Heather McMahan’s Ryder Cup Backlash

0:03 Hello, I'm Johnny Mac with your daily comedy news. Heather McMahon was almost cancelled at one point, and now she has a comedy special. She was hired to emcee the first tee of the Ryder Cup. That is the annual tournament meant to be a friendly battle between American and European golfers. And she was struggling and went over the crowd, the Hollywood Reporter tells us. The crowd was a rowdy, largely drunk, overwhelmingly male, undecidedly American horde at the Long Island course. They started chanting something mean about Rory McIlroy. Heather McMahon saw an opportunity to ingratiate herself with the new audience. She did that and got fired. She issued a public apology to Rory, but it was too late.

0:52 For 72 hours, she was the recipient of the golf subsection of the Manosphere. Heather McMahon said, Well, she's got a new special called Buy a Thread, which is on Hulu. It opens with Heather McMahon's retelling of the event. She told The Hollywood Reporter, I had grown men sending me personal messages, messaging my managers, my publicists, everybody saying, hey, have Heather meet me outside of XYZ Steakhouse in Atlanta. We're ready to brawl. It is insane what people will send from their personal accounts. This is from Bill. He's an accountant. I can see what firm he works at. What was scary is that I'd never been in this sort of situation, specifically in a man's world. My audience is strongly females and fab gays. They get me. Afterwards, of course, every single one of my buddies in comedy messaged me like, this is gold. This is the best thing that could ever happen to you. Once I apologized, once I got over the hump, I was like, there's so much here. She said, golf is in a weird space.

1:48 I grew up playing golf. I was a golfer in high school. It's in my blood. My husband and I go to the Masters every year. The Ryder Cup's always been known to be heavily competitive between Europe and America, but it's always been a good fun. I think having in Long Island the already weird animosity that America was having to outsiders, I don't think they were set up for success that year. And I'll fall on my sword. I didn't help the cause. It was wild. What does golf want to be? Is it all buttoned up like the Masters? Is it trying to be Happy Gilmore? Boy, I hope not. I do think golf needed a shake off of the cobwebs. Quit being a stuffy, but it doesn't know where it wants to go. Change of topics here. The Hollywood Reporter said, I would like to address your Pitbull affinity. I'm amused by the answer. She said, I started dressing in drag as Pitbull 10 years ago on a whim one Halloween. I went around trick-or-treating with a bunch of my friend's kids. They had no idea it was me for the first hour and a half. They just thought it was some creepy guy was following them.

2:35 Then I started doing impressions as him. By my first tour, people knew that was my shtick. I love Pitbull. This past summer, I got a text from a Miami number. It's the real Pitbull. He's like, Heather, I've seen all your stuff. I adore you. We have to have you be part of this Guinness Book of World Records party in Hyde Park. So I end up going to London. I'm in drag. I host this full countdown to the concert with two other guys. I think 75,000 people came out, but the people actually there in time to be counted for the Guinness record was around 22,000. It was incredible. Guinness sent me a plaque that's like, you were part of it. Good interview there. Kate Berlant has an HBO special. She also got a big piece with Vanity Fair. We're curious, how did you pick Parmesan for the title? She says, titles are so hard. I was like, Parmesan. Then I was like, oh, it's not going to be that. I'll improve on that. And I never did. I was talking to Chelsea Peretti and she was like, oh, you're shooting a special? I was like, yeah. She's like, what's it called?

3:23 I was like, Parmesan. She laughed and I was like, all right, good enough for me. It's sort of impossible to have a funny stand-up special title. I like how confusing it is. It means nothing. And then when you watch the show, you obviously gain insight into what it might mean or represent. But it was the best I could do, and honestly, I was just making me laugh because it was so deeply unserious. The L.A. Blade caught up with Fortune Feimster. She said, She talked about getting hateful comments. One person called her a pejorative towards the lesbian community that I'm not going to repeat, even though Fortune chose to say it in her own special. She explains, sometimes it's hard to deal with some of the hateful comments, but this particular one, I was turning his comment on its head that he referred to me as the awful things, but he did refer to my partner at the time as my wife, which meant he was recognizing my marriage.

4:18 That was a huge step because guys like him, people like him, don't want me to have that right to begin with. Fortune says she has always taken the representation she provides very seriously when she steps on stage, explaining any time we get to tell our stories on platforms like Netflix, it's big. People from all over the world see these specials, and hopefully they see something in you that they resonate with. And then on the silly side of this, I have some fun jokes that I tease my fellow lesbians about, which people are really enjoying. You've got to not take yourself so seriously. She will be the Grand Marshal for the 2026 Palm Springs Pride Parade. That is November 8th. She says things are getting harder. This is the time to be more visible, and that's what I do, just be a visible out comedian who is not trying to shy away from who I am. Margaret Cho is getting ready to do the time warp.

