WARNING: THE FOLLOWING VIDEO INCLUDES STRONG LANGUAGE
During a stand-up performance on February 4, comedian George Lopez was caught on tape flipping out at a woman in his audience in Phoenix when she didn’t like his joke about Latinos. The video, which was obtained by TMZ and posted on February 7, shows Lopez calling the woman a “bitch” and kicking her out of his show.
“There are only two rules in the Latino family — don’t marry somebody black and don’t park in front of our house,” Lopez joked at the Celebrity Theatre. While most members of the audience laughed, one woman in the front row flipped him the bird.
After that, Lopez told her to “Sit your f**king ass down” repeatedly and called her a “bitch.”
“You can’t take a joke, you’re in the wrong motherf**king place,” Lopez told her. “Sit your f**king ass down or get the f**k out of here.”
“You have two choices, either shut the f**k up or get the f**k out,” he told the woman.
Eventually, she left with her friends and Lopez told the audience that four seats opened up in the front row.
After the incident went viral, Lopez posted the following on Instagram. “‘Get on up here motherf**ker’ this happens when you try to become part of the show , you catch a Ibanez to the side of the Dome,” he wrote.
In the following radio interview, Lopez talked about dealing with hecklers in the past. He said in 2014 that he’ll often hear more negative talk because of social media.
When Lopez talked to the Smithsonian Magazine in 2010, Lopez gave his thoughts on ethnicity in comedy:
If you look back in time, comedy was always insensitive to people of color because our country, and comedy, was dominated by whites. That is why Amos and Andy could paint their faces black and make “black” voices and everyone in the theater who was white thought it was hilarious. You can’t do that anymore. Then there was “All in the Family” or “Sanford and Son” or “The Jeffersons.” Then we got overly sensitive and politically correct. But you can still do [ethnic and racial comedy] if you tell the truth. If you do it out of meanness, it’s no fun.
Lopez is best known for his self-titled ABC sitcom, which ran for six seasons between 2002 and 2007. Most recently, he hosted his own talkshow, Lopez Tonight, which was cancelled in 2011. In 2014, he starred in FX’s Saint George, which was not picked up after 10 episodes.
Read more about this incident with George Lopez in Spanish at AhoraMismo.com:
