Vice Presidential nominees JD Vance and Tim Walz will meet for their first and only debate Tuesday in advance of next month’s election.
When Walz was nominated, a good amount of the conversation about him centered on his “dad energy,” referring to his outfits, his personality and his jokes. And even though both Walz and Vance are dads, it’s tended to be Walz who’s been the subject of discussion about dad energy.
To talk about this — dad jokes specifically — The Show sat down with Valley comedian and father of two Anwar Newton.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Anwar, how do you define a dad joke?
ANWAR NEWTON: Dad jokes, honestly it’s anybody who’s a dad who makes a joke.
BRODIE: So the content doesn’t matter.
NEWTON: I feel like if you have dad energy, if you are not cool. It's like a ring. You’re you’re cool and you’re not cool, and then you’re so not cool it’s kind of cool again. It’s kind of cool how uncool you are. They have niches of subgroups: normie behavior, they call it dadcore, things like that. It’s all of a sudden cool again.
But dad jokes. If it doesn’t upset you a little bit that it’s so joyful. I think that’s the core of a good dad joke. It’s upsetting how innocent and joyful it is.
BRODIE: Like everyone’s rolling their eyes except the dad who’s telling the joke.
NEWTON: Like if you’re in a harrowing situation and someone has pointed out someone’s butt is exposed, it’s sort of a dad joke energy. It’s like, “Yeah, I guess there is a but there.”
BRODIE: So here’s my big question about it. I have two kids, and I am frequently accused of making dad jokes. But in my opinion at least, I’ve had the same sense of humor since I was in my 20s, long before I had kids. So have I always just had a dad sense of humor? Or do they become dad jokes once my first child is born? Like, how does that work?
NEWTON: That’s interesting. I’ve never thought of it in that way. And as soon as you were saying it, I was like, that’s actually very interesting because comedy changes and comedy sensibility changes. And I think a lot of people can tell the difference between what’s comedically highbrow now and what was comedically highbrow, say, 20 years ago — or even generally what people accepted as being very funny.
I think about the early aughts, and a lot of the humor was just mean. And now if you go back and look at those now, a lot of people are like, “What was going on 20 years ago? Is everything OK?”
Comedy changes. So I think it’s like if you keep an era of comedy in your heart and you take it for it, then it’s all of a sudden it’s dad. It’s like an obsolete sense of humor that’s sort of refreshing.
BRODIE: That’s really interesting. And one of the things I’ve read — doing some research on what constitutes a dad joke — is there are some people who say that a dad joke is the kind of joke that only a father will tell. Someone else, in theory — like anyone can tell these jokes. Dads don’t have a monopoly on cheesy wordplay or anything like that. But dads are seemingly the only ones who maybe have the guts to say it.
NEWTON: Maybe because …
BRODIE: Trying to put a positive spin on it.
NEWTON: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s guts. I think it’s that …
BRODIE: Lack of self-awareness?
NEWTON: Lack of situational awareness. And I was thinking about just dad jokes in general. A lot of times it’s just like having a certain level of joy in a situation where it’s mundane. Like one of my favorite dadisms — I don’t know if it’s necessarily a dad joke, but some people would say it is. It’s like when you go to a restaurant with the family and you finish all the food, and the waiter comes and grabs the plate and the dad goes, “Hated it.”
It’s the cleanest dad joke there is. And it’s like only a dad would make that. No kid is making that. And if you’re not a dad and you’re making that, people are like, “What’s going on? What are you trying to do here? Let’s just leave and pay the bill.”
BRODIE: So you have two young children. Have you found yourself working dad jokes into your routines? Do you find that you are making dad jokes at home now, that you would never have thought of having done before your kids were born?
NEWTON: Yeah, my butt humor has gone through the roof now. With a 4-year-old, butt humor is the cream of the crop. I have found a lot of trouble personally bringing my dadness to the stage because I wasn’t that. And I didn’t have any plans to be a dad early on, so a lot of my humor was social and political and commentary on sort of what’s going on in adults’ lives.
And now I find myself talking about — family is something I never really did. But I would be amiss to say, you know, a lot of my set is talking about my kids now. And one of my favorite jokes to do on stage is — it’s not even a joke. I’ll wiggle my glasses like this.
BRODIE: OK. Up and down.
NEWTON: I started wearing glasses when I had a kid. And I’ll wiggle my glasses like Groucho Marx up and down. And prior to me doing this, I’ve talked about a myriad of different topics, and I’ll come at the audience. I’m like, if you don’t laugh at this, there’s no joy in your heart, you know?
And that’s the heart of a dad joke. It’s just joyful for no reason.
BRODIE: It’s interesting because it sounds like, in your mind at least, part of the purpose of a dad joke is maybe to defuse a difficult situation, or put others at ease and maybe shift the concern or the worry or the problem from one thing and put it on themselves.
NEWTON: That’s the perfect way of putting it. I think that is at the heart of a lot of dad jokes. And when you think about most situations, that’s the best person to have around: the person that’s still in the midst of so much crap. It’s like, let’s smile a little bit. Yeah, I know the car is broken down, we’re in the middle of nowhere, and then you make a dad joke situationally about where you were going — I’m not very good at dad jokes.
BRODIE: But your kids are young. You’ve got time.
NEWTON: I’m still learning. I’m four years into dad jokes. I feel like you got to have a teenager to really seal in a good dad joke.
BRODIE: Yeah. Let me tell you, they love them.
NEWTON: I think that’s why you do them. It’s like, oh, you’re going to hate it.
BRODIE: You mentioned that a lot of your earlier stand-up was more social, more political. Have you found that your audiences are OK with you? Because it seems like kind of a hard left turn from talking about politics to talking about butts?
NEWTON: I tell you right now, I do them both. I think it makes me more complex and more interesting as a person.
BRODIE: So are you aware, like when you’re interacting with your kids, when you are telling a joke? Is there something in your brain that says, “Yeah, this is a dad joke. I probably would not have said this before my kids were born”?
NEWTON: Yeah, yeah for sure. I can’t recall anything in particular, but sometimes I’ll stop and I’m like, “What is going on with you?”
BRODIE: Who are you?
NEWTON: You get a reflection of yourself in the mirror. You’re like, “What was that?” I’m a new dad. I have to always remember that because I don’t have anything in my repertoire that is like, “I got this for this situation. I go out and do this and do that.” Maybe I do, and I’m not aware of it yet. I feel like I don’t have enough years under my belt to be like, “Oh, that’s a joke I’ve been doing a while.”
But I’m sure there are moments where people are just like, sick of listening to me. And I think that’s the core of a dad joke or just a jokey dad. So, in that sense, I think I do, but I don’t know it yet since I’m so wet behind the ears. I’m a baby dad.
