Tom 2 says:

Am I the only one who feels a little sorry for Mencia. This guy has really been made to look like an ass on the internet. And he gets a new season that is coming up. I mean like any good artist you take a little something from somebody else. Its the nature of the biz, but Mencia i think has been singled out.

Bill says:

Bill Cosby’s is better.

JohnS says:

Joe Rogan was right all along. And yes Cosby is far better than this schmuck.

Brew Kline says:

Look hard enough and I’ll bet you’ll find that joke in the Bible. In this new age of connectivity we see how difficult it is to be unique. Haven’t you ever try to come up with an internet handle and find that your first few tries have already been taken? Its called similar life experiences. And that is why its endearing as people have SIMILAR life experiences.

danno says:

#8 – difference is that bands who cover songs have to pay a license fee.

TJGeezer says:

I don’t see the big deal. Comedians do that all the time. They even made a movie, “The Aristocrats,” about 100 or so comedians telling the same filthy joke in as many styles. Most comedians lift material from each other, See http://tinyurl.com/2zuhyw for the Netflix take on the movie. There’s probably a better review at Rotten Tomatoes.

I haven’t rented “The Aristocrats.” My wife doesn’t want to watch it and I prefer to pick my battles. But if anybody knows what the joke in that movie is, post a link, okay?

Odyssey67 says:

Carlos Mencia’s whole shtick is about him being a ‘greaser’, yet supposedly ‘keepin it real’ by not falling for the ‘liberal’ attitude regarding immigration, and cultural issues in general.

Well, just to show how much of a fraud he is, the dude isn’t Mexican, and his real name isn’t “Carlos Mencia” either. He was born “Ned Holness”, to a European dad and a Honduran mom. From what I’ve read, he was brought up totally ‘middle class’ in the US. His identity change came at the suggestion of the woman who currently owns the Comedy Store, where he got his start. Apparently he wasn’t too funny at the time, and she basically told him he needed a ‘shtick’. She thought he’d go farther with the ethnic angle, and – being it was Los Angeles – devised the whole Mexican persona, and even gave him the Mencia name!

There’s so much video documentation of Mencia/Holness ripping off other comedians work that it’s no longer disputable. He and Dane Cook are the two most notorious no-talents to hit it big in a generation. And this is according to other SUCCESSFUL comics who have no reason to be jealous. The savvy ones are literally afraid to see Mencia in an audience when they do a set, cause if they kill they know Carlos will steal the material. And he usually does. My guess is he moved on to Cosby ’cause Bill’s been around awhile (lots of shit to steal) and probably doesn’t even know who the fuck he is (as opposed to his contemporaries, most of whom have probably threatened to kill him, or won’t even speak to him anymore).

As for the ‘everybody does it’ defense; that’s a bunch of bull. Milton Berl came of age in vaudville, when a joke might never see the same audience for years. Stealing – if it was done – had a lot less impact. These days, with instant stardom, HBO, & multimillion dollar sitcom deals at stake, comedians are much more sensitive about this stuff. Those that cross the line are shunned, and for good reason. Just look at how well Carlos/Ned has done, largely off the creativity of others (even his stage persona was invented by someone else!).

Basically, Ned is a thieving asshole. And a liar to boot, since – despite all the evidence floating around the internets – he continues to deny what everyone can see & hear with their own eyes & ears, AND continues to do it, as the Cosby clip illustrates.

Talk about a slime – guess that explains why he identifies as a Republican.

BubbaRay says:

Awww. Poor half-german half-honduran mexican wannabe. Let’s all say a prayer for the joke-stealing jerk. Now, if the MAC guys want to apologize for the PARC ripoff, I’m in.

dave says:

#11 – you can read The Aristocrats joke here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocrats_(joke)

scroll down to the heading “An Example”. It’s not a funny joke, but that’s actually part of the point. It’s more about being over-the-top and thinking of new variations of the joke than being funny.

Another good movie, I think a bit better, is called Comedian. It’s focuses on Jerry Seinfeld and how difficult it is to come up with new comedy material. It’s a good movie even if you don’t like Seinfeld.

OhForTheLoveOf says:

#13 – We have the privledge to live in a society that thinks the best part of a day is to catch someone at something….no matter how innocent or horrendous.

Dude… I am so amazingly in line with you on the strength of that statement. You nailed a great cosmic truth here…

But I have to say that the weight of evidence that Mencia steals often and liberally is pretty great. If a comedian does a 30 minute set and theres a one or two line riff in there that invokes Bill Hicks, I think, nice… it’s funny and it honors the memory of a great comedian. But if that same set has a whole ten minutes of Hicks, well… not so cool. Mencia appears to be like that latter guy.. Too much of other peoples stuff in there.

So while I can’t fault what you’ve said… this issue is one of those that goes way beyond that… or so it seems to me.

TJGeezer says:

18 – Thanks. I think. 🙂

rich (richmanwisco) says:

#14
Wikipedia, which is right far more often then it is wrong, says this:

Mencia was born “Ned Arnel Mencia”[1], the seventeenth of eighteen children in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. His father, Roberto Holness, is from Honduras, and his mother, Magdelena Mencia, is from Mexico. He was raised in East Los Angeles, California by his aunt Consuelo and uncle Pablo Mencia. “[O]ut of respect for his father”[1], he went by the name Ned Holness as a boy. By his own admission, staying out of trouble was difficult growing up, but with the help of his family he excelled in school and stayed out of gangs. He majored in electrical engineering at California State University, Los Angeles, but left early to pursue a career in comedy after a successful performance at open mic night at The Laugh Factory. He also has an older brother named Joseph Mencia who is the co-host of Mind of Mencia.

Depends on your definition of middle class, but growing up with your aunt and uncle in East LA at a minimum stretches the definition. Besides, what difference does it make? All stand up comedians are actors playing a character, so let’s forget about the character assassination, that’s not what is at issue.

Get your facts right and stay on topic.

Joel Pice says:

Is it possible with all the people on this earth that eventually a few of us will say or come up with the exact same thing?

Greg Allen says:

Same joke — different delivery. And, again, not in Mencia’s favor.

Mencia’s set-up was perhaps a little better paced but his punch line relied far too much on a silly temper tantrum and misogyny.

I strongly prefer Cosby’s far more subtle — and classy — ending.