In Defense of Carrot Top

“Have you ever met anyone who finds the comedic stylings <sic> of "carrottop" <sic> funny? Do you wonder what hallucinating marketing executive hires him for ads? Then this is the place for you!”

(Introduction found on  http://ihatecarrottop.tribe.net/)

Carrot Top, born Scott Thompson, is one of the highest earning comedians in the last 20 years. In 1994 he was awarded the American Comedy Award for best male stand-up. He entertains sold-out audiences at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas for 15 weeks each year. He has appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno countless times and has even starred in a movie, 1998’s Chairman of the Board, written specifically for him. 

Carrot Top is also a lightening rod for ridicule and hate.

The ridicule he has faced has been a result of industry backlash that peaked with Thompson’s success in the mid 1990s and has continued to this day. Essentially, Carrot Top rose to the top of his profession with an act that was considered gimmicky and lacking in artistic value by most of his peers. That, combined with his stage name and unique look, has made him an easy target for his comedic contemporaries. Furthermore, Thompson has done himself no favours by dramatically altering his appearance through excessive plastic surgery and body building. 

For many comedians, Thompson’s inoffensiveness is what is most offensive. If the late boundary pushing Bill Hicks is on one end of the “edgy” spectrum, Carrot Top is on the other. Incidentally, Hicks lost the American Comedy Award to Thompson and frequently targeted him in his act.

Comedian Fraser Young explains the backlash over the slight and suggests that the award is “…basically saying (to comedians) ‘this is the best example of what you do’, and it goes back to the argument of who is the best comic: the one who makes the audience laugh or the one who makes the comics laugh. That's why the comics who can do both are so revered.” Unfortunately for Carrot Top, he does not fall into the latter category.

Thompson himself has suggested, in a previous article, that the resentment from his peers is motivated by jealousy and contempt for those who are unique. “I think it's the fact that I do something different and that I actually have some success with it. That bothers a lot of people... especially comics.”

While Carrot Top has inspired ridicule and eye-rolling from fellow comedians, the reaction from some members of the general public has verged on hate speech. Spend a little Carrot Top research time on the internet and you will come across the kind of vitriol usually reserved for genocidal dictators. For example, some of the most recent posts on the “I really do hate you Carrot Top!” Facebook page include the following:

“I wish he would hang himself.”

“ He looks like a girl”

“OHH i Hate His Guts, he looks like a plastic robot”

What’s unique about the animosity toward Carrot Top is that it’s entirely based on the perceived quality of his act. Unlike the polarizing comedians of the past, (Andrew Dice Clay, Sam Kinison, Lenny Bruce, Janeane Garofalo, to name a few.), the public backlash toward Carrot Top has little to do with “controversial” content.

While the resentment within the industry toward Carrot Top is somewhat understandable, why does anyone else care? Are people being held at gunpoint and dragged into the Luxor in Vegas to see an hour of prop comedy? In this day and age, is it not possible to successfully live in a Carrot Top-free world and save your negative energy on the things that actually adversely affect our community? What’s with the pitchforks and torches?

For Young, this vitriol has as much to do with the hero worship of Thompson’s detractors, as it is about any sincere dislike of Carrot Top. “He gets ripped on by those high up in the industry, and it trickles down into stolen outrage from those at the bottom,” explains the comedian.  “Much like Dane Cook, people see their comic idols talking shit about a guy, and then do the same, making their jokes based on a stolen premise, which is no better than the guy they are ripping.”

Regardless of how you feel about prop comedy, reading the Anti-Carrot Top tirades on the Internet will make you question whether we as a human race can ever live in harmony. In a time when anti-bullying campaigns are becoming the norm, perhaps we should question what’s really behind the intensely negative groupthink toward a guy that pulls toilet seats out of a box for the enjoyment of other consenting adults. I can’t help but think that some of the mean-spiritedness driving the Carrot Top hate is also behind the bullying that is victimizing LGTB teens and anyone else who gets harassed for being different. 

Before writing this article, I hadn’t seen much of Carrot Top’s act. I remember enjoying him as a teen during his career peak in the 90s. I watched a few recent clips not long ago, and while I occasionally found him funny, unpredictable and clever, I won’t be rushing out to purchase Carrot Top: Rocks Las Vegas on DVD.  However despite his many detractors, Carrot Top can still lay claim to a very popular original act which is as visually theatrical as anything in comedy. 

In closing, I salute you Carrot Top, if for no other reason than your determination to persevere in a world where the price of originality and success is contempt and seething hatred. Now go forth and make props!  

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