Jeff Dunham

By Robin Leach (contact)
Jeff Dunham at The Colosseum in Caesars Palace
Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009 | 1:32 p.m.
Jeff Dunham @The Colosseum

Comedy ventriloquist Jeff Dunham performed at The Colosseum in Caesars Palace last night as part of his Identity Crisis 2010 Tour. Brian Haner, aka The Guitar Guy, opened the show with his standup/music comedy routine and returned later to join Jeff onstage for a comedy segment with the incredibly hysterical and controversial character Achmed the Dead Terrorist.

Our contributing photographer Erik Kabik shot our photo gallery and told me: “Jeff Dunham opened his show with some great standup comedy that had the audience roaring with laughter. After that solo performance, he brought out his well-known characters Walter, Peanut, Achmed the Dead Terrorist and Bubba J. His standup comedy and the ventriloquism was amazing -- and the packed audience loved it with great applause, cheering and a standing ovation.”

Jeff performs again at The Colosseum tonight, and a limited number of tickets are still available at Ticketmaster.

Comic Jeff Dunham to return to Allentown Fair after successful 2009

By Kevin Duffy SPECIAL TO THE MORNING CALL
December 17, 2009

The Allentown Fair announced it is bringing back comedian Jeff Dunham, whose two sold-out shows as well as glorious weather helped boost last year's attendance by more than 10 percent over 2008.

By the time the weeklong fair finished Sept. 7, a total of 576,000 visitors had walked through the turnstiles of the Allentown Fairgrounds, fair officials said.

Final attendance and revenue figures were ratified Wednesday during the annual meeting of The Lehigh County Agricultural Society, the nonprofit organization that oversees the annual fair and owns the Allentown Fairgrounds.

The fair posted a net income of $405,265, nearly a 38 percent increase over 2008.

Fair organizers saw a 7.6 percent jump to $584,481 in admission revenues and an 8.3 percent increase to $2,043,520 in grandstand revenue.

Attendance for the grandstand events (concerts and Demolition Derby) were up 12.5 percent to 48,713.

Dunham alone sold 19,000 tickets. He'll return to the fair Sept. 5. Tickets will go on sale Jan. 16. The prices will be $49 and $39, the same as the 2009 shows.

The fair had previously announced that country singer Keith Urban will appear Sept. 3. Tickets are $75 and $65 and are already on sale.

Marketing Director Bonnie Brosious said the success of this year's fair showed that even in tough economic times, people will flock to affordable entertainment that offers something for everyone.

''We put together the strongest possible program, and if it's priced as a value, they'll have a full day of entertainment,'' she said.

General admission and grandstand fees varied for adults, seniors and children, and grandstand fees for the concerts ranged from $39 to $69. Admission for the first day preview kick-off was free.

A healthy pre-sale of admission tickets guaranteed a successful turnout even if the weather wasn't up to par, Brosious said. But in the end, patrons enjoyed warm sunshine and gentle breezes.

''We had the most spectacular weather; I have never seen seven days like that,'' she said. ''It was picture-perfect.''

Kevin Duffy is a freelance writer.

No Puppet to Political Correctness
By NEIL GENZLINGER
Published: December 4, 2009

THE question: Is Jeff Dunham the most offensive person on television?

The answer: No, not by a long shot.

The real question: Why do so many people think Jeff Dunham is the most offensive person on television?

Mr. Dunham, a ventriloquist with a collection of outspoken dummies he uses as a license to make politically incorrect remarks about all sorts of groups, had built a huge following even before “The Jeff Dunham Show” made its debut on Comedy Central in October. “Huge” somehow feels like an understatement. One of his YouTube videos just racked up its 100 millionth viewing.

Mr. Dunham developed that fan base through long years on the comedy circuit, late-night talk show appearances and DVD sales. But now that he is in prime time — yes, it’s on cable, but still prime time — something about his weekly show has caused both bloggers and mainstream television critics to get out their knives.