5:00 She will make her Broadway debut in the Rocky Horror Show. She will take over the role of the narrator beginning November 3rd. Cho replaces Rachel Dratch, who has played the role since the production opened earlier this year. Dratch's final show will be Sunday, November 1st. The change comes just weeks after a brief guest appearance by Rosie O'Donnell, who was the narrator for two weeks, October 6th through the 18th, while Rachel Dratch was on leave. Exciting day here in the basement. We've got 49ers Falcons at one o'clock. Boy, the Niners gave me a scare on Monday night in the first half. They looked like they were going to win 70 to nothing. And then I'm sitting there hoping they can stop the last play. However, the undefeated 49ers will continue to go undefeated against the stupid Falcons today.

5:40 The only question is, will they cover or not? And then the 4 o'clock games suck. Broncos, Cardinals, Packers, Lions, Rams, Raiders, those are all terrible. So luckily, the world champion New York Knicks play the Magic at 7 o'clock. I'm going to continue to nag you to vote. Early voting is available. You can wait till Election Day or you could go vote right now. You got to do a little bit of work and Google like early voting near me and there's a place you can go vote. Again, I don't care who you vote for. Vote for whatever you believe in, whoever you believe in, whoever you support. That's good. The important thing is to vote because if you don't vote, then maybe your team doesn't win and then you're upset about it. So you have the right to vote. Please go vote. If you need something to listen to while you're driving to the polling place, on the Live One app, I do host a weekly show that comes out on Sundays.

6:24 It is called the Weekly Comedy Thing. It's kind of like this, but I play a lot more bits and I talk a lot less. Then a lot of you are probably like, wait, less of him, more of the clips? That sounds amazing. I agree. It is called the Weekly Comedy Thing. You'll find it on the Live One app. The New York Comedy Festival has set the lineup for the fifth annual Creators to Watch Showcase Festival. The lineup includes Austin Nasso, Carly Stanton, Caroline Haynes, Caroline Portu, Charles Hsu, Dan Yang, Jordan Fisher, Carly Sargent, Max Manticoff, Mike Liszewski, Misty Sanderson, The Really Good Talk Show, Tiffany and Gabe Lipton, The Yard Sale Girls, and Yvette Segan. Creators to Watch spotlights the next wave of comedy trailblazers, redefining entertainment online.

7:08 Some of the alumni, Grace Rader from Class of 24. She's one of the new SNL cast members. Congratulations. Do you like Lego? Do you like Jimmy Fallon? Let me talk about the Lego. Somebody put in my head recently that, like, I'm surprised you don't like Lego. And I'm like, I do like Lego. So I was like, all right, maybe I'll get one of these Lego sets. And there was like this cool Lego pirate ship on Amazon. It's $ 400. I'm not doing that. No. And I'm also not doing this. Somebody wants there to be a Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon Lego set. So LEGO has LEGO Ideas, an official program that allows fans to submit concepts and rally support to have them turned into products. If the Jimmy Fallon LEGO set sounds familiar, it's because the opposite once happened.

7:49 In 2021, Fallon and Jerry Seinfeld celebrated Seinfeld's LEGO Ideas set by transforming Fallon's show into a life-size LEGO set. This 429-piece set, created by Unir Zone Press, includes the Studio 6B desk area that Fallon has called home since taking over the show in 2014. The concept features Fallon's desk and mug, the guest chair and couch, and the wooden New York City skyline. You will also get minifigures of Fallon and announcer Steve Higgins. Rob Beckett is on Celebrity Traitors. He explained why comedians thrive on Celebrity Traitors. He says because they can change the emotions at the roundtable. He explains it doesn't matter who you're in a room with. If you're funny, you got a little bit of control of that room because you completely deflect with humor. You can close conversations down. You can change their emotions if they're frustrated and inquisitive. Then you get a laugh out of them. Then it's all switched. So it's quite a lot of power in those situations if you can disarm people with humor. Now, it's funny. On American Traders, I hate when it's celebrities. I want it to be regular folks.

8:46 And UK, I actually prefer the regular people, too. But when you throw comedians in there, I'm interested. And Time Out New York has their list of the comedians to watch. One of the comedians to watch is Maddie Wiener. We're told she's something of a prodigy when it comes to stand-up. She started the art form as a teenager after spending her childhood as a theater and improv kid in North Carolina. At 16 years old, hanging around a lot of divorced dads, she became a mainstay at Good Nights Comedy Club in Raleigh and managed to get on stage most nights of the week. Wow. She's got some good lines here, told better by her, but they read funny. One of them about body positivity. We should just let people be ugly. Another about gender identity. I've got a little they-them bubbling up in me, but I'm more lazy than I am trans, so it's at a standstill. They were curious about the funniest thing in her life right now. She said, I got prescribed Klonopin, and then I got worried that it would make my anxiety worse. I may be the first person ever Klonopin gave a panic attack to. How about a joke that lands? She said, I hope this doesn't sound like a pretentious answer, but I think once you're like, this one can never fail, then you're effed, because the audience can sense that you have the energy of, this is about to crush, and then it's off-putting. Pretty smart there.

9:51 And that is your comedy news on a Sunday. Go Niners! Go Knicks! See you tomorrow.