Bookshelf Battle

I love Jim Carrey.

I was a comedy nerd even when I was a kid and it was fun to see Jim’s unlikely success in the 1990s, an underdog story come to life.

In the pre-Internet days, your shot at becoming a major comedic actor was either get a gig on SNL or forget it.  Jim was turned down for SNL but managed to get on Fox’s In Living Color.  Fans of the show knew him as the white guy on In Living Color for a few years until he had a bunch of big movie roles right in a row – Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, The Mask, Batman (as the Riddler), Dumb and Dumber, the Truman Show.

Prior to all that, he grew up living poor in a van.  So it was cool to see him make it.  Made it seem like anyone can make it.

But sometimes it makes me sad when celebs do politics. He was on the Bill Maher show recently. I guess he has these strong opinions and he has a right to them, but here’s how I feel when I hear them:

JIM: We need to stop being afraid of the word, “socialism” we need to embrace it.

ME: Others who embraced the word socialism = the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the National Socialist Party of Germany (Nazis.)  More recently, it’s led to Venezuelans hunting zoo animals for zebra meat, but sure, let’s give it another try!

JIM:  We need to embrace socialism.

ME: You first, buddy.  Take your millions you made from talking out of your butt as Ace and cut a check to any one of many charities that help the poor.  How many poor kids could you send to college if you cash out your savings? And do you need that big mansion?  How many poor people can you take in?  How many refugees can we put you down for?

JIM:  We need to embrace socialism.

ME: Hey, you know what socialist countries aren’t known for? Paying millions of dollars to a man so he can talk through his butt cheeks in Ace Ventura.  In America, someone says, “Hey we can sell movies of a guy talking out of his butt!” In a socialist country, there is no job for a butt talker.  You just get to dig ditches for 12 hours and then wait in the toilet paper line for another 12 hours.  But hey you could entertain everyone else in line with your zany comedy, until you offend one of the commisars and get hauled off to the gulag because free speech?  Not really approved of in socialism.

ME AGAIN:  I get it.  People worry about the poor.  It’s a good thing to do.  Not knocking it.  And he’s right when he says that if you get sick, you shouldn’t lose your house.  And he was very poor once so he knows a thing or two about poverty…this isn’t the way though.  Socialism has never worked anywhere it has tried and it just depresses me that people still think it will work.  It’s like being that gambler who has been losing all night who by morning has liquidated the kids’ college fund, his 401k and sold his house but is still like “One more lucky roll!”

So I don’t know.  That’s it.  Jimbo has been driving me crazy lately.  Socialism is the “23” of economic systems.  The studios wouldn’t let Jim do another 23, but they’d let him do a thousand more sequels to Dumb and Dumber.  Stick with the hits.  Stick with what works.  Stick with capitalism.  Stop trying to do the same thing that’s failed a hundred times and see if it works again.

Maybe this is just what celebs do as they get older, hoping to stay relevant.  Alysa Milano is on that bandwagon too.  I spent most of the 1990s either laughing at Jim Carrey or rubbing one out to Alysa Milano and now they want to turn America into a socialist craphole.  Very sad.  Very depressing.