Satiristas Read online

PAUL KRASSNER: What all the people I’ve been fortunate enough to hang around and become good friends with had in common—Lenny Bruce, Abbie Hoffman, all of them—was a sense of playfulness. There was a certain irony intertwined with the politics and you couldn’t separate them.

  Abbie was a master at it. He played pool with the cops who arrested him. When the Yippies! were going to scatter dollar bills over the floor of the stock exchange, security wouldn’t let this group of hippies in for the free tour, and Abbie said, “You know, we’re all Jewish. You don’t want to be accused of anti-Semitism do you?” So they let him in! To toss out dollar bills and create total havoc.

  The spirit of the Yippies! came from something Phil Ochs said, “A demonstration should turn you on, not turn you off.” A lot of the Left didn’t like the Yippies! because they thought we weren’t being serious about serious matters. Like Steve Allen said, “A lot of wars are fought between the good guys and the good guys.”

  But we showed them you didn’t have to be serious, and could still get the message across. People don’t like being lectured to, and if you make them laugh at any moment, they’re all agreeing on the truth that the humor’s revealing.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Are you impressed by any satire and political comedy you see today?

  PAUL KRASSNER: There’s lots of good stuff on the Internet, and a lot of good people doing it live. The Daily Show is terrific; really valuable, and genuine. But there’s also a lot of what passes for satire, but is really just name-calling. How many people just did jokes about Bush being dumb rather than getting to the real core of what you’re supposed to be exposing?

  There are so many comedians who are great at their craft, but choose to go with the flow instead of being on the crest of any wave. I respect Jay Leno and David Letterman immensely and think they’re terrific comedians, but they just joined in on all the demonizing of Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the war, and only when public opinion shifted did they start to really go after Bush. They follow opinion; they don’t really care to lead it.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you see a difference in the state of satire today as opposed to in the past?

  PAUL KRASSNER: In a lot of ways. One big aspect is that the pace of everything has accelerated and the rate of acceleration is accelerating, so there are instant deadlines now.

  Another is language. People like Lenny, Carlin, and Pryor were leaders of a movement breaking down barriers to free speech rather than just proudly exercising it as comedians do now. Perhaps the biggest difference is that what they did was truly courageous. Lenny went to jail for things he said; Carlin went to the Supreme Court to defend his free speech. Because of what they went through, that fear doesn’t even exist now. To say things then took a real kind of courage that it just doesn’t take now, so there’s a huge difference in the spirit of satire now. It’s not as courageous.

  Except for Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. My jaw dropped watching that. That was courage. That was brave.

  STEPHEN COLBERT

  WHEN COMEDY CENTRAL debuted The Colbert Report in 2005, it was widely lauded as one of the most important innovations in satire since the invention of the word “satire” itself. Among comedians and comedy writers, the degree of difficulty in what Stephen Colbert does is, frankly, astonishing. Like Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, no one was even sure he could survive it until he did. When Colbert appeared at the White House Press Correspondents’ Dinner eviscerating President Bush and saying to the man’s face what half the country wished for years someone would, he was hailed as a conquering hero. It was a moment that gave everyone in comedy pause, and made them question their own timidity. But while the comedy community—and many Americans—view Colbert as fearless, important, and uncompromisingly ballsy, the man himself has a more measured view of what he does and the impact it has.

  STEPHEN COLBERT: I don’t consider what I did at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner brave. Antiauthoritarian maybe, but I think there’s a difference between that and bravery, because I enjoyed myself. I was not afraid of the people in the room. I think “bravery” is action in the face of what you consider reasonable fear. But I wasn’t afraid; I was so excited. It’s like, if there was this chasm to go over and my jokes were my bridge, I had confidence in the construction. I was so happy to go and do it.

  PAUL PROVENZA: I couldn’t help but wonder if they had any idea they were letting a fox into the Republican henhouse. If so, someone there has a real subversive streak and I can’t believe they didn’t end up in Guantanamo.

