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  CRAIG FERGUSON: Yeah, but to be fair, there were plenty of things you could say that would get you glassed in Glasgow in the 1970s. But yeah, if you start doing comedy in Glaswegian punk rock bars, you develop a certain aggressive style. I’ve been introduced with: “Here’s a cunt that thinks he’s funny.” Not a great way to start. You have to be fairly tough just to stay alive.

  But just naturally, over the years, as my balls get lower, I’ve become gentler in my approach. I still have a wee bit of fire left in me, but not much.

  PAUL PROVENZA: That punk mentality was behind those first flashes of alternative comedy over there. Was that all just about “Fuck the power, fuck authority, fuck all rules,” or was there a real social consciousness to it as well?

  CRAIG FERGUSON: There were some who were very politically motivated at the time. I wasn’t, myself. I think I was more about this terrible rage that I believe all comedians have. I was a drinking alcoholic, so that fueled it in many ways, but all the comedians I know have a bitterness, a fucking anger, a malcontent and madness about them. Which, you know…they use for cash.

  PAUL PROVENZA: The alternative comedy scene in the U.K. didn’t really “evolve,” did it? It actually happened suddenly, almost as if someone flipped a switch in 1980.

  CRAIG FERGUSON: I think what happened is that in the sixties and seventies, it became a little better. There was a pop combo around at the time called The Beatles—I don’t know if you’ve heard of them—and everybody got into music for a while. Then comedy became “cool” in Britain around 1980.

  PAUL PROVENZA: So you’re not only an American TV personality now, you’re also an American now, and I wonder if you feel like you’re in a bit of an uncomfortable situation at all. You have a forum to talk about politics on your show, but you’re newly a citizen.

  CRAIG FERGUSON: Yeah, it’s difficult, because you can’t choose to become an American and then within the first six months start telling people, “No, here’s where you’re going wrong.” ’Cause then it’s, “What the fuck are you doing here anyway?”

  But what it does allow me to do is to truly say I am a voter who is uncommitted right up until I hear what you have to fucking say about this or that. I don’t get to say, “I’m a Republican, so that’s the way I think!” or, “I’m a Democrat, so that’s the way I think!” As a new American, I’m new to all those kinds of affiliations, so I can admire the policies of the Democratic Party and despise the Democratic Party for their arrogant infighting. I can despise the policies of the Republicans and admire the fact that they know how to get elected and how to reach Americans who live outside of just New York and Los Angeles—all those good people who give a fuck about things, you know? It allows me a certain freedom in the way I see the politics here.

  But the reverse side of it is the restriction of being an immigrant, and always being aware that I’m a new immigrant. I don’t feel like I can say, “Hey, everybody…Know that I’m here now, and that there’s a few things I’d like to get sorted out.” I think that’s a terrible arrogance. So I watch my mouth a little bit.

  I mean I kind of speak out in certain ways, you know, because everybody that runs for power is always questionable. Anybody. Obama is questionable. I know everybody around me thinks he’s fucking great, but he’s questionable, because he wanted to be president in the first place. And anybody who wants to be president, well…you’ve gotta question that. What is that? And you’ve gotta fucking needle away at that.

  Power should be made fun of. Anyone who seeks power should be got at. They have to be fucked with in a big way. Even if they’re vetted and they pass, they’re gonna change, because they’re going to get the power anyway. So let’s fuck with them. The guys who started this whole deal, the Founding Fathers of this country, knew that. They got that whenever anyone got into power, they’d turn into fucking jackasses so we need to limit the amount of time they’re there. They understood that, and that was a huge fucking leap forward in human thinking, I think.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Was your choice to become an American citizen based on economic opportunities for you or was something else going on?

  CRAIG FERGUSON: Nah! I mean, I had been paying taxes in America for ten, twelve years before I became an American. There’s no tax break if you become an American. You pay what you pay. Would it make me more successful? I don’t think I was worried about that.

