In the stand-up video Arguing With Myself, DVD released on 11th April 2006, filmed in Santa Ana, California, stand-up comedian and ventriloquist Jeff Dunham has a very short routine entitled Gay Man whose star is the doll Peanut. Although it takes around one minute, the video routine is one of the funniest sketches from Jeff Dunham, developing around a single subject.
The comedian trying to blame it on his purple “woozle” puppet Peanut and constructing a strong personality for him is one of the most amazing things regarding Jeff Dunham’s genius. Unlike other stand-up comedians, Dunham does not impersonate directly another character, a star or a personality, but he’s using other means to do that, so he can reveal his real face all along the show or the video routine he’s offering to the audience. But this is just a sketch he uses in order to express his own ideas about different and controversial subjects, in this particular video routine the matter would be gay people.
Gay Man relates to a previous “argument” in which Peanut accused Jeff that he is gay and made fun of his immediate denial. The brilliant idea of the routine comes after that. The stand-up routine comedian suggests a gay superhero, whose name were, very suggestive put, Gay Man, as the title of the routine clearly states. Peanut describing the new imagined superhero is just astonishing, but terribly funny, because he relates exactly to most unexpected characteristics of a gay person.
The comedian is surely touching a very delicate subject in this routine, but it does not really matter because he does it indirectly, so Dunham has not to be taken as a conservative, a gay hater or an offensive idealist in this video routine either.
Watch Gay Man routine from Jeff Dunham and open your appetite for more of his stand-up routines or full videos.