  STEPHEN COLBERT: I have to say that afterward, I wrote to the Correspondents’ Association people who had asked me to do it and said, “I had a wonderful time, I certainly hope I didn’t make any trouble for you.” Because I didn’t want to; they were very nice to me, and I’m not an assassin. I really like doing my work and my jokes, but I really didn’t want to fuck this guy who booked me. But he said, “We loved it! Thank you. We’re thrilled.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: You faced some apparent disdain from Bush and others on the dais, and as I watched it I couldn’t help thinking, “His tax returns for the past ten years had better be impeccable.” Yet you never wavered, never backed down, never bailed. Those of us who know what it’s like dealing with that in front of any audience, let alone in front of the actual subject of your mockery who just happens to be the President of the United States and the Most Powerful Man in the World, see that as unbelievable courage and fearlessness. Do you think your performance had a greater weight in that context?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: He’s eight feet away from me! How could it not?

  PAUL PROVENZA: More than just his reaction, do you think it was perceived as something more than comedy? That it was a real confrontation with the powers that be?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: Oh, I don’t know if it was seen like that. I know that afterward there was a lot of talk in the press and the blogosphere about it, and much was made of whether there was any significance to the evening, but I purposely haven’t read that stuff, and in the room, nobody talked to me so I have no idea.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Spoiler alert: a lot of people did see it that way. So you’re in what seems to me a very odd position: you’re an actor, a comedian, and a comedy writer, but you and your show are quoted in op-ed pages, studies say you’re considered by many to be an actual news source—or at least an alternative to distrusted news sources—and you, your jokes, and this comic character are part of the narrative of American politics and the national discourse. Is that disconcerting?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: I don’t know whether I accept that, Mr. Provenza. What I mean is I don’t accept that responsibility, because I don’t accept any responsibility for anything I do, but I also don’t know if I accept that premise. I don’t necessarily think that my work is all that informative or all that influential. I think that it is influential in this regard: that I can make people feel better at times about something that otherwise might make them feel sick. But I don’t know if that’s the same thing as changing their minds.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Does any of this make any difference or are we really just entertainers, and nothing more?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: Surely someone’s given you the Peter Cook quote about satirists. When asked, “Does satire have a political effect?” he said something to the effect of, “Absolutely. All that great satire of the Weimar Cabaret, look how they stopped Hitler.”

  I think when we do the show well, or when I do my job well, on some level it reflects honest, passionately held beliefs. Now, could those influence people? They could. But I’m not doing it to do so, and I’m not expecting it to. I don’t feel it’s a failure if it doesn’t. If somebody tells me that I influenced them, it’s not for me to say they’re wrong, but that’s not my goal and it’s not the definition of my success. I’m out for laughs. When people came up to me after the Correspondents’ Dinner and said, “Fuck those people, man. What does it matter if they laugh?”

  I was, like, “No, it kind of matters
to me.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Many people who do satire feel the same way you do: they’re not sure they have any effect and doubt that they can change people’s minds. But at the same time, many feel that Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Right-wing talk shows do have an effect and do influence politics.

  STEPHEN COLBERT: I’d say the aggregate of them has an effect. Whether or not Bill O’Reilly himself does, if you’ve got a Bill O’Reilly and flip the channel and somebody else is parroting those same points, the entire news cycle gets hijacked by a particular take.

  PAUL PROVENZA: So as satirists, by picking up and commenting on what’s already churning in media, are we not then allowing ourselves to be “hijacked” the way the news cycle is? Should we be the ones to dig deeper to find some other take than what’s already gained traction? Or finding out what is not already in the discourse—but maybe should be—and presenting that instead?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: I agree, and I think I do it. The danger, for example, is that I’ve got to do a show tonight, and today, the scripts aren’t ready. Generally, we have scripts in pretty good shape twenty-four hours ahead of time, but we’re doing a soup-to-nuts rewrite today. Sometimes you get pressed by that clock into a point of view that you don’t necessarily believe is the best, but that you know will be comedically successful. That is a danger, but we try to continually name that danger. If we don’t do it half the time, I feel great.