  My son is one of the reasons. My son was born here and he’s an American, and I wanted to be like him. He’s also Jewish, but there’s no way I’m getting fucking circumcised; never mind, it’s too fucking late. I’ll deal with my maker when the time comes: “I missed it. Sorry. There was a window of opportunity and it didn’t happen, so…Sorry, God, but you gotta overlook this one.”

  But, I think, emotionally I’m an American. I’ve always felt more comfortable here than anywhere else. It’s where I belong; certainly more than England and a lot of the time more than Scotland. I think it’s because I became myself, I turned into who I am here. It seems kind of weird saying that; it seems hippie-dippie, but I ended up here because it just felt right. It just felt inevitable.

  It’s a hell of a thing to change your own nationality, but I didn’t change my ethnicity—and that’s one of those things about being an American. You can be an American and still be Scottish. You can be an American and be Jewish. You can be both an American and whatever your ethnicity is as well. That’s specifically America.

  I think America is more than a country: it’s an idea and a dream. It’s a dream that’s become nightmarish at times, I don’t think anyone could deny that, and I’m not blind to the problems and the horrible issues that we have, will have, and have had in this country. But it’s the best idea for a country anybody’s fucking had, ever.

  PAUL PROVENZA: That’s the other thing that’s interesting to me. Because one of the responsibilities we have as Americans is to criticize what’s wrong.

  CRAIG FERGUSON: It’s your job.

  PAUL PROVENZA: And yet, that’s been portrayed as being unpatriotic.

  CRAIG FERGUSON: Oh, that’s just lies per our own corporate culture. And I’m saying that from my own comfortable office at the CBS Corporation, but corporate culture has sold itself as two things: one, corporate culture has said, “This is truly American,” which is fucking bullshit, and two, corporate culture has said that capitalism and corporate culture are the same thing. That’s fucking rubbish as well.

  You know what I believe? I believe that’s fucking lawyers and middle management. That’s the fucking problem. You think that the Indians, the Russians, the Chinese, and, to a lesser extent, the Europeans—all of the economic competitors to the U.S.—do you think they’re having middle-management seminars on how their workers and people are fucking feeling today? Don’t be fucking ridiculous. There’s this strange kind of “Everybody gets a trophy; everybody gets a prize” thing that corporate culture’s become. It’s fucking nonsense.

  I think it’ll come, and it’ll go. It’s a new economic model that doesn’t work. It has nothing to do with patriotism. You get patriotic fucking bums, you can get patriotic punk rockers, patriotic comedians. In fact, one of the best patriotic speeches I’ve ever heard was in Team America, at the end, where it’s, like, “You need dicks, pussies, and assholes.” That was a wonderful speech about how America works. I liked it.

  My personal belief is that the political process has been hijacked by corporate culture and I don’t know if there’s a way up that very steep, slippery slope. What will happen is that it will become economically nonviable, that’s all. When it becomes economically nonviable, it falls apart. When the dollar fucking collapses against every other major currency in the world—what’s happening right now—and it becomes economically nonviable, it will no longer exist.

  I think what will happen is that as people get more disadvantaged they personally get more political. What we’ll see is a rise in political interest, which will eventually disseminate corporate control. Because corpor
ate control is about minority interests and issues that should be majority interests.

  Not enough Americans are political in their own mindsets. That’s all.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you think through comedy, or whatever, someone like yourself, on TV every night reaching millions, can change anybody’s minds about anything?

  CRAIG FERGUSON: You know, I think you do change minds sometimes. I suppose in order to maintain any form of mental comfort I have to believe there is value in what I do on a daily basis, but personally, I feel it’s necessary to realize that you may change someone’s mind—and that you may also change it in a direction you were not intending them to go, too.

