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After announcing his plans to leave California for Texas last month, comedian Jeff Dye made it clear that this wasn't a decision he made overnight. For years, he clung to the belief that the state he loved could still be saved, but eventually that hope was over.
Dye sat down with Fox News Digital, where he offered insight into his decision to leave Los Angeles for Austin and how politics has created a growing divide within the comedy community.
A fixture of the stand-up scene since 2005, Dye is preparing to join the wave of artists and everyday Americans who have fled the Golden State in recent years. While agreeing that there is “nothing heroic about abandoning” California, the comedian expressed a sense of hopelessness about the state's future under Gov. Gavin Newsom's leadership, especially given his handling of the wildfires that devastated the Palisades earlier this year.
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Comedian Jeff Dye sat down with Fox News Digital and talked about his recent decision to leave California for Texas. (Photo courtesy of SA Ent. Group)
“I don't think it's a good thing to leave California because you're upset with the way it's run. We should stay and fight for it,” he said. “But at a certain point, you just feel a little defeated and I don't know how to fight it anymore. I don't know what to do.”
On the issues of homelessness and transportation, Dye questioned where taxpayer funds allocated to address these issues have gone, directing his questions to Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
Newsom's office received a dismissive response when Fox News Digital contacted it for comment, saying of Dye: “Who is that?” Fox News Digital also reached out to Mayor Bass' office for comment.
In April of last year, a state audit found that California had spent $24 billion to address homelessness over five years without consistently tracking how the funds actually helped the homeless crisis.
“How many things do Mayor Bass and Gavin Newsom do, you know, how many things can they just lie to our faces or ignore or not do before you're gone, I'm out of here?” asked.
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With politics making its way into seemingly every facet of life, the stand-up scene has been no exception.
Jeff Dye explained the impact that, in his opinion, politics is having on the world of stand-up. (Courtesy of SA Ent. Group)
Fox News Digital asked Dye if he felt the growing influence of politics on stand-up comedy has had a negative impact on the industry.
“The biggest thing I've noticed in the stand-up (and people will accuse me of being a drama queen or a punk for even saying this) but the biggest thing I've noticed is that politics is interfering with the comedy,” he said.
“At least my heroes used to say, 'Dude, don't be politically correct and say what you think and don't be afraid to make any missteps.' In today's situation, even the most successful comedians say, 'Hey, you can't joke about that,' or 'You can't say that,' which breaks my brain.”
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According to Dye, today's stand-up stars tend to follow an unspoken rule: “Say what you want, but you better be liberal.”
One comedy legend whose words have stayed with Dye over the years is George Carlin, whose provocative, anti-establishment style helped define conscious comedy.
“George Carlin once said that our job as comedians is to find that line and then deliberately cross it… I'm not running for office. I'm not giving TED talks. I'm not lecturing people about ethics and morals. I'm just supposed to be funny and point out things in society,” he explained.
Comedian George Carlin performs at the Cheyenne Civic Center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on June 1, 1992. (Mark Junge/Getty Images)
Dye maintained that some “brave comics” have changed Overton's window regarding what is and is not acceptable to speak as stand-up.
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He credited comedians and hosts like Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Shane Gillis for this change, and praised their willingness to speak their minds without regard for what others might think.
“Now you see a lot of comedians coming in and saying, ‘Oh, it's a little safer now, because these big comedians have said something.’ I was kind of on the front lines of that,” he said. “I've always been more conservative than my comic counterparts. I've always been much more religious in that I'm a Christian, so that's not a very popular thing in stand-up. I was on the front lines in that sense.”
Comedian Jeff Dye performs on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” on January 19, 2018. (Andrew Lipovsky/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal)
Explaining his gradual shift in political ideology, Dye told Fox News Digital: “I was late to the Trump party. I was late to a lot of those things. I thought, because I had gay friends, that I must be a liberal, and then becoming a liberal became crazier and crazier and more antifa, and I was like, 'I'm out.'”
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Dye acknowledged that some may scoff at the idea of comedians being brave in expressing their views, but he rejected that perspective, pointing out the risks that come with challenging the dominant political consensus.
“It's brave to say something that others don't say. There's some bravery in that. Saying something that your colleagues and the people you work with are going to hate. And if you don't think that's brave, look at what happened to Charlie Kirk,” he argued. “It's brave because there are risks when you say things that people don't like.”
