Jeff Dunham's new puppet doesn't ignore 'the elephant in the room'

Imagine trying to talk, only to be constantly interrupted by a motley crew of characters with names like Peanut, José Jalapeño and Bubba J.

It could be a real pain.

But for ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, the pain is self-inflicted, as he plays straight man to that trio and other puppets, including grumpy old man Walter and Achmed the Dead Terrorist.

Dunham and his foul-mouthed, happily dysfunctional company will make a Dec. 31 stop at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh as part of the “Jeff Dunham: Seriously” tour.

In addition to his regular crew, Dunham will be toting his latest addition, Larry, a jittery, cigarette-smoking White House adviser. Larry was introduced in “Jeff Dunham: Beside Himself,” the ventriloquist-comedian’s second special for Netflix that premiered Sept. 24.

In the special, Dunham observes, “You’re a little stressed out.” Larry replies, “Oh, ya think?!”

The elephant

With Larry, Dunham has said he doesn’t want to take political sides, “but you can’t ignore the elephant in the room.” Trump’s tweets, marriage and revolving staff door are all fair game, with Larry claiming that Trump holds “Firing Fridays,” similar to “Taco Tuesdays.”

Dunham has more than a dozen definitely-not-G-rated puppet foils in his repertoire. Among the most widely used are the aforementioned Walter and Peanut.

Walter is a squinty-eyed, “get off my lawn”-type old man who continually grouses about his wife. The hyperactive Peanut, with purple skin and white fur, is classified as a “woozle” and delights in getting under Dunham’s skin with observations about the comedian’s looks and behavior.

A little more controversial are puppets like José Jalapeño and Achmed the Dead Terrorist.

José, a sombrero-wearing pepper on a stick that speaks in a thick Spanish accent, is often a foil for Peanut’s less than enlightened views on diversity. Achmed is described as the skeletal remains of an incompetent suicide bomber who shouts, “Silence, I keel you!” when provoked.

“People accuse me of using the puppets as a vehicle to shoot off about my own beliefs or to tell terrible jokes that I believe in,” Dunham told The Guardian during 2018 tour dates in England. “But it’s not that at all. What the characters do is give you a licence to go a little further than you would as a human being, simply because they’re not real.

“Never make fun of big groups of people,” he said. “Always make fun of individuals. I think that’s a good rule of thumb. I mean, if a group of people believe or think one thing, that’s their right. But if you have one idiot out of a group behaving incredibly badly, then that person deserves to be made fun of.”

On the couch

A native of Dallas, Dunham built many of his first puppets himself. He began performing for audiences as a teen and, during college, was doing corporate gigs around the country that attracted attention from comedy legends like Bob Hope and George Burns.

Following college, he moved to Los Angeles to perform in clubs like the Improv chain.

In 1990, he won a coveted spot on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” where Hope was also a guest. Carson signaled his approval by inviting Dunham to sit on the couch for further conversation after his bit.

More television appearances followed, including a number of Comedy Central specials and a series, “The Jeff Dunham Show,” that ran for one season on the network in 2009. In 2014, Country Music Television premiered “Achmed Saves America,” an animated movie starring Achmed the Dead Terrorist.

Dunham earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2017, but as Peanut pobably felt compelled to point out, it’s not prime real estate — “It’s in front of CVS.”