Bill Burr: When Calling Peyton Manning Ugly Goes Wrong

BOSTON (CBS) — Bill Burr is a comedian. As such, his words should be taken as part of an act, intended to make people laugh.

Alas, in this day and age, everything is quotable, and as a result, everything can get you into some trouble.

Burr joined Toucher & Rich on Wednesday morning and explained how calling Peyton Manning ugly got him into some trouble recently.

“I said something recently that the reason why Peyton Manning wasn’t under the same scrutiny for that HGH to his wife that Tom Brady was for the gerbil’s hair level of air out of a ball is I basically said that Cam Newton and Tom Brady were just really good looking, and sports writers are ugly, and Peyton is just as ugly as a sports writer. It was absolutely absurd, completely over the top. I don’t believe that on any level, I was just being an idiot on my podcast,” Burr said. “And then somebody picked it up and they presented it like I was on ‘Meet The Press.’ So then I start getting all these tweets, like, ‘Dude you might be one the dumbest blah blah blah bleep bleep bleep,’ and I’m just sitting there going how could anybody in their right mind take what I said seriously? It’s the dumbest thing. It was completely absurd. But nowadays, because there’s so many different things that people are watching, the way to slow people down and get a hit on your website and all that, one of the easiest ways is to take a comedian seriously.”

Burr, who’s an avid Boston sports fan and makes that perfectly clear on his podcasts, later tackled the question of whether Cam Newton gets treated unfairly because of his race.

“There’s always going to be racism when you have white and black people, there’s always going to be that issue. And they did all that stuff after the people, ‘How come Peyton Manning doesn’t get blah blah blah, and Cam Newton gets all this?’ I don’t think it’s a fair comparison. I don’t think Peyton Manning is the white version of Cam Newton. They are as askill level, but Peyton Manning’s whole thing is ‘Aw shucks I’m just happy to be here.’ I would more compare Cam the way he hams it up after every play, I would compare it more to like a Johnny Manziel. … I look at it as if you’re going to dance and do all that crap after every time you make a good play, you’re going to bring all this. Those sports writers are going to hate you. They can’t wait for you to fall on your face, because they’re out-of-shape nerds who didn’t get picked in gym class. Generally speaking. So you can’t run around and do all the stuff that he did with the million dollar smile and sit there [and sulk].”

Burr, however, was amused by Newton’s post-Super Bowl press conference.

“I actually thought it was hilarious, his interview,” Burr said. “He looked like a kid who got a timeout. He was acting like he was 3 years old and then he just got up and walked out. They’re going to have a field day with that. And then the thing that he’s black, if there’s some white dude there with an issue, they’re going to go extra. But I don’t think Peyton Manning could have done ‘no, no, no, no, I don’t know,’ and then just get up and walk out. I don’t think any quarterback could’ve done that after a Super Bowl and not gotten a certain level of crap.

“I don’t know. What do I know? I’m a white guy. I have no idea what it’s like to be black. But I didn’t think it was 100 percent, ‘Oh this guy is a black quarterback, let’s trash him extra hard. And if Peyton does it, let’s let him get away with it.'”

Burr then quickly thought of something.

“However,” he said, “he also had HGH sent to his house in his wife’s name and nobody said anything. So maybe there’s truth to it, I don’t know.”