Once Notorious, Now Just Trying Not to Be Invisible
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By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Mercy now plays a major part in the religion of fame. That's not good. Disgraced superstars -- Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, all the prostitute-frequenters and sex-tape-makers -- regularly receive such automatic forgiveness from the public that we're beginning to surrender the last of our meager power over them. Today, in fact, if you so much as claim annoyance at patently annoying figures like John Travolta or Rush Limbaugh, there's a deacon standing by to scold you and tell you that, no matter what, that guy ''was great in X and changed Y forever.'' I guess so. All of fame's children now deserve a permanent place in the heavens.
It may be the wrong time, then, to go Calvinist on Andrew Dice Clay. The motor's running on what he must see as his due: his Ozzy moment, his Bonaduce moment. The VH1 reality show ''Dice Undisputed'' -- about his attempt at a career comeback, co-starring his two sons, his shrill fiancée and his motley entourage -- is intended to shove him back in our faces, right where he apparently belongs. But we must again resist his advances. Let's say it one more time: He's charmless and unfunny.
''Dice Undisputed,'' which has its premiere tomorrow, begins with a capacity crowd of permed women and mulleted men doing the wave at Madison Square Garden in 1990. This was Mr. Clay's heyday: a stand-up comic who packed the country's biggest auditoriums. He had a lughead Arthur Fonzarelli Jewish-Italian attitude. He was known above all for being sexist. He attracted boycotts. He was banned from MTV. Sinead O'Connor and Nora Dunn both refused to appear with him on ''Saturday Night Live.'' Apologists said he voiced a particular kind of male rage (which he now believes is back in style), while sensitive, right-thinking women felt free to despise him even though his stuff was tame compared to later hip-hop.
As comedy, Mr. Clay's bellowing neo-Dangerfield shtick worked about 40 percent of the time, especially in a giant, responsive room; he could really belt it out. His tag line was a disgusted, drawn-out version of the word ''un-be-liev-able,'' pronounced as if through a mouthful of bagel.
''Who, after 1990, will remember who Andrew Dice Clay was?'' is the question at the top of the new program -- asked by Jane Pauley, who later would have her own struggles with fame. The answer, really, is not many people. In those days, he was Dice or the Diceman, a hero to a certain kind of hotheaded lout and a fat fish in a barrel for anyone who saw herself as sophisticated. But then he really was pitifully slow -- a wheezing, galumphing guppy -- when it came to dodging his critics, and the pain of ''Dice Undisputed'' is that he has evidently spent 17 years brooding on the havoc political correctness wrought in his career.
Because the world-historical significance of that career is not entirely clear -- Rodney Dangerfield outdid Mr. Clay as the outer-borough lunk, and nearly any old rapper is more incendiary -- it's not all that satisfying to watch him try to revive it. His relationship with his fiancée, a onetime wrestler with the improbably buttoned-up name of Eleanor, has no sweetness, levity or sexiness. Mr. Clay treats his entourage with contempt that's surly and lazy, not entertaining.
Mr. Clay's current problems become clear tomorrow night in a scene with his agent of 20 years, Dennis Arfa, whom he fires in the next episode. Mr. Arfa is a grim-reaper man of ghoulish physiognomy who, on hearing of Mr. Clay's comeback ambitions, says, ''There's a difference between dreams and fantasies.''
Mr. Clay says weakly, ''Yeah, but years ago -- -- ''
''That's a long way from home.'' Mr. Arfa responds, taking a call from Debbie Gibson. The vagueness between them is more aggressive than a swearing match. Mr. Clay looks desperate. Later he seems to fight tears.
Has this really been going on all this time? Andrew Dice Clay has just been getting fatter and balder and listening to his agent idly crush his hopes of working again? How horrible. Still, 17 years is a long time to float around without suiting up, going back to the old gym and directing some of that manly Madison Square Garden rage into a real, gutsy, full-dress comeback.
Think about it. Eddie Murphy befriended a transvestite. Woody Allen married his girlfriend's daughter. Both seemed to be culturally left for dead at the time, and now each is at the top of his game. So what got you, again, Mr. Clay? ''Political correctness''? Unbelievable.Dice Undisputed
VH1, tomorrow night at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.
Danny Salles, executive producer for Fox TV Studios; Jeff Olde, Jill Holmes, Alex Demyanenko and Damla Dogan, executive producers for VH1.
