Satiristas

by Paul Provenza

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you think there is any value in “rousing the rabble”? Preaching to the converted?

  TOM LEHRER: I wasn’t preaching to the converted, I was titillating the converted, because they were often responding with a “Right on!” kind of thing. I think it does make people feel good to be able to say, “Oh, well, that guy really nailed it!” I think it does do some good, but mainly it does good to ourselves and to our own egos. The people who think, “Oh, no, we can’t say that!” are emboldened when they hear someone whom they respect saying it. But I always have to qualify that with “…to some slight extent.” They’re not going to go out to suddenly picket or demonstrate just because of that. Because the people who demonstrate usually don’t have much of a sense of humor anyway. I never understood “All you need is love,” and all that kind of stuff. That’s the biggest lie ever told in a popular song, next to “The best things in life are free.” I mean, “Give peace a chance?” That’s nice, but, really…

  PAUL PROVENZA: As a matter of fact, at the time he did that song, lying in a bed with Yoko Ono on international television, John Lennon was confronted by a journalist who said to him pretty much what you’re saying. She asked him, “Don’t you think you’re being silly? Do you really believe singing ‘Give Peace a Chance’ is really going to make a difference?”

  And he said, “Well, a million people just marched on the White House, and they were all singing that song.”

  TOM LEHRER: Well, yes, I do agree with that. Singing brings people together; it creates a feeling of solidarity. If we’re all singing, never mind the content, never mind the actual grammatical errors. We shall overcome using a transitive verb without an object. But I associate that also with the German youth singing in the beer gardens; the same kind of thing. They put their arms around each other and sing. It makes you feel that you’re a part of something, which may or may not be good, depending on what you’re a part of.

  But I was never convinced that anything I did would convince other people of anything. I think one of the only ways it can make a difference is if someone who wasn’t already on my side listens to it and hears so many other people laughing that they have to think, “Well, maybe that is an idea worth at least reconsidering.” So it may have some tangential value, but nobody’s going to say, “Gee, I always thought war was good, but now…now I’m convinced that it’s bad.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: So why is it that we continue doing it?

  TOM LEHRER: Well, I don’t.

  JAMIE KILSTEIN

  AT TWENTY-SIX, JAMIE Kilstein approaches comedy with the crusading optimism of youth. Every joke in his stand-up and every rant in his writings for Left-leaning comedy blogs is a sharp rock hurled at the powers that be. For him, comedy is a cause, not a career—though with his breakout success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and on the comedy circuit worldwide, it’s shaping up to be a very bright career indeed. Here, Jamie describes how comedy radicalized him, and how he hopes to radicalize comedy.

  JAMIE KILSTEIN: I became political in my late teens because of comedians. I was the most apathetic fucking person in the world until I met people like you and Doug Stanhope and a bunch of other people—through comedy. I didn’t really give a shit about politics, but all these really cool comics I looked up to were really into politics and cared about things so much. I wanted to be like them comedically, and they talked about politics and issues, so I was, like, “Aw fuck, I guess now I have to learn about politics.” And now I think I care about that more than comedy.

  Any time comics who don’t think they changed anything get an e-mail from another comic who’s, like, “You inspired me to do such and such,” that shows they did change something. They passed it on to someone younger.

  I almost gave up on this whole social-political thing at one point, but my girlfriend’s a writer and she writes about the same kind of things I talk about, and recently we started getting these e-mails from kids who just dug our comedy and were, like, “What can we do politically?” They’re asking us what Web sites can they go to, so we tell them about Democracy Now and things like that—and that’s huge. It’s really cool when you can get an artist-to-fan kind of dialogue going. They get inspired by it, and I think that’s the fucking greatest thing ever.

  PAUL PROVENZA: So you got two hundred people in the audience, and one person comes up to you and is inspired in some way. I guess 0.5 percent is not a bad impact for one guy.

  JAMIE KILSTEIN: Seriously! If I can tell them one thing, like, “Go listen to any independent media,” and they start watching that instead of CNN, then that is a huge fucking difference. They’re going to learn from that, and they’re going to pass it on to their friends, and it all keeps spreading.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Now, even though you look like you’re about twelve, you’re actually twenty-six years old, which is still pretty young.

  JAMIE KILSTEIN: Yeah, that’s why I’m naive. That’s why I’m, like, “Yeah, I can change the world.” I haven’t found out yet that I can’t.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you find that people are less responsive to your ideas or don’t take your politics seriously because you’re “just some kid”?

  JAMIE KILSTEIN: What’s weird is I’ve been doing okay in front of older audiences. I know that if anyone wanted to dismiss anything I say, “Oh, he’s just a kid” would be a really easy go-to, so I like to think I’m well-read enough on the things I talk about that it’s hard for them to do that.

  When I first started comedy, I was talking about politics and this awful, hack club owner gave me all this advice: “You should open up with, ‘Hey, I probably look familiar. Sorry your newspaper was late this morning.’” I don’t do anything like that. I don’t even acknowledge it; I just start talking.

