Come on, he's right up there with Greta van Susteren in the "noticeable plastic surgery" department. How come everyone made a big deal about Greta's redo yet pretends Denis Leary looks the same as he did a year or two ago?

I call sexism.

First, its by Denis Leary; second, its barely went to press and already the pitchfork brigade is howling about it. Third- he makes fun of sick little kids. Mmmm...chewy Swiftian goodness soon to follow...

So few people understand good satire- the GOOD stuff, that, even when you brace yourself for it, makes you inhale your bagel and hit the floor in convulsions. That was the great thing about being a fifteen year old kid and sitting down with a copy of National Lampoon- you were too fucking stupid to understand half of it, which meant you doubled your fun- you do your first read-through and have a good cackle at all the jokes about niggers, kikes, and cripples, then, a few years later, read the same issue over again and stroke your chin and nod knowingly at all the evicserating political commentary on Darth Reagan.

Yup- satire at its best is the gift that keeps on giving...

Denis Leary's career is largely based on plagiarism. He ripped off Bill Hick's red meat, chain smoking bah-humbug persona but without the insight or intelligence.

Since that time he's tried to keep the shock value at a maximum to keep the persona rolling but it rings hollow, lacks irony.

"Matt Dillon Is a Giant Fag" is a perfect example. It's there to get attention, not to make a point or find a deeper truth. Many people see this as aloof but if you look deep inside there's nothing.

Leary has the same phoniness in his persona that Tom Cruise has with women. Perhaps he now has something of value to say but it's wrapped in fraud and thus it can't ring true. His false outrage is fake, shallow and dumb. He's a fake.

The constructed machismo; the perseveration on gender, disclosure, and homophobia; the quite odd connection with Oprah, “because she's so open about weight and about clothing and about her greedy desires to own stuff and her private desires to change ...”; and the real anger and aggression displaced safely onto children and disguised as parenting.

I dunno . . . .

Lazy parenting, or lazy work on self?

Who is this guy? I never heard of him before today. He makes my head hurt. I hope I never have to hear about him again. I think he's a Big Fat Twit! He isn't funny.

Leary is intellectually lazy and uninformed and reaches for the easiest out in the world- blaming others. His bullsh*t session on parents of Autistic children is a perfect example. I have yet to come across a child in my classroom whose parent has diagnosed the child with Autism. That's just not a realistic scenario. I also have come across several Autistic children with mild to moderate MR. So, no they are all not smart and hardworking. Due to the fact that Autism is a neurological disorder, children can present a wide range of behaviors and levels of functioning. If Leary did even a cursory reading of the disorder, he'd know that.

Denis Leary needs to step back from issues he clearly knows nothing about and should stick to the day job.

..but that's okay.

...who don't get the joke - the reason you don't think he's funny is because he's talking about you.

It's called satire folks - exaggerating the small truths to make a larger point: That too many people take themselves way too seriously and make asses of themselves in the process. Writers like Leary are the perfect medicine for pompous liberals - he's a true progressive who makes the average Salon reader look stodgy in comparison. Rock on Denis!

I have to agree with the various people who critique Leary's career. And he isn't even fit to polish George Carlin's tombstone. Out of the box, back when he was clean-shaven and wore a suit and tie, Carlin was something unique. He managed whimsy and daring simultaneously. And as he matured, as his comedy and the world around him grew darker, he became more incisive and daring. Even when he seemed to turn conservative to a point when I started to disagree with him, he was a compelling voice.

Leary's work in Rescue Me is, frankly, more work than Carlin ever did. Carlin had numerous opportunities to do a TV series (there was almost a spinoff of Welcome Back Kotter when he appeared in one episode) but he didn't follow it up. TV tends to drain and destroy talent, and in that sense Leary is courageous. By choosing to take TV money, he is risking overexposure and public disdain. In that sense he is courageous.

But his standup material is ugly and misogynistic - aimed at shock to get attention, as other people have said. On the surface, he looks exactly like the kind of cretin comedy you hear on "morning zoo" radio and among people who declare themselves "redneck comedians." There may be heart and soul underneath Leary's macho Irish jerk persona, but it's too much work digging through his surface appearance to get to it.

Look at how someone pretending to be a Bill O'Reilly lout, Stephen Colbert, manages to remain human while playing an inhuman jerk - a surface appearance that fooled Republicans into thinking he was safe enough to entertain Bush and his lackey press. But anyone with perception knew that Colbert was a decent guy underneath. I don't know that about Dennis Leary.

Once again, a journamalist decides to defend Leary based on nothing but Leary's word. The problem with Leary's assertion is that he claims that the only form of autism which should be recognized is the form HE recognizes, that is, low-functioning classic autism. He rejects, against the vast majority of the mental health community, every other form of autism.

Leary has made himself the ultimate arbiter of what autism is and is not. Whatever Leary thinks in his fact-free views on autism, I AM autistic, I am NOT self-diagnosed, and autism (in my case, Asperger's Syndrome) has had a pervasive effect on my life, a kind of effect that Mr Leary could not possibly understand the first thing about.