After months of circling one another over a joke made by Andrew Schulz on his Flagrant podcast, retired NFL safety and ESPN NFL analyst Ryan Clark finally hosted Schulz on The Pivot so they could hash out their differences.
In a long conversation tracing back to Schulz’s comments last July about dating Black women, he and Clark discussed how the line that comedians walk when it comes to stereotypes, life experience and respect.
On Flagrant last summer, Schulz got heat for an over-the-top description of Black girlfriends, in which he riffed on the idea of Meghan Markle cleaning up the British royal family and described the “Black girlfriend effect” as women stressing their boyfriends out and slapping them. Clark responded to the segment on The Pivot, claiming that Schulz was racist. The disagreement picked up again in recent weeks as Schulz made the rounds online promoting his latest stand-up special.
But when Schulz finally sat for an interview on The Pivot this week, he acknowledged the joke didn’t land as well as it could have but defended himself against the accusation that the joke — or he — is racist.
“The joke wasn’t funny enough for how much it hurt people,” Schulz said. “And they’re entitled to however they want to feel about it. I just don’t like it going into the territory of, ‘that’s how he really feels, and he’s just using it as a smokescreen for how he really feels.’ No, what happened is I just wanted us to laugh.”
From his point of view, Clark explained that he believes Schulz can perpetuate stereotypes and give the audience permission to harbor negative views of certain types of people when he makes insensitive jokes.
“To people who may see that … they’ll go, ‘well Andrew Schulz made this joke about Black women and there were two Black men sitting across from them, this must be true, so I can go behave like he behaves,'” Clark offered.
As Clark continued, he expressed that his intention was to use Schulz’s comments as an example of this tricky territory, not to paint Schulz in any particular way. But Schulz pushed back.
The comedian said that just as Clark worries how Black women might come off when an audience hears a joke like Schulz’s, when Clark spreads his thoughts on Schulz, that gives an audience a bad impression of him. And Schulz believes he approaches comedy — and life — with the right intentions and deserves the benefit of the doubt.
“I hope that people maybe learn more about me and they see that I don’t have bad intentions for people and I make fun of everybody,” Schulz said. “I hope that they learn that, but I understand that as I get there, we’re going to have these little things that we stumble across, and people’s feelings are going to be hurt. And it sucks.”
Later, Schulz added that he is mindful of how to discuss groups of people and lifestyles that he hasn’t experienced. And in the case of the Flagrant episode, he believed the context of his guests and the situation should have made it clear what his intentions were.
“That was kind of, with that situation, what I thought people would see is, I’m not doing that joke in front of two white guys in a room,” Schulz said. “I’m doing it where there are two Black guys in the room as well. I thought that would communicate there’s good faith here, there’s no real animosity or that kind of s***.”
For anyone who has watched Flagrant or heard Schulz’s comedy, this debate will come as no surprise. Depending on how you view comedy as an art form and the sensitivities anyone might have, Schulz’s argument may or may not land.
But considering Clark was so direct with his criticism and that the two had no prior relationship, there is something to be said for both being willing to sit down and respectfully discuss their sides of the situation. That’s what most podcasters claim to do, but it rarely happens.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.