  I just talk to people like we’re all adults—because adults talk down to adults every day. If you go into any typical office building…Casual Fridays? Really? That’s what they’re excited about? That’s the big day of the week? People are treated like they’re in fucking kindergarten. Grown men and women are talked to like they’re fucking children. I have more adult conversations with them than their boss does, or than some of their husbands or wives even do. I think that’s why I do well in front of audiences who even disagree with me politically—because they’re just excited to have a real, adult conversation. They forget you’re even allowed to talk about this stuff. Even if I’m just a kid to them, I think they’re just so excited to not have someone talk down to them that they don’t even care.

  People want to talk to me after my shows. They’ll talk to me about stuff I disagree with. I’ll get people who are, like, “I agree with this and this, but why do you say this about religion?” And then I tell them why, and then we’ll talk about it. It’s awesome. You have to feel really fucking comfortable to go up to a performer you just watched for an hour and dissect their political beliefs, you know? I’ve sat at the bar after shows for hours and talked personally about religion or my lack thereof, and people listen and talk back. I always talk to them, and we’ll usually agree on certain things and disagree on others.

  But even if I change their minds in the slightest little way, or have them question something they wouldn’t have before, that’s good enough. Maybe I’ve just changed someone’s image of a liberal a little bit—like if their idea of a liberal is some elitist poet from the “Left Coast,” but now they’ve connected with one, weren’t talked down to, weren’t preached at, and instead it was just the sharing of ideas—that’s changing their mind about something right there. About liberals, at least.

  PAUL PROVENZA: So just having some kind of dialogue is enough of an accomplishment for you?

  JAMIE KILSTEIN: Absolutely. You know that saying, “Don’t talk about religion or politics at the dinner table”? Fucking most detrimental phrase to our society. That’s all we should be talking about until we fix some of the stuff that’s been going on.

  But we’re so red state/blue state, atheist/Christian, CNN/FOX…It’s all
these fucking labels, and no one wants to talk to each other. I’ve had some of my best conversations with Right-wing Christians, because we’re both so shocked that we agree on stuff. We both want to help the poor. I want to do it because I think the class divide is too big in this country, and they want to do it for Jesus, but we both want to fucking do it, and that should be what matters. A lot of us are working for the same goals, but no one wants to have that dialogue, because we’re all subdivided into all these interest groups.

  I think humor is the one thing that kind of unites people. I’m a liberal, but I laugh the hardest at Jon Stewart when he makes fun of liberals, because I recognize it and because it’s just a good joke. That’s where I do care more about the comedy than the social aspects, I guess; you have to make the joke so good that people who do disagree with you will still laugh. Some of mine are there, and some of them certainly aren’t yet, but how awesome is that? You can make a joke that’s so strong it can break down the barriers. That’s fucking insane, and you’re doing it with just words. It’s like a fucking magic trick.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Elaborate on that analogy a little for me.

  JAMIE KILSTEIN: Well, you have your Republican guy in your average strip-mall comedy club, right? I’ll start talking about gay marriage. Now this guy has his stereotype of gays and he’s told his share of fag jokes, and a comedian goes and defends gay marriage, and the guy sits there, nudges his wife, and goes, “No fucking way.” That’s what people do at a magic show: some guy pulls out a blade and a box and a dove or something, and you go, “There’s no fucking way.”

  And the laugh you get is that same kind of gut-punch reaction that you get when you see a good magic trick. You see the guy pull it off, and you just gasp.

  PAUL PROVENZA: And like the magician, you’ve fucked with the guy’s reality?

  JAMIE KILSTEIN: You’ve completely fucked with his reality, or his version of reality as he knows it, anyway. And maybe it won’t get across right then and there, but subconsciously, maybe a month later, he’s watching a piece on the news or reading some article about it and just maybe he doesn’t go into it with the same harsh bias as before, because he’s taken in some different idea about it, or seen some different perspective on it, or connected with something in a way he hadn’t before—because he’s laughed about it with you, and he’s heard an idea about it that normally he might never have even listened to before.

  PAUL PROVENZA: I love the analogy of a magic trick; that’s really lovely. People watch a magic trick thinking, “I can’t believe that’s possible!” For comedy, it might be, “I never thought I could ever even listen to this idea!” But in both cases, they’ve been forced for just a moment to question something they thought they knew for sure.

  JAMIE KILSTEIN: Totally. You know how when you’re onstage, you see people in the crowd hit the person they’re with when they recognize something they completely relate to in a bit you just did? It’s like they’re going, “Wow! Can you believe that? How’d he do that?”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you care much if people end up not liking you or what you have to say?

  JAMIE KILSTEIN: I was sixteen when I started doing stand-up, and I would be very aggressive, very arrogant. I used to talk down to the audience a lot. I was, like, “I’m gonna be Bill Hicks! And if they don’t get it, fuck them!” You’d hear stories about guys like Hicks walking people, but the difference was he didn’t go into it trying to walk people.

  So, in the beginning, every time I’d bomb I’d think, “I’m like Bill Hicks! I’m too good for them.” But really, it was, “I just ate my balls onstage.”

