Pierre—a rando from comedy show Kill Tony’s lot of amateur comedians—opens his set with “I’ve been working out lately, and I realized I could rape everybody here… if I wanted too.'” An outlier/success in ep. 669’s series of audience call ups, Pierre spins racial stereotypes/myths about black people, taking cues from the show’s host Tony Hinchcliffe—who’ll run with jokes about his homosexual life (clever ones, not hateful slurs). Before Pierre’s entrance, it’s hard to watch as Tony pressures one guest, after a lame set—enough humiliation already!—to detail his violent criminal conviction. Ali Siddiq‘s feature and follow-up in another episode—head in hands as Tony does in a newbie whose stand-up is impaired by a speech impediment—embodies every (sane) KT viewer’s dilemma: should I really be watching, participating in this? Comedian Bill Burr amps up such doubts by explicitly refusing the show’s premise in one ep., calling out Tony for abusing newer/younger comedians. Yet KT’s formula, the cringe (and/or occasional burst of talent), is almost addicting—the show gets millions of YouTube views and hundreds of thousands of podcast listeners. The hosts’ brutal skewering beefs up KT‘s meritocratic claim: guests like Pierre who do well get another shot to come back (and perhaps become regulars). New hosts keep things moving, too. KT’s irreverence has drawn Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones, along with other meme celebs, to make guest appearances as co-hosts. But the show’s (a)politics doesn’t come down to these far-right goons’ platforms.
On episode 669, Pierre mentions he makes a living as a commercial truck driver. Guest-host Luis J. Gomez—while giving Pierre dap for his confident, at ease performance—tries to link up with Pierre: “I would love to drive some eighteen wheelers.” Pierre corrects Gomez’s bro-ey shout-out: “No you don’t. It’s a nightmare.” He also tries to put Tony, an Austin-gentrifier, onto the city’s more legit BBQ. In this same episode, a viewer takes in a high-strung boxer (he’s holding back tears, or punches, after Tony’s done with him), an autistic Jewish comic from L.A., a glory hole/casino custodian (believe me, you don’t want to understand), a fat guy who brings his kidney stone for show-and-tell. Kam Patterson, a black comic whose career jumped off via KT, jumps in after the amateurs, bringing home KT’s value as a sort of forum for demotic Americana. His South Florida accent and youthful parlance contrast with KT’s crispy white comics—Tony even asks for a (Ebonics) translator when Patterson and Ali Siddiq rap together on ep. 617. Patterson isn’t, however, merely a diversity shoo-in. His sets display his quick mind for improvisation, an ability to turn any story into a laugh. One bit where Patterson recalls a white girlfriend (“that stupid bitch… I loved that girl”) captures Patterson’s absurdist style: “I kept a pick in my hair… one day she came up to me, she was like ‘that is an extremely weird place to keep a knife.’ I was like ‘what the fuck’… so I stabbed her.” After Patterson delivers that line, Tony asks for more. “I’m not retarded, but I like rocks,” Patterson smiles, digging into his pocket to unveil part of his collection… “I just like how they feel, they feel real good… I got a couple’em bitches… they just make me go to sleep and shi’, you know what I’m saying?”
Patterson, though, isn’t always tripping; he keeps it real on the KT episode with Tucker Carlson: “My grandmother hates you!” Carlson—red-faced, forced laughs—tries to scurry away: “she doesn’t mean it.” Yet Patterson re-affirms: “yeah the fuck she does. She can’t stand your ass… That’s my grandma’s opp [underscoring to the audience that his elder sees Carlson as a nemesis of her people].” Tony, riffing off a set Patterson delivered before engaging with Carlson, ends up referencing police double standards of care for white and black citizens (specifically referencing the desecration of Mike Brown). Carlson has come to play, thinking KT will roll out a welcome mat, but Patterson and Tony aren’t there to be walked over.
It was a bit disheartening, though, to see—on a recent viral episode—Patterson dap up Trump impersonator Shane Gillis who makes the Don over into a canny operator able to cleverly manage a partnership with rapper Kodak Black. Gillis holds forth with Adam Ray who plays a tottering Biden. Gillis’s version of Trump might be reckless—too clever by half—but Ray’s 2024 Biden—“I love roller coasters… I love the up and down, that’s what America is: it’s up and it’s down”—makes it hard to resist laughing. Ease your conscience—when it really mattered, during that Carlson appearance, KT (Patterson and Tony) proved they won’t be trumped.