Adam Carolla’s DEI Firefighter Story Goes Viral
'Loveline' star tried to join city's bravest but was sent to back of the line
Parts of Los Angeles are on fire, and many want to pin the blame on someone besides Mother Nature.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. She was in Ghana when the deadly fires broke out, a terrible look for the big-city leader. Her budget cuts, including $17.6 million for the city’s fire department, also are catching up to her.
Now, some wonder if the progressive city’s DEI efforts fueled the crisis.
Enter Adam Carolla or, at least, testimony he shared with Congress nearly eight years ago.
This story is all too familiar:
Adam Carolla applied to be an LA firefighter, and was told he had to wait 7 years because he wasn’t black, hispanic, or female.
DEI kills.pic.twitter.com/5tLWzVIi3C
— John LeFevre (@JohnLeFevre) January 8, 2025
The comedian appeared before the government body to defend free speech, part of his “No Safe Spaces” project. He used the opportunity to share tales from his youth, including the time he tried to become an L.A. fire fighter.
It didn’t go well.
“I graduated North Hollywood High with a 1.7 GPA and could not find a job. I walked to a fire station. I was 19 and living in the garage of my family home and my mom was on welfare and food stamps. I said, ‘Can I get a job as a fireman?’ and they said, ‘No, because you’re not black, Hispanic or a woman and we’ll see you in about seven years.’”
He eventually got the invite to apply – roughly seven years later, he recalled during his testimony. He took the written exam and queried a fellow applicant while waiting at the government office.
“I had a young woman of color standing behind me in line, and I said to her, ‘Just out of curiosity, when did you sign up to become a fire man?’ … she said, ‘Wednesday.’ That is an example of my white privilege.”
He shared the anecdote to critique race-based policies, particularly those taught on college campuses. Now, the clip is going viral for different reasons.
X owner Elon Musk shared a post featuring Carolla’s testimony on his platform and it quickly amassed more than 4.4 million views.
And counting.
Others are aggressively reposting the 2017 era clip, including Carolla. The comic has been excoriating DEI-style policies for years on his self-titled podcast and on “The Adam and Dr. Drew Show.”
This week, he doubled down on how LA-area Democrats left the city vulnerable to natural disasters like this.
It’s a perfect example of bad governance https://t.co/4dkq0oW7hF
— Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) January 8, 2025
He also played up concerns that DEI priorities may have cost area residents dearly.
Very important when it comes to fire safety https://t.co/jUmbwRZSiD
— Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) January 8, 2025
Fire fighters are still working to extinguish the fires. We don’t know all the facts behind why the fires broke out in the first place or why some containtment efforts have stalled.
Carolla’s story, and suspicions that DEI prioritizes diversity over competence, won’t fade anytime soon.
Some of you here may want to read this article written by a current US Geological Survey scientist:
https://theconversation.com/how-santa-ana-winds-fueled-the-deadly-fires-in-southern-california-246965
Calif. repeatedly suffers droughts, but builds no reservoirs to preserve what Nature gives freely, rain. They could build desalinization plants to use the inexhaustible ocean to create fresh water but, besides paying for them, they would need power to run them.
Calif. repeatedly suffers brownouts from insufficient local production of electricity and pays a premium for power from OTHER states. There are no plans for anything but windmills, which have repeatedly been shown to be insufficient to anyone’s needs, much less a population of 40 million.
Calif. is notorious for the dilapidated condition of its road, freeways, bridges, and dams, Calif’s businesses are running away from the costly regulations that Calif. loves to create.
One could go on and on, but the point is that all of this catastrophic blundering is due to policy and Californians keep voting for people who create foolish policy. It doesn’t take a genius to catalogue these many failings, but it takes ‘P. T. Barnum’ scale of conman to keep selling such policies in the face of reality.
SO THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO HIRE A FUGGING IDIOT WITH A 1.7 GPA??? HE’S TOO STUPID TO CUT FISH AT A MARKET@
You sound like you were a 4.0, but couldn’t change your own oil.
