Adam Carolla did something we rarely see in pop culture these days.
He mocked "land acknowledgements." And he didn't poke fun at them on his podcast or from a comedy club stage. He used the recent GOP midterm convention to do the honors.
All right. I would like to start tonight with a land acknowledgment ... This is the greatest land in the history of mankind. And if that bothers you, you, your communist and hippy buddies should get the hell off it!
The crowd laughed and applauded right on cue.
And why not? Woke 1 might have been crazy, but somehow these Land Acknowledgements survived the first wave and continue on, unabated. Liberal singer Billie Eilish did a variation on the theme earlier this year, telling the crowd at the February Grammys that "no one is illegal on stolen lands."
Some right-leaning news sites mocked her, of course. And The New York Post asked an actual Native American tribe to weigh in on her rhetoric, suggesting she herself lives on "stolen land."
And, shockingly, she has no plans to give it back.
The concept is perfect fodder for late-night comedians who feast on silly headlines and sillier celebrities. Except you won't hear Jon Stewart crack wise on the subject. Nor will Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver or Jon Stewart. Progressives know better than to mock an oh, so mockable topic to their trained seal audiences. The blowback would be considerable.
And they're all comedy cowards, sticking to the DNC script and refusing to go off teleprompter. Yet one hard-Left comedian did just that.
Stavros Halkias is keeping busy these days. He's a touring stand-up comic, a co-star in the Anthony Bourdain origin film "Tony" and a player in the "Tires" repertoire alongside Shane Gillis and Thomas Haden Church.
And he's very, very liberal. How liberal? SFGate.com dubbed him The Left's Joe Rogan, even though the comedian doesn't want that job (or label). Plus, Joe Rogan was the Left's Joe Rogan until the Democrats lost their collective minds, forcing the Spotify superstar to the Center.
Even amid his increased popularity, Halkias hasn’t tried to hide his political identity, which is somewhere between Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani...Halkias called Trump a “full-blown fascist” and accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement of “murdering people.”
Stunning and brave. It's also what every third liberal comic says today. Still, his progressive bona fides are intact. So when a clip of him shredding land acknowledgements hit social media, it actually mattered.
The undated clip has Halkias talking to a Canadian audience, and before long he brings up the land acknowledgement practice. Yes, they do it up North, too.
It's so wild you guys do land acknowledgements. Who is that helping at all? Imagine you f***ing kick a guy out of his house, you live there, and every morning you show up at the window and say, 'Hey, bro, thank you for the house. It rocks. it's really sick in here, thank you so much. No, you can't come in, no. You're gonna stay there, but I want to let you know I feel bad," he said to chuckles from the crowd. "It's so f***ing stupid."
He's right. Now, why can't more comedians say it?