  That’s why I truly believe that if you want people to vote Republican, then you want to have Hollywood endorse the Democratic candidate. Because if Gwyneth Paltrow is telling me how to vote, I’m going the other fucking way, Buster; that’s the way it’s gonna fucking be. You want somebody to vote Democrat? Give them an hour and a half of Fox News, and a lot of them will end up going, “Oh fuck you, you overbearing, lying, fucking windbags.” That happens—and it probably happens a lot, too.

  What I think we’re guilty of in the media is that we don’t attempt—or even want, really—to change anyone’s minds. What we want is people in the same business as us to like us and give us awards; that’s all we really want.

  We don’t even want numbers; we don’t even want ratings! You know what was the best fucking rated show ever on late-night TV? Well, I know you already know who it was: It’s Jay Leno—by a million fucking miles. You know why? Because he doesn’t fucking talk down to his audience, that’s why. To assume an intellectual superiority over your audience is a terrible arrogance. I think I am guilty of that occasionally in my weaker moments, and others are, too.

  That’s the only fucking reason Leno stayed ahead in the ratings, and why he was always so far ahead. Leno’s not a better comic than Dave; his show wasn’t a better show than Dave’s. But that’s got nothing to do with it, because that’s not the point.

  The point is that Jay Leno does not talk down to his audience. Period.

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  STEVE MARTIN

  JOHN CLEESE

  ERIC IDLE

  EUGENE LEVY & CATHERINE O’HARA

  FRED WILLARD

  DAN AYKROYD

  LARAINE NEWMAN

  KEVIN NEALON

  DANA CARVEY

  CHRIS ROCK

  DAVID SPADE

  HORATIO SANZ

  RACHEL DRATCH

  NORM MACDONALD

  ROBERT SMIGEL

  SPINAL TAP

  JAY LENO

  WHETHER AS TWO-TIME host of The Tonight Show or on his TV-history-making NBC prime-time debacle, Jay Leno has always made it standard policy to gently knock both sides of the aisle in his nightly monologues while remaining seemingly neutral himself. Even in times of dire political polarization, Leno keeps to the center—despite ongoing criticism from many comedy peers and some of the public. America’s un-deposed late-night king explains why that’s ultimately a more difficult and admirable thing to do.

  JAY LENO: The trick is not to know more than everybody else knows, it’s to know exactly what everybody else knows. If a story’s on the cover of the New York Times, USA Today, the L.A. Times, the Boston Globe, if they all have the same story, that’s what you write jokes about.

  My job is not to give the audience new information—sometimes you can, but the trick is to take the information they already have, then turn it on its head a little, or exaggerate or blow it out of proportion to make it funnier than it is in real life.

  A classic example is a joke I did in front of the Reagans at the White House Press Correspondents’ Dinner when he was president. I said, “I want to congratulate Nancy on winning the Humanitarian of the Year Award…” There was big applause for her, of course, and then I said, “I’m glad she beat out that conniving little bitch, Mother Theresa.”

  It got a big laugh, and I was able to say, “Okay, we know you got that award; congratulations,” but then: “How ridiculous that you’re ‘humanitarian of the year’ over someone like Mother Theresa,” at the same time.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Actually, l happen to think Mother Theresa was a conniving little bitch.

  JAY LENO: That’s your opinion, but not the one the audience has. A joke that’s contrary to what most of the audience believes won’t be a joke to them; they don’t buy the premise. Another joke—I don’t know why I’m going back to the Reagan era again, but this comes to mind as another good example of what we’re talking about—was, “President Reagan has come out against the electric chair…” In fact, he was not against the electric chair at all, but establishing that as a premise got their attention; it surprised them, they thought this was new information, but I said, “Since there are so many people on death row, he’d like to have electric bleachers.”

  So we’re back to his true position on the death penalty, but exaggerated for comic effect. It worked because it took them one way, then brought them back to what they sort of already knew or believed. I’m going far back with these examples, but that’s still sort of the basis for all the jokes I do.