“The Jeff Dunham Show Is the Worst Thing in the Entire World,” a rant on videogum.com was headlined. And a writer for The Chicago Tribune said, “There are gay jokes, bathroom jokes, racist jokes and a bit that will surely be offensive to White Trash Americans,” adding: “At best, you won’t laugh. At worst, you will weep for the half-hour you have lost and destroy all the puppets in your home.”

Mr. Dunham’s dummies are not exactly lovable Lamb Chops, or even mischievous Charlie McCarthys. They include Achmed the Dead Terrorist (he of the 100 million views), a skeletal suicide bomber; Walter, an angry old white guy; and Sweet Daddy Dee, a jive-talking black man identified in skits as Mr. Dunham’s manager. Any given Achmed bit is liable to have jokes about the 72 virgins and to carry the strong implication that the only thing Arabs and/or Muslims are interested in is killing everyone else (though Mr. Dunham has tried to sidestep criticisms of Achmed by saying the character isn’t Muslim). A Sweet Daddy routine is sure to mock Mr. Dunham for not being able to talk “street,” and Walter is prone to making exceedingly vulgar remarks about women, among others. Oh, and the puppets like to question Mr. Dunham’s sexuality.

Sure, people who like their humor only a certain way are going to find such stuff offensive, but the history of television is filled with comedies that found somebody to offend. Sometimes it was the offensiveness of an earlier time when sensitivity wasn’t a top priority — the whole tone of the television version of “Amos ’n’ Andy” in the early 1950s, for instance; the mentally dim Goober of “The Andy Griffith Show” and the whiskey-brewing Indians of “F Troop” in the 1960s. But often it was calculated.

Spike TV plays to a crowd that views women as sex objects, but so did “Three’s Company” 30 years ago. Whom might Mr. Dunham have looked to for precedent when creating his deliberately stereotypical dummies? How about the revered “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” of 40 years ago, with its dumb blonde (Goldie Hawn), broad black caricature (Flip Wilson) and irascible old people (Ruth Buzzi’s Gladys character and Arte Johnson’s leering geezer). What constitutes “offensive” has a lot to do with who is doing the judging, and when.

And nothing in “The Jeff Dunham Show” comes close to the scathing satire of the average episode of “South Park,” which has been praised for years for boldly going where no show has gone before. Just a few weeks ago “South Park” managed the difficult trick of outraging both big-engine-loving flag wavers and some gay-rights advocates with an episode that involved repurposing a slur applied to gay people so that it referred to Harley owners instead. Dunham critics might argue that “South Park” is funny while Mr. Dunham’s show isn’t. Ultimately, though, viewers define “funny.” Mr. Dunham’s first episode drew an audience of 5.3 million, a record for Comedy Central. That Harley-related “South Park” drew 2.8 million viewers, the Nielsen Company reported; Mr. Dunham’s show that same week drew 2.3 million.

These are muddy waters indeed. Let’s see if we can clear them up by taking a look at a few specific Dunham bits. How would you rank these in order of funniness and/or offensiveness?

1. Jeff and Walter are talking about a Georgia Supreme Court ruling that suggested consensual sex between teachers and students as young as 16 might be legal. “You know what makes matters worse?” Walter says. “Since it’s Georgia, a lot of these 16-year-olds are still in third grade.”

2. In a holiday-season bit Jeff is looking on as Achmed the Dead Terrorist plays with a dreidel. “This is as athletic as Jews get,” Achmed says.

3. Jeff and Sweet Daddy drop in on some Civil War re-enactors. The bit ends with Sweet Daddy and his large, black bodyguards using automatic weapons to mow down the re-enactors and Mr. Dunham, who is dressed as Abraham Lincoln.

4. Achmed is visiting a synagogue whose members are mostly black. “You being colored — well, I know you had no choice in that,” he says to one of them. “But whatever made you turn Jew?”

5. Apropos of nothing, Walter notes that women in India often have a red dot on their forehead. “Maybe it lights up when the coffee’s ready,” he says.