We just don't want to be Marlene. (NBC)
Unfortunately, Mr. Gottfried is both married and carrying a large chip on his shoulder about women not wanting to sleep with him because he's funny. But he's got it all wrong.
According to his recent Playboy article, the prevalent myth about women wanting to have sex with comedians which is patently untrue:
It’s like a Pavlovian thing with women. Ask them what they’re looking for in a man, and more often than not they’ll tell you, “Somebody who makes me laugh.” But I’m here to tell you, as a man who has made his living in comedy for more than three decades, that women are full of shit.
Being funny (and I have occasionally been funny) has never gotten me laid in my life.
Mr. Gottfried, in some amount of seriousness, launches his tirade against the female sex for being "desperate" enough to want "to fuck you," and only then finding you funny. Like, funny in hindsight, which we guess is a thing? Or as much of a thing as the old adage that "Women think guys are funny if they can make (the women) laugh; men find women funny if they (the women) laugh at their (the men's) jokes."
But maybe we have another reason for not laughing with the guys we're sleeping with: Because they're psychopaths. From a New York Times article on Thursday:
In a study in the British Journal of Psychiatry, researchers analysed comedians from Australia, Britain and the United States and found they scored significantly higher on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of people who had non-creative jobs.
These traits tend towards impulsive and anti-social behavior, as well as a--surprise, surprise!--desire to stave off intimacy.
So maybe we're not not sleeping with you because you're funny. Maybe we're not sleeping with you because we know you're going to not call us tomorrow and then write us into one of your bits. And/or relating a little too well to Will Graham? Either/or, really.