It's official: Standup comics are sick

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on December 6th, 2006

From a Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer article by Kaffie Sledge, speculating on why Michael Richards acted like an asshole, comes a quote from a Ph.D:

“I don’t have any statistics, but we do know that most stand-up comics are ADHD adults,” said Paul A. Jurek, Ph.D., a presenter at the annual Convention of the National Association of Forensic Counselors in Las Vegas.

No, he doesn’t have any statistics, but he does have a gross generalization formed from… formed from what exactly? A half-baked theory mixed with a little prejudice, a dollop of folk wisdom and a heaping helping of junk science?

Read the entire piece. Could this guy sound like any more of a crank? What’s next? Forced sterilization? It gets stranger on a near-daily basis.

Hey, Doc, how about you take your ritalin and go fuck yourself? (There’s that anger boiling up out of our brain that’s “30 percent slower than the brains of everybody else.”)

The next time someone looks at you funny when you tell them you’re a comic, you’ll know why. (Be prepared, they’ll probably start speaking slowly– just so you’ll be able to understand them better. And they’ll probably flinch if you make any sudden moves.)