Honest, it was just a joke at first, but I'm beginning to suspect that many of Jeff Dunham fans really aren't very bright.
For starters, I was pretty benign in my review of his new Comedy Central program, "The Jeff Dunham Show," basically saying that while it wasn't my cup of tea, I understood the ventriloquist had his fans, and they needed to laugh too. The real mystery to me was how many fervent admirers Dunham has given the slimness of his act, based on the impressive audience of 6.6 million he attracted for his earlier Christmas special.
So I actually felt like a bit of a wimp, frankly, after reading other reviews of the program on Metacritic.com, which were flat-out brutal by comparison. (Note to TV Guide's Matt Roush: Have I told you lately that I love
you? Great stuff.)
Anyway, then I started seeing the comments on my review and some of the emails that I received directly, many of which fixated on my use of the expression "sawdust-filled heads." This was, I thought pretty obviously, a pun on the fact that Dunham is a ventriloquist and uses, you know, dummies -- with sawdust-filled heads -- as part of his act.
But some of the messages took this as an attack by the commie-loving, God-hating liberal media saying that anybody who likes Dunham must have a sawdust-filled head -- which only feeds the impression, unfortunately, that this isn't just comedy with dummies, but comedy for dummies.
The program's debut on Oct. 22 averaged 5.3 million viewers, based on Nielsen results, the highest-rated series premiere in Comedy Central's history, so the network can laugh all the way to the bank. With those kind of numbers or anywhere close to them, in fact, Dunham's show will be around as long as he can still fit his arm up any one of those puppets.
There's nothing more pointless than debating with somebody over what they find to be funny, other than perhaps insulting people for what kind of entertainment they like (OK, except for die-hard [or if I must, "Twi-Hard"] "Twilight" fans; I'll make an exception in that case).
Still, based on the dubious quality of the show and the chips they apparently carry around on their shoulders, the Dunham contingent sort of makes you root for his most ardent fans to come down with a bad case of termites.
UPDATE: Apparently Dunham fans spend a lot of time online looking to be outraged -- and defend him. An MSN review of the program and his recent appearance on "The Jay Leno Show" also yielded a torrent of responses, most of it in support of Dunham.
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