‘Last Man Standing’ Star Tim Allen Slams ‘Thought Police’ on ‘The View’ After Demanding to Use N-Word in Comedy

Last Man Standing star Tim Allen was on The View earlier this week, and talked about the changing attitudes in comedy. Allen slammed the “thought police” as he explained why he gets frustrated with political correctness. Even co-host Joy Behar chimed in that she could probably not perform her old act if she went back to doing stand-up.

During the segment, Behar noted that the “PC culture” makes it really hard for a stand-up comic, joking, “If I ever brought that old act back, I’d be driven out of town.”

Allen agreed, noting how comedians Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor’s comedy would be controversial today.

“You can’t even go back and talk about the book [Pryor] wrote,” Allen said. “And you know, what I got to do sometimes sometimes is explain – which I hate – in big arenas, that this is a thought police thing and I do not like it. But when I use these words, this is my intent behind those words. So as long as you know my intent… I still get people who say, ‘Just don’t say it.’ And I said, I’m not going to do that.

Behar pointed out that some people take what he says out of context and share it on Twitter.

“I’m surprised they haven’t because I do use some provocative words, but I tell them, it’s words I really got from my parents,” Allen explained. “They said this stuff. When we talked about it… We can’t even say this stuff. Can’t even point to it.”

Allen later called it an “alarming thing” for comedians, but described his act as being more about family and having kids, with some jokes about politics inspired by the women in his life.

Allen’s remarks on The View were similar to comments he made to the Tampa Bay Times back in 2013. In the interview, he defended using the “n-word.”

“If I have no intent, if I show no intent, if I clearly am not a racist, then how can ‘n—’ be bad coming out of my mouth?” Allen asked at the time. “[The phrase] ‘the n-word’ is worse to me than n—.”

In a November 2018 interview with IndieWire, Allen joked that he likes to “mess around” with the public because “there’s nothing, especially in this area, that pisses people off more than a very funny conservative… A smart, funny conservative that takes shots and is certainly self-effacing.”

Allen certainly isn’t the first comedian to bemoan political correctness. Back in 2015, Jerry Seinfeld said he doesn’t perform at colleges because of it.

“They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,” Seinfeld said of college students at the time. “They don’t even know what the f— they’re talking about.”

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