that don't all fit in his 30-minute cable vehicle (Mind of Mencia). CraveOnline: People keep pushing the envelope, so what is outrageous today?
Carlos Mencia: You know what? I don’t know. Doesn’t that seem to change every day? It seems like ethnic jokes are bad and then they become good and then sex jokes are bad and then they become good. CraveOnline: Do you run into problems with the censors on your show?
Carlos Mencia: All the time, all the time. As far as Comedy Central, I fight with them every day. Standards and practices don’t want me to get away with anything, so it’s a constant battle with those guys. I mean, I get it. I’m on a TV show trying to sell Sprite, I understand, but it’s a fight. It’s never just like, "Hey, I want to make fun of these people," and they go, "Great! Let’s do it." It’s always like "Ooh, really? Can you do it different? Can you make fun of these other people instead, or how about you don’t make fun of anybody?" It’s just like it’s a constant battle but it’s fun and it’s TV and it is what it is, and I’m having fun so far.CraveOnline: But isn’t that stuff the reason people watch your show in the first place?
Carlos Mencia: In the end, I’m not stupid. I know that they have to sell Sprite. I just understand that, and if I don’t understand that then I shouldn’t be in the business. I get it, I get it. Shows are not important. What’s important are the commercials in between the shows. My job is to keep people watching long enough that they watch the commercials. I get that, I’m not stupid, I get the business of that, so I’m okay with that and I understand the artistic struggle. It’s not offensive to me. It’s tiring, but it’s not offensive, so I don’t look at it in any negative way whatsoever.CraveOnline: What about the gig hosting the creative Emmys? How is that different?
Carlos Mencia: You know what? Hosting the creative Emmys is actually harder than hosting the regular Emmys, because with the regular Emmys, they’re artists. All of them are pretty much actors, so they kind of give you leeway that you’re going to say some jokes about certain people and they’re okay with it. But creative Emmys is different in the sense that these aren’t actors. Most of them are like lighters and all of this other stuff and they take their job really seriously, so they don’t want to hear “Yeah, well, I’m happy to be hosting the sh*tty Emmys.” They don’t want to hear stuff like that because to them it’s like "Hey, what are you talking about?" But for me it was easy to host that show because look, I have a lot of family members that work in the construction industry and they never get credit. You know who gets credit? Some architect. And you know what he does? He shows up and says “I’m going to build this great house,” and then he leaves. And then six months later he comes back and goes, “Ta-daah!” Everyone goes, "That was amazing! How did you do this?" And there’s some Mexican guy behind him going “I can tell you how he did it.” So I can totally identify the folks in those awards because I think those are these people, the unsung heroes in the background that nobody gets. But when you look at lighting and all of that stuff, these are the guys that do it and these are the ones that make the background work and make all of the technical things function properly and the mixes and the sound, so it was fun to do. But it was very, very restricted.CraveOnline: What’s your standup about these days?
Carols Mencia: What’s going on in the world. Some of it is about Britney, of course. A lot of it is about our inability to be honest about who we are and what we are. A lot of it is about how I feel like in places like California and Texas, Latinos have a lot of power. In places like California I can literally go on stage if I wanted to and say, “F*ck white people, you’re pieces of sh*t” and I’ll get a cheer. I think that however funny or unfunny that is, there’s a little bit of power that comes with it. Especially, like we’re talking about my TV show. I’m able to say things on my TV show that white people can’t, and I find that abrasive and corrosive at the same time, and I’m really, really scared because what kind of people are we when we get the power to say things that we want to say? Who are we going to be? I hate people that say “racist white people” and when they get the opportunity to do a show they only include "their people." If you watch Mind of Mencia, the thing I love about it is we pretty much have cast every single race and ethnicity in my show. It’s my show yet it’s an unbelievably diverse show. I just don’t like that America is okay with everybody making fun of everybody except for white people. White people can only do jokes about rednecks, but if white people do jokes about black people or Latinos you have some explaining to do or you’re a racist. Look, there’s a TV show called Nappy Happy Hair [Happy to be Nappy] or something. It’s a cartoon on HBO, it’s for children, and yet when a white guy says that, it’s a racist term that means something negative and derogatory. I don’t like where this is going. I don’t appreciate it, and a big part of my standup is poking fun at that because I want America to know I’m not down with it, that when I say I’m not a racist I’m really not. When I say I love equality and I believe in it, I really do, in the sense that I’m going to exercise it and not just talk about it. CraveOnline: Is it a positive or negative sign then when Comedy Central puts on the Flavor Flav roast where someone says of him, “You look like Magic Johnson should look?”
