Cable TV hero Daniel Tosh — the “alleged” not-even-trying-to-be-butch queen who has somehow figured out a way to get straight teen guys to watch his show — is such a girl — it’s cute in a weird way.
Lately he’s been poking so so so much fun at himself and his “rumored-to-be” gayness that he eventually took it too far and made a rape joke. Now the big might-be-a-queen has to apologize. (yawn)
When I was a kid — about 18 or 19 –I knew a guy like Daniel Tosh — except he was a street tough New Yawker. He was cool, funny and goodlooking and he was the guy who would always pull down your trunks at the town pool or tweek your nipples or grab your crotch. Then he’d call you a homo and follow that up real quick about how he’d hooked up with some “hot chick” the night before. It got to be the usual — yank down your bathing suit, tweek a nipple – grab the crotch — call you a homo — then talk about his hot chicks.
All the others guys thought he was so cool but I felt sorry for him because he was afraid to be gay — at least I assumed that was the psychology behind it all because I was always the smartest and most perceptive person in the universe.
You see, this guy never pulled the tweek nipples, grope crotches, talk about the chicks routine, with the ugly fat kids. The cuter or hotter or sexier you were, the more he did it. Straight pranksters, my friends, do not discriminate based on how hot a guy is when they annoy you with their wrestling in the surf or the pool and their pretend butt slams and humps– this guy did indeed discriminate, and for that reason alone, I was hip to him. Personally I thought he was a creepy asshole, but the rest of my dopey friends liked him.
So one day, this crotch grabbing guy got just a little too drunk. He was on the border of a blackout and when my friends and I emerged from a hotel pool he tried drunkenly to grope us all and he said in his fake-tough voice. “Come on pull down your shorts. I’ll blow “youse” all. He was kinda crying and had that drunk- maudlin thing going on, and he just kept repeating, “I’ll blow youse all.”
Needless to say, we never saw him again after that. He went away as fast as he appeared. Sad story? Not really. He’s probably a married policeman now.
So what does Daniel Tosh have to do with this? Well nothing actually, but he’s a nice guy and he’s a great talent — maybe one of the best to come around in years. But to me he’s very gay and in a girlish way he kind of wants people to know, but he kind of doesn’t want his major demographic to know.
If you want to get all historical about it, he’s much like Paul Lynde or Liberace because he has two sets of fans. One small group loves him because they think he might be gay and the joke is on everybody else. The other group are the straight 18 – 35 year old Howard Stern-loving kind of guys who love that Daniel makes gay jokes and acts gay — they think it’s funny and it makes them feel masculine. So they have that going for them — which is nice.
But think about this — if you had told some old lady with blue hair back in 1979 that Liberace was a homosexual, she would have hit you in the head with her pocketbook, and if you told the average American in 1972 that Paul Lynde’s jokes on Hollywood Squares were homosexual double entendres, the vast majority would not even know what the hell you were talking about. Hey, it’s before my time but I study this stuff because my job is to teach you idiots out there in the dark.
So, my take on this is that Daniel Tosh has achieved the ultimate — and he is indeed a genius for doing it. He has somehow — in this day and age of TMZ and Perez Hilton – that he is just a character who gets laughs at people “thinking” that he thinks they’re thinking he thinks that they’re thinking he knows that they know that he’s not really gay….or something like that.
NOTE: It pained me to mention Perez Hilton in the previous paragraph because they don’t come any lower or more loathsome than that hideous creature.
The thing that sucks is that it would actually be even funnier if Daniel Tosh was really gay, but then his appeal would go down because the average moron wouldn’t be able to deal with it. Within a few weeks he’d be playing The Abbey or some other shit hole. By the way, is shit hole one word like “shithole” or two seperate words — shit and hole? I can’t get a straight answer on that one.
So anyway, look at Mario Cantone – and please don’t tell me how big a star he is because he’s not as big as he was.
Anyway, when Mario was ambiguously weird and “possibly gay” he had a lot of fans. These days Mario is as funny as ever — although a bit played out — but his audience is limited. Yeah, he packs houses in New York and Los Angeles because he is a known face and a great talent, but now he is labled as a “gay” comedian. He’s hilarious, but (sigh) he’s gay and that’s the end of that.
The minute Mario went openly gay — which, in my opinion was the day he opened his mouth — a million chubby girls simultaneously said, “OH MY GOD! I TOTALLY LOVE MARIO CANTONE! — and so did a lot of shapeless, middle-aged old gay guys who still go grocery shopping with their elderly mothers. Mario is not yet headed for The Abbey which is encouraging because he’s very talented, but in lieu of flowers….
One thing I don’t like about Daniel Tosh is his politics. I am not saying I disagree with his politics, I am saying that in his stand-up — which is nowhere near as funny as his heavily scripted Tosh.0 show — he gets waaaaaaaaay too lefty. Comics should never do that. It doesn’t work. It comes off as forced and the great comedians who could pull off politics are all dead, so I wish Daniel would just stick to the format at which he works best.
Look at poor OLD Kathy Griffin (puke) she went all political and what happened? Her career fell into the Grand Canyon and now she has to look up at Joan Rivers who is pushing 80 and more famous than ever. How freaking stupid was Kathy? Now she’s lucky if she can cut a ribbon at a Piggly Wiggly in Hooterville, Iowa, and about 10 yucky gay guys will show up with 1999 bleached blond hair tips and puka shell necklaces. Now that’s a sad, sad situation!
So anyway, I love Daniel Tosh — gay or straight — and he’s fun and loveable — but I think he’s gay — end ‘o story. One day he’s going to get a little too drunk by a pool and say “I’ll blow ‘youse’ all,” to the wrong guys and somebody will have a video of the whole thing, and it will be on TMZ and………zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Keep in mind that out of all the shit I have written over the years, this judgement of Daniel Tosh is by far the most pedestrian thing I have ever covered. The “is Daniel Tosh gay thing” is as close as “does a bear shit in the woods” as you can get.
If this is the way Daniel wants to play out his career — goody goody for him and I hope he is around forever because he is a comedic genius, but I have a movie idea for him that would probably make more money than Titanic.
damien
