Apparently, classic playground insults are off the table now. A producer of a radio talk show in Chicago, named Shane Riordan, apologized for saying he’d have sex with the mother of a rival host he’d been beefing with on Twitter, named Dan Proft. The two had been arguing about the media portrayal of Chicago as a violent city. Proft compared the city to Afghanistan, to which Riordan replied, “Dan, I’ll have sex with your mother.” He then continues to double down and find new phrases to repeat his sentiment.
Honestly, I think he was really close to pulling this off as a dismissive joke. If he didn’t take a victory lap around the laugh he got from the room to try to make the joke a few more times, it would’ve really appeared to be in jest. Instead, he really beat the joke to death. I honestly thought he was going to at least try to have sex with Proft’s mother. Another thing that made this pretty impossible to come back from is the fact that Proft’s mother is dead. When your response in an argument is to go at a guy’s dead mom, you forfeit the moral high ground instantly.
I respect the guy’s effort, but he clearly doesn’t have the comedic precision to navigate such a rocky subject. As a kid who wants had to write an apology letter to my mom as punishment for telling yo-mama jokes in the fourth grade, I feel for this guy. I also agree that a well-done joke about your opponent’s mother is a classic. But when you continuously berate a guy’s deceased mother, you end up having to make a YouTube style apology video on radio. I truly do respect his comedic intentions, but you have to improve your execution if you’re going to pull that off, and if you don’t, I’ll bang your mom.
