Chrissy will be courting beauty on TV
Jeff Foxworthy has a problem.
The comedian, famed for his “you might be a redneck” oneliners, said last week that in 36 years in the business, he’s never peddled political humor.
And yet, he often finds his name attached to comments he never uttered.
PolitiFact recently assigned a “False” rating to a viral Facebook post that claimed Foxworthy said: “If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally — you might live in a country that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.”
The post included 11 politically charged quotes. It’s drawn more than 6,000 shares.
“It happens all the time,” Foxworthy told the Daily News at the New York toy fair as he promoted his game Relative Insanity a kidfriendly alternative to Cards Against Humanity that he spent a month writing jokes for.
The invasion of politics into the comedic sphere is relatively insane, too, Foxworthy said.
“It will have my name and my face, and go: Here’s what Jeff said about this. And I go, ‘No, Jeff did not say that,’ ” Foxworthy said, adding that he steers clear of politics because, “No matter which side you’re on, half of the crowd is going to hate you. That’s not my job.”
The Atlanta-based jokester — who hosted the quiz show “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” — said his role as a humorist is to unite people, not divide them. (He departed from his usual low-profile political posture in 2012 when he endorsed Mitt Romney during the Republican presidential primary.)
At first, the blue-collar comic said, he considered asking a lawyer for help with fallacious social media bombs. But he’s since accepted there’s no easy way to prevent it.
It’s one of a number of pitfalls facing today’s comedians.
Foxworthy, 61, also pointed to the proliferation of phones at performances. He said he notices that about 1 in 3 audience members are holding their mobiles at a typical performance, and he’s considered forcing people to seal them up.
A number of standups have tried the tactic, including the controversial Louis C.K., who requires crowd members to lock their phones in pouches made by the California company Yondr. On Broadway, where a ringing phone or a filming audience member can wreak havoc at the wrong moment, some shows have started to toy with the technology, too.
But Foxworthy decided such an approach doesn’t suit his style.
“It just seems so invasive,” Foxworthy said. “It’s like, my mom’s in the hospital this week, so I want my phone with me, in case I’ve got to check on my mom.”
Still, you don’t have to be smarter than a fifth-grader to see that smartphones have also brought benefits.
Foxworthy said cell phones have forced him to keep his material fresh. His shows will land on the internet shortly after each performance, he figures.
He keeps rifling through his old notebooks looking for jokes that still could stick. (He said he mostly skips the “you might be a redneck” cracks, which were never a major component of his narrative-focused shows.)
And for burgeoning standups, tech can provide increased exposure, Foxworthy said.
“You have a bigger platform for more people to see you than ever before, because 30 years ago, there weren’t many people that were doing DVDs,” Foxworthy said. “For the struggling comic, they didn’t have a platform. Now you’ve got a platform.”
The courtroom TV genre has a new face — and it’s quite a beautiful one, indeed.
Chrissy Teigen will get a chance to don a black robe and bang a gavel and give people a piece of her mind as the judge of the arbitrationbased reality court series “Chrissy’s Court.”
On Monday, the model-turned-best-selling cookbook author and TV personality made the announcement official and gave her 28.4 million Instagram followers a glimpse of her sitting in the judge’s seat, complete with a robe and a big, colorful necklace.
“All rise for the honorable judge … ME,” she captioned.”My dream come true!!!”
Starting April 6, the series will be available on Quibi, which is being marketed as a “mobilefirst streaming platform,” focusing on short-form content.
The name of the app is an abbreviation of “quick bites.”
Last November, Teigen (inset) uploaded a sneak peek of the upcoming project, in which she asked a man named Fred if he “ever cheated in this year and a half relationship.” The defendant denies the charge, but she doesn’t exactly believe him.
“Chrissy’s Court” will run in 10 “bite-sized” 10minute episodes as the 34-year-old former Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover girl tackles “real people, real cases, and real, legally binding decisions,” according to the show’s official description.