Not With a Bang

By Neil Schloesser
Contributing Writer

Watermelon-smashing prop comic Gallagher was in Fargo on Friday night. Gallagher is best known for smashing fruit and food on stage and spraying audience members in the impact zone.

Gallagher’s show was offensive and not because some ears are more sensitive than others, but because he comes across as genuinely angry and bitter.

He started his show with jokes about Muslims which grouped all Muslims into one category and had a tone of “us” versus “them.” He then told offensive gay jokes and used the word “faggy” multiple times. He told many lesbian jokes and a few jokes about other races. 

Offensive jokes are fine if the audience believes that the comic is aware of his transgressions and the audience shares in the guilt but Gallagher seemed to believe his jokes. He didn’t appear to be telling them to be funny but rather to illustrate a truth that only he knew. It was almost an accident that his “truth” came out in funny way.
Gallagher told that audience that he was there to teach people how to think. He made the audience aware that he was smarter than most and underappreciated. At one point he told the audience that he did not get better entertainment deals because he liked to freely speak his mind. 

Gallagher is mistaken. He is trying to excuse his offensiveness and divert any blame he has in his own stalled career and turn himself into a victim. At times he sounded like a conservative pundit; simultaneously angry, using the language of victims, and believing he was a prophet to the masses.

Gallagher’s “insight” was comprised of overly simplistic logic which he held up as a light of truth. He told a joke about fire exit signs being above a door and then pointed out that in a fire smoke rises and those signs would be invisible. He then pointed out how smart he is by making this observation. 

First off, that joke, like many of his jokes that night, was at least 25 years old, if not older. Second, his logic ignores equally valid reasons and logic for why those signs are above a door. Gallagher believes his logic was superior to all others and when he said he was there to teach us to think, it was not with a wink and nod. He was serious.

Gallagher ended his show by bringing audience members up to the stage and letting them smash a variety of food. Even during the highlight of the show he still resorted to crude generalizations of gays, Italians, the French, and anyone else that crossed his mind. The smashing was fun but it was not enough to save the show.

There were moments of Gallagher’s old brilliance, when he was a masterful observational comic with unrestrained energy, but they were few and faded. 
Maybe Gallagher is a terrific man who loves everyone and his act is really just an act but what I saw wasn’t worth mentioning again.

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