Larry the Cable Guy calls out Fox News for taking him ‘outa context’ — network revises story after his complaint

THE DAILY BS: HOW MUCH CAN YOU HANDLE?

SPARE ME THE BS (I’ve got things to do).

Larry the Cable Guy accused Fox News of taking his remarks about corporate advertising and missed endorsement opportunities out of context.
The comedian says he was joking about decisions companies made years ago, not complaining about his successful career or attacking fellow entertainers.
Fox subsequently revised its article and added an editor’s note — while Larry also complained that the network should have used a more flattering photograph.

LAY IT ON ME (I’ve got time).

Larry the Cable Guy has a message for Fox News: If you’re going to turn an old comedy story into a headline, at least make him look good doing it.

The comedian, whose real name is Daniel Whitney, took to X Sunday to complain that Fox News had taken his comments from a podcast appearance out of context, making it sound as though he was bitter about missed advertising opportunities.

And this wasn’t some angry celebrity demanding an apology while threatening to call his attorney.

This was Larry the Cable Guy, who managed to criticize the news business and his own publicity photo in the same breath.

“This is why I never do interviews because clips are always taken outa context,” Larry complained.

The dispute began with an October 12 appearance on The MeatEater Podcast, hosted by outdoorsman Steven Rinella.

The setting wasn’t a Hollywood press junket. It was Larry’s private suite at a University of Nebraska football game, where the conversation wandered through hunting, comedy, football and his career.

Somewhere in the discussion, Larry remembered an advertising opportunity he thought corporate America had missed years earlier.

DirecTV had been running commercials featuring handsome actors, and Larry thought the company was overlooking an obvious advertising gimmick.

Why not hire him?

“Larry the Cable Guy is switching to DirecTV.”

Come on. The slogan practically writes itself.

Larry recalled that some advertising executives believed his Southern accent and occasionally controversial humor limited his appeal to national audiences.

But he found that reasoning rather peculiar when other corporations were perfectly comfortable hiring entertainers whose lyrics and public personas could be considerably more provocative.

He pointed to rappers whose songs included references to killing police officers and degrading women, noting that some still managed to secure lucrative endorsements.

Snoop Dogg entered the conversation as an example of a rapper with major commercial deals.

But Larry made a point of saying he wasn’t criticizing Snoop.

“I got nothing against Snoop Dogg,” he said. “God bless Snoop Dogg.”

His complaint was directed toward corporate executives who, in his view, applied one standard to entertainers with a blue-collar or Southern image and another to performers whose material could be just as controversial.

It was an observation about corporate decision-making — served with a helping of Larry’s trademark humor.

Fox News published an article Saturday discussing his comments about hypocrisy in the advertising business.

That was apparently enough to make Larry reach for his phone.

He insisted that the conversation had been about the past and that he wasn’t sitting around nursing some decades-old grievance against DirecTV.

“First of all my career has been amazing and I’m not unhappy about anything,” he wrote.

He explained that the discussion took place before a Nebraska game and concerned companies that once considered certain entertainers too offensive while hiring others with equally controversial material.

That, he said, was the entire point.

Then he accused the news business of doing what it does best: chasing clicks by lifting moments from a much longer conversation.

And just when the complaint was starting to sound serious, Larry delivered the punchline.

“Also, use a better pic than this one. Im much hotter now. lol”

There you have it. A media criticism, a defense of the American blue-collar comedian and a request for improved photographic representation.

Fox News, to its credit, didn’t simply ignore the objection.

The network subsequently updated its article and added an editor’s note explaining that the story had been revised after Larry said his remarks were taken out of context and clarified that he held no genuine resentment toward corporations over his career.

That last point matters.

Larry has done rather well for somebody corporate advertisers supposedly couldn’t figure out how to sell to the public.

He became one of America’s most recognizable comedians through the Blue Collar Comedy Tour alongside Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Ron White.

He built a multimillion-dollar entertainment career around his Git-R-Done persona, released successful comedy albums, starred in movies and became the voice of Tow Mater in Disney-Pixar’s Cars films.

Not exactly the résumé of a man waiting beside the telephone for DirecTV to discover him.

Mediaite, which reported on the dispute Sunday, observed that Fox had actually included some of Larry’s historical context in the original article. The opening nevertheless presented his remarks as though the corporate double standard were a complaint he was making about the present day.

The New York Post also reported on Larry’s original comments, though his public complaint specifically singled out the Fox News coverage.

There is a broader cultural observation buried beneath the comedy.

For years, entertainers with Southern accents, country audiences or outspoken conservative reputations have argued that Madison Avenue considers them too polarizing for certain national campaigns.

Larry’s point was that corporate executives sometimes seem remarkably selective about what qualifies as offensive.

But he wasn’t asking anybody to feel sorry for him.

He was reminiscing about a missed advertising joke during a football-game podcast, and somewhere between Nebraska and the national news cycle, the story acquired a little more outrage than he intended.