Ron White

Ron "Tater Salad" White is a stand-up comedian. He first gained fame in the early 2000s as a member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, in association with fellow comedians Bill Engvall, Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy. He is easily the most vulgar of the four, with his albums regularly carrying explicit-content warnings.

White's first major comedy album, Drunk in Public, was a commercial success, going gold in the wake of the Blue Collar tour's peak of success. One of his most notable jokes is a long Shaggy Dog Story wherein he is arrested for public intoxication.

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Ron White provides examples of the following tropes:

• The Alcoholic: The Sophisticated As Hell variant (see below). He rarely performs without a glass of whiskey in hand, even making a joke of it when he had a large number of the water bottles most comedians used... and then got rid of them in favor of his booze bottle. Perhaps the only time it's really hindered him is when he became more and more visibly inebriated during the Jeff Foxworthy Roast, with Larry finally having to take over hosting duties for him.
• The Alleged Car: One story involved a...botched tire-change job at Sears Auto, which ended with him driving out of the parking lot and one wheel falling right off his van. He should've known something was up when "it took three hours to change four tires."
  • "And I told the guys at Sears that I'm gonna tell this story every show I do until they settle."
• All Men Are Perverts: "Guys, you know how it is. You've seen one woman naked... you wanna see the rest of them naked!"
• Berserk Button: Ron discovered a whole new world of pissed off when, after having the tires on his van replaced, one fell off.
• Brick Joke: The "Tater Salad" story. Short version: he was arrested for DUI when he was young. Since it was a small town, he had known the cop personally for a long time. When the cop -- who of course had to follow procedure -- asked him if he had any aliases, Ron sarcastically responded "Yeah. They call me...'Tater Salad.'" Twenty years later, while being arrested for being drunk in public in New York City, the officer ran his record and asked him "Are you Ron 'Tater Salad' White?"
  • Also the guy who didn't put the lug nut back on his van.
  • And the below mentioned old man with the Gag Penis.
  • The "KOO-pins" joke mentioned lower down actually managed to show up, completely without preparation or explanation, in a different routine he did years later.
• Comically Missing the Point: When recapping the documentary Grizzly Man to his audience, he gets to the part where Timothy Treadwell is eaten by a bear.

"Funniest movie I've ever seen in my life!"

• Cool Old Guy
• Deadly Fireworks Display: Brought up in one of his routines. "No! Get away fr--would you look at that?"
• Deadpan Snarker: Oh so much. When referring to a man who planned to ride out a hurricane by tying himself to a pole, on the grounds that he was in great physical shape and could withstand the wind:

"Okay, uh, let's get something straight. It's not that the wind is blowing, it's what the wind is blowing. If you get hit by a Volvo, it doesn't matter how many sit-ups you did that day."

• Fan Nickname: "Tater Salad." He calls his son "Tater Tot."
  • And "Poot."
• Gag Penis: During a trip to Hawaii, he encounters a man that must have had a fully grown squirrel stuffed into his speedo. He meets him again, this time at a nude beach...
  • And apparently the squirrel was eaten by an anaconda.
    • Not So Different: If he were in his position, he would've had a frame around it.
• Gay Aesop: "The most useless thing you can be is homophobic"/"We're all gay, it's just to what extent are you gay." (The latter is a possibly unintentional reference to the Kinsey sliding scale of human sexuality developed by sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.)

Ron: Do ya like porn?
Homophobe: Yeah, I like porn.
Ron: You don't just like two women, though, you like to see a guy in there too?
Homophobe: Well, sure.
Ron: Do you mind if the guy has a small dick?
Homophobe: Naw, man, I like big, throbbing cocks!
(gets a horrified face, stops to think about what he said)
Homophobe: I did not know that about myself.

• I Need a Freaking Drink: In the third Blue Collar movie, when Larry starts telling "'joke' jokes", Ron gets up and goes to the bar on stage and fixes himself a drink. Jeff asks him if the show was running a little long for him.
• Insistent Terminology: The "Tater Salad" story involved the cops charging him with public drunkenness "Drunk. In. Pub-lic." He saw it differently:

Ron: "I was not 'Drunk. In. Pub-lic.' I was drunk in a bar. [The bouncers] threw me into pub-lic. Arrest them!"

• Overly Long Gag: The "Tater Salad" story again. He spends nearly 45 seconds imitating a telegraph, and lampshades the length by saying, "This part takes a while."

Ron: Brbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrp. (Beat) Shorthand.

• Popular Saying, But...: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, then find someone whose life has given him vodka and have a party.
• Product Placement: Averted; in one of his specials, he admitted that he pours his scotch out of one of his own bottles instead of a bottle with a label (e.g. Jack Daniels or Jim Beam) because he's not getting sponsored by any particular manufacturer. Considering he goes on to describe it as "the kind [of whiskey] you drink if you're gonna die penniless", the manufacturer's probably glad about it.
  • "...it's good, though!"
• Refuge in Audacity: His story about going across a "rickety-freaking-bridge" with a 5 MPH speed limit...wherein he got a ticket.

Cop: Do you have any idea how fast you were going?
Ron: I dunno, eight? Nine? My foot slipped off the brake.
Cop: I clocked you going eleven miles an hour; that's over twice the legal limit.
Ron: (holds hands out in "cuff me" gesture) Take me to jail. I'm begging you. I'll make a million bucks telling this story if you take me to jail for going eleven miles an hour.

• Refuge in Vulgarity: He really had to tone it down when touring with the other three.
• Seashell Bra: "I didn't know this. If you find a girl wearing a seashell bra, and you pick her up, and put her to your ear, you can hear her scream. I thought I'd hear the ocean, but not over that bitch."
• Sophisticated As Hell: One skit involved him shopping for sunglasses and asking a salesman, very politely, "How do you sleep at night, you fucking prick?"
  • Another involved an inattentive valet getting pissed off when Ron tried to park his car himself. the valet got in Ron's way, and...

Ron: I rolled down the window and, very politely, said, "Get out of my fucking way!"

• Stunned Silence: "I got kicked off the high school debate team for saying 'Yeah?! Well, fuck you!!' I thought I had won. The other kid was speechless."
• Theme Naming: At one point during the "Blue Collar Comedy" tour show, he claims his son is nicknamed "Tater Tot".
• This Is Gonna Suck: "It was at this time that I had the right to remain silent...but I did not have the ability..."
• White Sheep: Quite a few of his fans really don't like the other Blue Collar guys.
• You Say Tomato: One of his bits is making fun of a person pronouncing "coupons" as "KOO-pins".