Di Paolo honestly insulting in sold-out show
Nick Di Paolo is a polished comedian. Almost all of his material Saturday night, before a sold-out crowd at the Cohoes Music Hall that was excited to be in the audience for a seven-camera taping for a future TV special, showed precise craftsmanship and assured delivery. Di Paolo’s writing is undeniably attuned to specific, culturally familiar references that evoked vivid recognition from the nearly 400 people present for what was believed to be the first show of its kind recorded in the Capital Region.
For some, however, saying Di Paolo is good at the technical aspects of standup comedy will be akin to crediting Mussolini for having made the trains run on time: It may be true, but it ignores what will be seen — again, by some — as the much more disturbing and important larger truth.
And that is this: Di Paolo, as he presents himself on stage, is often an unreconstructed racist, sexist, homophobic pig. Rather than satirizing such attitudes, his largely unironic routine reinforces and therefore contributes to racial injustice, rape culture and gay-bashing. As he trades in vicious stereotypes and base insults, Di Paolo seems to delight in the fact that he’s among the few still allowed to say such things with impunity because his job – comedian and podcaster – caters to those willing to pay to hear
such repugnance.
It’s hard to overstate how loathsome Di Paolo can be. He said Whoopi Goldberg would be unfamiliar with sexual harassment not just because she resembles a “beanbag chair with dreads”; he asked, “In what zoo” would she have encountered it? He said there are few black serial killers, because African-americans lack the required work ethic.
He’s equally free using variations on “fag” as a catchall slur, applying it to everyone from liberals who can’t take his “honesty” to men who wear helmets while mountain biking. When a punchline drew what he deemed insufficient laughter, Di Paola aimed it at the audience.
Muslims got sprayed with Di Paolo’s cheap, pandering bigotry. And what he said he’d like to do with the autopsy photos of “thick-ankled, dog-faced” Hillary Clinton can’t be described in this newspaper.
Di Paolo found obvious glee in how some of his more outre lines took even a sympathetic audience aback, but he isn’t after mere shock value. He really seems to believe what he says, as when he complained early on, “There’s no respect for white European males anymore.” Actually, there is: They hold 72 percent of executive positions in Fortune 500 companies, according to an analysis by the magazine, and men comprise 94 percent of the list’s CEOS.
The difference is that now, gradually, those men are being asked to consider others who are not like them. Di Paolo dismisses such progress, and jokes and insults like his are part of the problem, because they actually hurt people, not just feelings. We know there can be real-world consequences to comparing black people to animals; or to suggesting women who don’t have a date on Saturday night should call an Uber and hope the driver is a rapist; or saying that Louis CK’S victims were partly to blame for him exposing himself because they were “not picking up on the vibe of how much (he) liked them.”
When Di Paolo isn’t spewing insults or trading on pernicious stereotypes, he can be funny in entertaining ways. Riffing on vaping, he said the cloud from e-cigarettes looks more suited for steaming vegetables or removing wrinkles from a shirt. Hotels’ “green” policies that reward guests who don’t change towels or bed sheets every day make him worry about “rolling around in somebody’s moderate to severe plaque psoriasis for the next three days.” Trying to model his behavior after Jesus’ example, as Di Paolo’s mother advises, is difficult: “Jesus rose from the dead. I can’t even get up before noon after six (nonalcoholic) O’doul’s.”
Josh Kincade, a young downstate comedian who is being mentored by Di Paolo, opened a little slowly, perhaps understandable given the cameras, but his confidence grew as he and the crowd warmed to each other. Among his best bits was a confession that, as a Caucasian man raised in Westchester County, he has an irrational expectation of privilege and keeps hoping a limo will pull up and miraculously save him from another bus commute, because buses are for “immigrants and crazy people.” But such thoughts, Kincade said, originate in “the worst whitepeople parts of my brain.” Here’s hoping Di Paolo was listening.