  I don’t go up with that kind of fuck-you, beer-in-hand, arrogant kind of attitude anymore. I want them to like me—not because of any need on my part to be liked, but because I want them to listen. I feel if they listen, they’ll get it, you know? And I want them to get it because I care about the message so much. If I’m a dick to them, it just gives them an easy out to disregard everything I say. It’s just, “Fuck that guy.” Done. And I’ve lost an opportunity to make a difference.

  My favorite compliment is when someone will come up to me after a show and be, like, “I didn’t fucking agree with a word you said, but you’re funny as shit.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Have you had anyone get truly upset by anything you’ve said?

  JAMIE KILSTEIN: I do this new joke about race, and it’s all irony—and sometimes people don’t see the irony right away, and they’ll have that knee-jerk, politically correct reaction to it. It’s about how I heard some guy say, “If it wasn’t for the blacks, there wouldn’t be any crime.” And I explained to the guy that crime doesn’t happen because of race, it happens because of class. That it’s not black people who commit crime, it’s poor people. And I say, “I’ve never been accosted by a group of wealthy black stockbrokers on Wall Street. I’ve never locked my car doors because a bunch of Harvard-bound Negroes were headed my way in their pink, collared shirts with that gang symbol of the little polo horse. ‘It’s the trust-fund Crips!’” And some people just hear the word “Negro” and immediately snap to, “What the fuck did that white kid just say??” It’s frustrating, because if you listen to the context it’s completely anti-racist.

  With black crowds, that joke usually kills, but once I had a black guy come up to me, “Did you just say the word ‘Negro??’” And I was, like, “Did you hear the joke?” So I repeated the joke for him, and he paused a minute and then just said, “Oh. That’s pretty funny,” and walked away.

  But if it’s an all white crowd, when you say the word “Negro,” they all start looking around, you know?

  DANA GOULD AND MARC MARON

  DANA GOULD HAS been a bright light in comedy since the comedy boom of the eighties. Swinging wildly between hard, recognizable reality and surreal invention, his comic expansiveness led to a stint as writer/producer for The Simpsons, but he’s since recommitted to his unique, highly imaginative stand-up. Marc Maron remained a stand-up as he hosted progressive, morning-drive-time radio shows, garnering a loyal following on Air America. His comedy is politicized and intimately personal, usually confrontational, and always hilarious.

  MARC MARON: To really have any conversation about race, you have to be pretty fucking righteous about it. You’ve got to make sure your math is really good.

  I did this comedy “debate” show with a black comedian named Darryl Lenox. The topic was “technology,” and my position was that technology’s bad because we surrender too much memory to it, what’s designed to make life convenient paralyzes us in other ways…fairly broad stuff. His argument was that technology’s good; it gave us medicine, all that broad stuff. At one point he said, “If my ancestors had a Ford Mustang, they could’ve driven right off the plantation. Technology would’ve helped my ancestors when they were enslaved.”

  And my rebuttal was: “Darryl…your ancestors were technology.”

  It was completely appropriate, really, but he looked like Sonny Liston taking a punch he never expected. He didn’t know what to say, the audience didn’t know what to do with it…

  Afterward, though, he goes, “Are you going to use that premise?”

  I said, “Run with it, man. It’s yours.”

  ’Cause I don’t think it’s something I could ever do outside of that very particular context. But it was an interesting moment about this stuff we’re talking about and what’s controversial or not. People still don’t know what to do with this stuff.

  DANA GOULD: There’s a great story in some Lenny Bruce documentary: Lenny’s onstage and asks a black guy in the audience for a cigarette. Lenny takes it from him and goes, “He nigger lipped it!,” and the crowd explodes with this huge laugh. And there was some comic there—I can’t remember who it was—who was also working in town and had dropped in to watch Lenny. He says, “I couldn’t believe it!,” and blatantly admits to stealing the bit: “So I go back for my second show, and I ask a black guy for a cigarette. I say, ‘He nigger lipped it,’ and they almost
killed me!”

  So there’s this weird, ephemeral line, some esoteric divider that you have to nail just right.

  MARC MARON: We live in a racist culture, no fucking way around that. There are definitely color lines. They’re very separate worlds, and they’re kept that way—intentionally.

  If activist gays didn’t march through the streets with nipple clamps and assless chaps, how else would they have demonstrated their identity? Their sexuality defined them as a community, so it had to be as out front as possible to make a reactive, revolutionary statement. In the same way, culturally, the black community wants to remain different and needs a separate identity.

  That’s where the whole “political correctness” idea was a bust—not in terms of changes in the workplace and treatment of women and race—but culturally, who the hell wants to be on the same playing field? You have a national identity and an ethnic identity you should be proud of. It should be accepted, not ignored or blandified.

  PAUL PROVENZA: When the gay community began fighting for rights, it was more of a pansexual thing, about freedom not just to be gay but to be a freak and different and whatever you are or want to be, period. Like your point, Marc, elements in the gay community decry compromising all that in the fight for gay rights, and that gays had to “earn” acceptance by going mainstream, embracing the status quo of conventionality rather than being accepted with a more expansive, outsider identity. Like, “What have we gained if we’re only accepted because we’ve become just like them?”