I CAN FUGGING GUARANTEE AND WOULD BET YOU LOTS OF DOUGH THAT THEIR WAS A HUGE HUGE AMOUNT OF PAST DEI CANDIDATES THAT ARE NOW EMPLOYED BY FIRE DEPARTMENTS THAT HAD 1.7GPA OR LESS.
Keith, you’re too stupid to realize you’ve missed the point.
Truth! The plumbers union would only hire me as a helper/laborer, digging ditches, jack hammering etc. and I had a 2.5 gpa. Every other year was a minority year, so I waited for a year to get into the apprenticeship, all while breaking my back laboring. I used this time reflecting on my life choices and what I could do to be better. You had the same opportunities I did. Don’t desire to take from someone else’s opportunities, get out there and work hard, do some introspection and become better.
An honest person looks at a drought and says, “I am going to bust my ass, and ask my neighbors to bust their asses, to do whatever aqua engineering we can think of to get more water and ensure we don’t have to depend on that bitch Mother Nature’s whims for our survival.”
A dishonest person…does what the Democrat government has done for the past few decades, then comes up with stupid excuses that don’t hold water for why their idiocy is not their fault.
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And then we have you.
Tell me – I’m not religious, you’re a stranger to me, my personal politics are middle-left (voted for Obama both times), and your post consists of nothing but useless whining about how unhappy you are.
Justify to me why I should care about you “considering taking an out”.
CA was once a very green (in the good way) and lush (also in the good way) agricultural area. Then the DEMOcrats spotted an opportunity to work their “magic” and diverted life giving WATER away from the farmers and residents to flow into the ocean! The “reason” was to save the Delta Smelt, a magical little fish that has the ability to solve most of the World’s issues! Once the land became barren and dry the AIR became dry – the cycle of moisture from evaporation into the atmosphere was broken and all that remains is the hot, dry air that causes MORE hot, dry tinder to fuel any small fire into a raging inferno! Just look at the pictures – burned out homes, but those scattered trees are still there – WHY? The trees don’t rely on the LAFD! They reach DOWN for their moisture! SANE Fire Management has been absent in CA for DECADES and the fires keep getting worse – except in the areas that were burned out recently!! THANK A DEMOcrat!
Wow.
That’s not even remotely true. Like, the quickest of looks shows that there has been ongoing issues with water, from the California water wars to the current drought.
But, no. It was those awful Democrats. They caused.
People like you are the reason why I am contemplating taking an out.
Meanwhile, that same delta smelt, has worked it’s way into the agricultural irrigation pipes, clogging them. Should a farmer kill even one of the invasive species of fish, they are fined or jailed.
All this is happening under a super majority of democrats in all three branches of state government. It is the useful ignorant idiots who put the “DEMONcrats” into power in California
Please go ahead and take that out. If democrats stopped dumping runoff water in the ocean, they would have water. It’s pretty simple.
Los Angeles receives very little water from the region in NorCal where the Delta smelts are. Much of its water comes from Owens Valley in eastern Sierra and its own ground water. What’s going on with the water situation up in NorCal has little bearing on the fire here. It’s disappointing to see someone who is going to be the president will continue spreading idiotic misinformation to score political points in time of a disaster.
yeah.
because nobody can move water anywhere.
And yet California had record rainfall and a heavier-than-average icepack less than a year ago. But rather than building reservoirs to store that water against future need, California has been dithering for decades over perfecting and increasing draconian environmental rules of exactly the sort Mr. Trump is highlighting. His point is well taken. And blackballing something as ‘misinformation’ is so 2021. Facts inconvenient to the left, or cogent points about how their policies hurt people, will no longer conveniently disappear, which I, for one, find very refreshing.
I like me some AceMan.. I miss his old pcast format but dude has been a Claravoyant on cultural issues for years.