Andrew Dice Clay

That’s an interesting thesis Goldstein proposes in his sympathetic puff-piece on Clay: that Clay’s ridiculing of women and calling them vile names is acceptable, because they’re just the spewings of a character he’s created, evoking the Brooklyn he grew up in, and have nothing to do with the loving, tolerant, well-adjusted performer who acts that character.

Oh, really? Well, let’s see. Then nobody should mind if I, a middle-aged white ex-Protestant male, ad-lib “comedy” routines which include racial and ethnic slurs, right? After all, I’m just playing a character, evoking the casual bigotry of the border city I grew up in a half-century ago. That has nothing to do with jolly old ACLU member Jim Brodhead, who’s just an actor giving a performance.

You say that would be different from what Clay is doing? How?

JAMES E. BRODHEAD

Sherman Oaks