Gallagher on...Everything?

Comedian Gallagher in an interview with the Onion, talking about everything from politics to comedy to behavior in public...and with enough hatred of 'the youth' to fill a retirement community.

Gallagher on mediocrity:

Well, I don’t think Katie Couric should have been the anchorperson for the news. She was originally a kicky young woman that did the on-the-street interviews, and she was known for her cuteness, and that’s why she was hired. The lady on the desk with all the stature that doesn’t speak good, Barbara Walters, was more of the kind of person you would have as an anchorperson, but in America, they are afraid to take a chance on people who aren’t known. This is how Conan [O’Brien] ended up with The Tonight Show: Rather than take a chance on somebody, they decide to advance from within. We promote people until they reach a point at which they’re incompetent.

Before you think up a retort to Gallagher on the topic of mediocrity, you should go take a look at the interview. It's blunt, angry, bitter, even impassioned, and it's not something I would have expected from the 63-year-old comedian. I'm not saying he's right about what he's saying (or that I even think he's right), but it's an interview that deserves a read-through, because this is the kind of stuff I would imagine George Carlin to be saying rather than Gallagher, and, well, it's intriguing. The Onion AV Club seemed ironically interested in the comic, and I am almost positive the interviewer had no idea that this was going to happen:

Then of course President Clinton ruined oral sex. [It’s] now an acceptable activity for a virgin, and doesn’t qualify as sex. So somewhere in there is a loss of morality—a mediocrity. You know, I think when Clinton ruined the presidency, it certainly made my point of mediocrity. We never pick a president who is above, we pick somebody we identify with: the lowest level, the most common. We didn’t pick the best politician in the Bush family, which of course was the governor of Florida. We picked the beer-drinking good ol’ boy. Ask them to lead us in areas that maybe didn’t require a good ol’ boy. You know, this is what I notice. Of course, I’ve been excluded from a lot of show business in America. So I’ve got a point of view that I don’t mind expressing, because I’m really not ruining a career that’s not really happening.

Interview: Gallagher