In a recent interview, veteran journalist Katie Couric asked California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, whether being “so ridiculously good-looking” made it harder for him to be taken seriously. For podcaster and former Comedy Central host Adam Carolla, that exchange captured much of what’s wrong with media and politics today.
In a March conversation with Nick Gillespie, Carolla talks about how legacy media traded skepticism for access and how California’s dysfunction makes everything more expensive and time consuming.
Q: Let’s start by talking about Katie Couric. Why did that interview set you off?
A: Here’s what I realized with journalism: There’s this sad tacit agreement, which is you can’t ask tough questions or follow-up questions because then that person would never come back. Gavin Newsom did my show 13 years ago, and he’s never come because I asked follow-ups.
Q: It was a tough interview, but it was not a hostile one.
A: No, it was not hostile at all. I just kept asking. People don’t do it now because Katie wants to get Gavin again down the road after he announces he’s running for president. But that’s not journalism. Journalism is asking the questions. If everyone just did it at once, then they wouldn’t have a choice because there’d be no friendly confines for them to go. If all journalists started acting like journalists and we all did it at once, then they’d still have to come back to you. They just have to answer your questions.
Q: What should Couric have asked Newsom?
A: There’s a bottom line, which is: “People are leaving California. Why?” Then he’d go, “We have the fourth-largest economy,” and they go, “OK, well, there’s a perception about California, and maybe they’re all wrong, but they’re still packing up U-Hauls and leaving. You’re telling me it’s the greatest place in the world, we’ve never been better, fine. There goes another U-Haul for Texas. Venture a guess as to why they’re leaving.”
Q: Talk a bit about one of your ongoing complaints about California. How does the state artificially make it so difficult to build and maintain housing?
A: I’ll give you a perfect example: California would love everyone to put solar panels on their house. I bought a big sprawling place on top of Lake Hollywood, a big Spanish place. It was in very bad shape, and I was going to do a huge renovation on it. There was space on one of the roofs and one part of the house that was big and broad and flat and I said, “I want solar panels on this roof.” I’m not an environmentalist, but fine, if I can generate kilowatts from the sun and a little less out of my pocket, a little less coal burning, then good, I’ll do it. I started to talk to some solar guys and plan out putting solar panels on my roof. I was told that in California, maybe it was even Los Angeles, the problem was that there needed to be a main shut-off for the solar that was outside of the front gate. Meaning, if there’s an issue—I don’t know what the issue would be, but—the fire department could hit the master on it. In every other municipality and every other state, that solar shut-off was on the panel, the electrical panel. The fire department could come in, see the panel, see the big solar shut-off, and shut it. The regulation in Los Angeles was it had to be separate and on the street. Well, the gate was 200 feet from where the solar panels were, and by code, I needed a 2-foot-deep trench with conduit, the 2-inch-wide conduit that ran, and I was like, I’m not going to pay a hundred grand to put a switch.
So you know what I said? “Fuck solar.” I had no solar. I didn’t pay for solar. I didn’t get solar, the solar company didn’t get money, we didn’t save anything, more kilowatts, more fossil fuel. They made it too difficult for me to get solar. They look at that as sort of a win—not me not getting solar but more safety, more safety, more rules, more regulation.
Q: Newsom and the regulators, at some level, must understand this. Where does common sense come back into the equation?
A: First off, I do not know what Newsom understands. I’ll tell you this about regulators. You go, “Well, they must understand.” Regulators make regulations. It’s in the title. I used to have this saying about producers in Hollywood, but I’ll say this about regulators. I said, if you take beavers and you put them on the roof of the Empire State Building, they start looking for wood to build a dam. And someone goes, “What do you need a dam for? We’re 2,000 feet in the air.” The answer is, “We’re beavers. This is what we do.” They’re regulators, they make rules. Get rid of rules, they add them, and they keep adding.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.