  Did you ever see any comedian doing material about what a great tactician President Bush was, or how fifty years from now his Iraq policy will be seen as genius? No, because most people don’t believe that premise. Some people may believe that, but it doesn’t work onstage because most people don’t. So you’d see a million comics doing jokes about what an idiot he was, because most people saw him that way. Most people go to see performers who believe as they do, who think like they do. Rarely do they go to see people who think differently.

  Comedy is basically a cowardly act. It never changes anybody’s mind. It only reinforces what they already believe.

  PAUL PROVENZA: When Stephen Colbert did the White House Press Correspondents’ Dinner, he didn’t seem to be reinforcing what that crowd believed, he seemed to go right up against it and contradict it. Was he not doing the job of a comedian?

  JAY LENO: I’m a huge fan of Stephen Colbert, but Colbert is, I think, a classic satirist—a great satirist—but he’s not a stand-up. He’s playing a character, so it’s very different from what I do. I couldn’t get away with what he does, and as far as I know, he doesn’t go to Vegas and do personal appearances. It’s a very different thing; not better, not worse, just different.

  If you want opinion and satire, go to Bill Maher or one of those guys; they do that really well. That’s not what I do. My terms are very clear: if you want jokes, I’ll come in and do the job. I will not give you a lecture; I will not try to change your opinions or criticize you for having them.

  And I’ve never had any problems playing for all different kinds of audiences. I’ve noticed a lot of comics, particularly younger ones, only want to play to audiences they think they’ll do well in front of. I meet young comics who go, “I just want to do colleges.” Or, “I want to be like Chris Rock and just play those kinds of gigs.” You’ll hear a lot of new comics make fun of the Bob Hopes and those kinds of old-school comics, but those guys played to every conceivable kind of crowd. I’ve always tried to challenge myself to be able to work in front of anybody, any audience. I’ve done the White House Press Corps Dinner with Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, George W…. just to see if I could do something that would make both Democrats and Republicans laugh equally.

  Not long ago, I deliberately booked myself at Oral Roberts University just to see if I could play a white, Christian, straight-arrow, Republican audience—to see if it would work. In my mind, I said, “Okay, they probably don’t like sex jokes. I’ll take any of those out and do all the other stuff I have and work around it.” And, in fact, it killed.

  When I was starting out, I used to play a primarily black club in Boston, called The Sugar Shack, just to see if I could work in front of that crowd. I toured in front of predominantly black audiences opening for a brilliant black jazz artist named Rahsaan R
oland Kirk. He was really outspoken and radical, and also happened to be blind. He’d go onstage in a dashiki before I went up, and say, “I want to introduce a young brother who knows the black experience and knows all about the white devils…” He’d do that whole radical Black Panther, “white devil” thing, and then: “Please welcome Jay Leno!”

  I’d walk on and whisper, “Shhhh…Don’t tell him I’m white.”

  Of course there’d be a huge laugh, because all you have to do is be funny.

  To me, the real test of a comic is when you can play any audience—all black, all white, all female—whatever it might be.

  PAUL PROVENZA: What’s your response to criticism that your monologue jokes on The Tonight Show never really took any stand on any issues?

  JAY LENO: My response is that The Tonight Show was not a bully pulpit. You try to give equal voice to all sides. For example, when Bill Maher made that comment after 9/11 about the terrorists not being cowards, he got a lot of shit for that. I called him a week later and said, “Bill, why don’t you come on my show and explain yourself?”

  We got lots of grief for it, a lot of angry letters, but I thought he had an unpopular opinion that was misinterpreted; I don’t believe Bill’s a “traitor” or anything like that said about him, so I said, “Come on our show,” because that’s what we do. I’ve had everybody from wacky Ann Coulter to so many others who had strong points of view; we didn’t say, “Oh, no, you can’t come on my show.” Unless it’s a viewpoint so abhorrent, like a David Duke or someone of that nature, you try and give equal voice and let the audience decide who or what they want to believe.