by Daniel Phifer

Adam Carolla first gained national attention as the much needed comic relief to Dr. Drew Pinsky’s clinical straight man on the Los Angeles based radio show Loveline. Since then his credits include television personality, voice-over artist, filmmaker, and author.

We spoke with Adam shortly after he was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records as having the most downloaded podcast, The Adam Carolla Show. Adam will be performing at The Palace of Fine Arts on Saturday, June 4th.

You recently experienced some controversy over comments you made about Manny Pacquioa. Why do you think people get so up in arms over things that comedians say? I can understand outrage if Obama had said these things at a press conference, but you’re an entertainer. Why don’t you think people can’t make that distinction?

I don’t know. Well, first off you say recently it’s been over a year. But, you know, I don’t know. We’re out of problems I guess as a society. I mean there used to be things like famine, and plagues, and dust bowls, and Great Depressions, and World War I, and World War II. We had problems. And you had to deal with things like, you know, childbirth would probably kill either the mom or the kid. It’s a lot of what are we going to eat tonight because we don’t have any food in the cupboards. And now we’re all living in places that have dual glazed windows, and central air, and everything’s been earthquake proofed, and every kid has a helmet, and everyone’s allergic to peanuts. And, we basically, the average car has eighteen airbags in it. We’re not in any major wars, at least none we have to dirty our hands with as a public. So we’re sort of out of stuff and thus we have gossip essentially and words. Then we just walk around and we pass judgment on everyone and we attack, again, comedians for making jokes.

I mean, I know, I understand. Statesmen, politicians, you know people who make policy. We can’t have them joking around because they make policy. So maybe their policy could affect the people they’re joking around with. But comedians? You’re really going to worry about what comedians are saying or if they’re saying off-colored jokes? That is…I mean on one hand it sucks because I’m a comedian. On the other hand it’s great because we have no problems. It means we don’t have any real problems.