New York Mayor Eric Adams earlier this month suggested immigrants could help fill the city’s lifeguard shortage because they are “excellent swimmers.”
“Ouch,” was the initial response.
Not from comedian Carlos Mencia, a Honduran-American.
“That joke has two sides to it. One side is, ‘Whoa, what is he trying to say.’ The other side is all my immigrant family saying, ‘No, he’s right. We’re very good swimmers,’” Mencia said.
The anecdote has made its way into Mencia’s new show, “Laughin’ and Livin’,” which he brings to Desert Diamond Casino on Saturday, May 25 — his first Tucson show since 2016.
Depending on the audience makeup, the joke will land one of two ways, he said.
Younger people or people who have white guilt will think, “Oh my God, that seems so offensive,” he said.
But his core audience, the folks who have followed him since he started his standup journey in the late 1980s and through his Comedy Central show “Mind of Mencia,” will be the ones who applaud when he says, “Clap if you were not born in the country.”
He’ll follow up with asking those who clapped, “How many of you are good swimmers?”
“And you will see that they will all clap. And then I will find somebody who speaks English with a really thick accent and I will go, ‘Were you offended by this?’ And the cool thing is it’s not always somebody from Mexico,” Mencia, 56, said during a phone call last week.
“The other day, a guy from Latvia said, ‘I am from Latvia and I am immigrant and I am great swimmer. Great swimmer,’” Mencia said, effecting a Latvian accent. “That’s the beauty of what I’m talking about, my ability today to be able to take reactionary moments, moments that are like hey man we are not supposed to be like that and … talk about the humans that this affects. Let us not be the arbiters of what is offensive to other people.”
In an environment of ultra sensitivity coming out of the pandemic and the tumultuous few years that followed, audiences have become quick to balk at jokes they perceive as offensive. But Mencia said he has learned that it’s not the joke that offends; oftentimes, it’s the person telling it and where they are telling it.
Mencia recently appeared at an LGBTQ+ event and watched comedian after comedian tell LGBTQ jokes. When it was his turn, he asked the audience why it was OK to tell those jokes there but not at his comedy club shows.
“Somebody said because here we know they are one of us,” Mencia recalled. “And I said, ‘So I’m not one of you?’”
The response was something of an epiphany for Mencia. Comedy cannot be contained in a bubble. It has to be given license to put a mirror to all of society, not just segments of it. More importantly, it needs to free us to laugh even when the joke is on us.
“That’s where I’m at now; I’m free,” he said. “You don’t have to go to a Latino show. You don’t have to go to an urban show. You don’t have to go to a redneck show. Come to my show and it’s like all those shows put together. We’re going to laugh at each other and ourselves and that’s it.”
“My intention is good, and if you don’t understand that then I don’t know what to say,” he added. “I am a comedian. … My intent is to make you as happy as humanly possible doing what I do.”
He said he believes audiences are open to that idea especially in a world in which we are so quick to label one another this “ism” and that “phobic” for the simple crime of laughing at a joke.
“Don’t tell me I’m a mean person because I chose to laugh,” he quipped. “Showing people that that’s the case is amazing, especially young people who have been told, ‘Don’t laugh at this, it’s going to hurt people’s feelings.’ Then to come and see Carlos Mencia and see that, as long as we all are open to it and accept it when the joke is on us, it’s OK. It’s a pretty cool revelation especially to young audiences.”
Mencia takes the stage at Desert Diamond Casino, 1100 W. Pima Mine Road, at 8 p.m. Tickets ($25-$35) are available at ddcaz.com.
Tucson native, Emmy and Grammy winner Linda Ronstadt honored at a ceremony before the International Mariachi Conference's Espectacular Concert with the renaming of the Tucson Music Hall as The Linda Ronstadt Music Hall. Video by Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star