Carlos Mencia: Sure. That’s a positive, but the most positive sign is that they allow white guys to do jokes in that vein and it’s okay. I think that’s what’s great about it, and at its worst you can say it was vulgar and bad and all of the things that you want to say. At its best, a roast like that is a unifying moment that allowed everybody to make fun of everybody while everybody laughed. Nobody got shot, nobody got killed, nobody got hurt. There were no nooses being put on trees and no people beating the sh*t out of white kids. There were just a bunch of people using words to be funny, and I think that’s a much better alternative than the latter. So I think it’s positive. When everybody can take a joke in this country, it’s going to be a much better place because the way I look at it. If you have the luxury of being offended by a joke, your life must incredibly awesome because that means you ain’t starving, your kids ain’t starving, you ain’t worrying about college, everything must be okay. It’s kind of like if there was a scandal about the president getting a blowjob, it wouldn’t be a big deal because the war is way more important than the fact that this guy got head. That explains why our other president got in trouble. America was in such a good place, everybody had money, the economy was great, everything was good that we were sitting around going, "Man, everything is good. The president got a blowjob? Oh man, that son of a bitch." And everybody had time to talk about that. So if you have time to go, "Oh my God, that guy said this and this and that," your life is good, and I don’t want to hear it. I really don’t want to hear it. Go to Cuba and live like a poor person for month and come back and tell me what’s offensive.CraveOnline: What do you think it says that the majority of our news coverage is about celebrity culture?
Carlos Mencia: Remember when I said a lot of my comedy is about being honest because a lot of America doesn’t know how to be honest? That’s part of our inability to be honest. Listen, there is a reason that we didn’t show the decapitation on television. It should be shown. That’s real news, and we don’t show it because we don’t want the real horrors of a war to be truly shown. They should be shown because, look, I’m not against the war, I’m not for the war, I’m a commentator on it. But if you’re going to tell an 18-year old kid “You’re going to serve,” the least you could do is show the authenticity of what might happen. And we’re not good at that. We’re not good at showing limbs being blown off, we’re not good at showing innocent people being killed, we’re not good at showing the right people being killed. We want things to be soft and cuddly and benign, and I think that’s a disservice to everybody in America. So I want to do things and I want to say things that make people kind of reflect on that. CraveOnline: On the lighter side, how do you do a Britney joke that hasn’t been told?
Carlos Mencia: I don’t know, man, and I don’t think that I look at it like that. I look at it like this is how I look at it, this is my opinion. If you want to see Chris Rock’s opinion, watch Chris Rock. If you want to see Leno’s opinion on it, watch him. We are comedians and we are not different in the way we think. We’re different in the way we interpret what we do. All paintings are exactly that. They’re paintings and yet there’s a difference between Cezanne and Monet and Picasso. It’s in the way they interpret it and they use the colors. But saying to Picasso, "You can’t use green because Monet used green” or “You can’t paint a flower because he painted a flower,” you just can’t think like that as an artist. You just pick up the canvas and do what you do, so every day I wake up and watch the news and something makes me go "Oh my God, no, that did not just happen!" And I go on stage and I talk about it like that and for me it’s really easy. A guy who will deny that he’s gay more than once is gay. It’s really simple. So when I turn on the news [and a guy is saying,] “I’m not gay, I’ve never been gay,” I’m like, "Dude, you’re blowing people. It’s that simple." Nobody denies it that bad, you know what I mean? If people ask me if I’m gay I’m like no. Do you think that guy is attractive? Yeah. If I was in jail? You never know. It’s very simple. "I’m not a wetback! I’ve never been a wetback!" It’s like, please! Dude, you’re protesting a little much, so I find that funny, I talk about it, and I just see things that are simple and uncomplicated. You’re really telling me that an old white guy in a bathroom was going to pick up a piece of toilet paper from the floor? Are you serious? I’m supposed to believe that, you wanted to clean the bathroom? It’s a public bathroom. I’m sure that had the janitor seen him try to pick it up he would have been like, “Don’t pick up that sh*t! It’s contagious.” It’s so stupid, but there’s got to be something that brings a sense of stupidity and mundaneness to the things that Bill O’Reilly makes as these huge deals. You really think that the worst thing in America is that some white guy said “nappy headed hoes?” Is that what you really believe? And here’s the sad part about it, and guys like me gotta point this out. The sad part is that Don Imus would have a job, he would have a job today, never would have been fired, if the guy who shot up Virginia Tech had done it ten days before, and that’s a sad comment on America. The only reason we gave a sh*t is because nothing else was happening. If Britney had shown her tit or her snatch, I’m telling you – well, not Britney, she’s done it so much that everybody’s like, "Oh again?" But had something else happened, we wouldn’t have paid attention, but nothing happened in ten days and we just went off on a racial rampage and blah blah blah. But nobody asks real questions. As an example, the leader of the Afro-American community. I on my show went out and interviewed almost a thousand black people, and we asked every single one "Is Jesse Jackson your leader? Is Reverend Al Sharpton your leader?" Do you want me to tell you how many people said yes? F*cking none. Not one black person. I was like "How did this guy become the leader? Can I just come out on the news and say I am the leader of the Latinos and people are going to follow me"? And if nobody asks this or nobody makes fun of it, it doesn’t happen, and for me, that’s what it’s all about and it seems to work so I’m having fun at it.
