Jeff Dunham Sold 1.98 Million Tickets With a Skeleton. He's Better Than You Think

Jeff Dunham got his first dummy for Christmas in 1970, when he was 8 years old. It was a Mortimer Snerd, and most children who get one of those put it in a closet and spend the rest of their lives describing it to a therapist. Dunham took it on the road. He made his television debut in Dallas in 1976, moved to Los Angeles at the end of 1988, had a Tonight Show booking cancelled that same year, and finally reached Johnny Carson on April 6, 1990. That's 20 years from Christmas morning to the couch. Plenty of marriages don't last that long, and the ones that do tend to end up the same way, with one party doing all the talking.

Here is what he did next, and I'd ask the comedy purists to take a seat, since they've had a long night of not getting paid. His Spark of Insanity tour sold 1,981,720 tickets at 386 venues between September 2007 and August 2010, which Guinness World Records lists as the most tickets ever sold for a stand-up tour. Forbes ranked him the third-highest-paid comedian in the country, behind Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, with about $30 million from June 2008 to June 2009. That's a fellow with a skeleton on his arm out-earning every comic in America but two, including all the ones who'll explain to you at the bar why they're the real thing.

The television numbers were just as rude. His Very Special Christmas Special drew 6.6 million viewers in 2008, at the time the highest-rated telecast in Comedy Central's history. Controlled Chaos pulled an estimated 8.3 million in 2011. The Achmed the Dead Terrorist clip had nearly 200 million YouTube views by June 2009, back when YouTube was mostly cats and men falling off things. A dead man in a turban did that, and I know living actors with three agents who can't get a callback.

The case against him isn't stupid, and I won't insult you by pretending it is. Randee Dawn of The Hollywood Reporter and other critics called some of his characters racist caricatures, and when your roster includes a jalapeño named José and a redneck named Bubba J, you've left the door open and put out a chair. South Africa's advertising regulator banned a ringtone ad featuring Achmed in 2008 after a complaint that it offended Muslims. And The Jeff Dunham Show had the most-watched premiere in Comedy Central's history in October 2009, then got cancelled after one season for bad reviews, falling ratings and high costs. So the man can fail, which I find reassuring. A dead terrorist who couldn't be cancelled would be a real national security problem.

But look at what's actually happening up there. He sculpted the original Walter himself and made the silicone mold, and he restores antique dummies for fun, the way another rich man might collect wives. Then he stands in front of an arena and has a fight with himself, in two voices, with his mouth shut, and gets laughs off the timing. That's harder than anything anybody has ever said about airports. When Malaysian authorities asked in 2014 that Achmed not be used or named, Dunham performed him as Jacques Merde, the Dead French Terrorist. A government told a puppet to shut up, and the puppet came back French. I've seen entire hours at the Comedy Cellar with less on their minds about censorship.

You needn't like him. I'm not sure I do. But the snobs say anybody can get rich talking to himself, and they're right, it's called a podcast, only none of those fellows would sell two million tickets to watch them do it with their lips closed. The world will forgive a man nearly anything except being popular with people it doesn't have dinner with.