  I can understand getting hijacked by a particular take, because on The Colbert Report we’re constantly going, “Do we really want to say that, or are we just parodying what other people are saying?” We ask, “Is that really what the story is about?” all the time. I’m sure actual news [ people] ask themselves that question all the time. But then there’s the hungry beast of the clock, which goes, “Come on, we know Blitzer’s going to be out there in The Situation Room in five minutes. What’s the story?”

  And they go, “Well, this is just being reported.”

  “Okay, let’s just go with that.” I’m as human as they are. But the real crime here is laziness. Lazy thought and willful ignorance. After the first time we ever did The Colbert Report, I said, “If this show works and goes on and on for years, it won’t matter who’s in office, what the political landscape is or what the story of the day is, because what we’re talking about is willful ignorance of facts over what feels like news to you, what feels like the story, what feels like the truth.” I said, “That will never go away.”

  One of the great sins in modern news is that the facts really don’t matter. Those nighttime shows are the most popular shows and they are all about feeling. That is not a sin specifically of the guys that I parody, that is a sin—and “sin” is a strong word, but I’m a Catholic—of laziness and fear: laziness about getting a different take on a subject, and fear that you won’t serve the beast of the clock on the wall. In my opinion. I could be wrong—I’m a comedian.

  PAUL PROVENZA: On The Colbert Report, you’re actually satirizing a form and type of media personality more than satirizing newsmakers and actual events of the day.

  STEPHEN COLBERT: We do both. I may be stealing this definition of satire from somebody, but “Satire is parody with a point.” Presently, I am parodying willful ignorance. But I have to say the medium is a lot of my message.

  PAUL PROVENZA: And as a comedian, I think what you’re doing is completely unique in comedy. Can you point to any influences that got you to this fully formed character and comic idea?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: Well, one for sure was Don Novello’s The Lazlo Letters. I read the covers off those things. I loved Novello’s stuff so much I wanted to ape it, and actually started writing letters like that myself when I was in college. As the phenomenon of the Young Republicans started—college-aged Republicans—I and a friend of mine, Rich Ferris, started an organization called “Us Young Republicans,” and we would write to people, the way Novello did.

  I love Novello’s character of Lazlo Toth, and there’s some of that DNA in what I do, for sure. I frequently think of Lazlo Toth when I think about my character’s emotional ignorance.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you meet people who don’t get it? Who don’t see your character as a character?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: People who care to know me generally get it. I’m not saying people never get it wrong, but I myself have only encountered that once: when I was still at The Daily Show, I did a piece about how diverse the population of delegates was at the National Democratic Convention: African-Americans, Native-Americans, Jews, environmentalists—or “tree huggers,” as I’d call them—homosexual rights lobbyists, union workers, “Gandhi Indians”—as I called them, as opposed to “Sitting Bull Indians”—that kind of thing. I got them all together on a panel, and tried to get them to agree on things. Of course I picked very divisive topics, and it ended up being a cacophony that I just walked out of, like I couldn’t wait to get to the Republican Convention where they all spoke with one voice.

  Then I went to do a piece at the Republican Convention. It had been kind of a dull night. Madison Square Garden was empty, but I’m sitting in the bleachers, thinking, “How am I going to cut this together into something?” and a guy comes over in one of those “here’s your cowboy hat for being at the convention” cowboy hats and he says, “I’m from Bush Headquarters in Dallas, and I gotta tell you, I love that piece you did on the Democrats and how many crazy different kinds of people they have! I mean, what are they thinkin’, man? They’re never going to get that coalition together.”

  And I said, “Oh, that’s interesting. Um, you know, that was ironic. The whole point of it was that it’s a nice effort to try to get those kinds of people together. It was really kind of a celebration of what they were doing, and the idea that the Republicans are all one voice is a criticism of what is essentially the patriarchal power structure still propped up by the white, Christian male leadership of the Republican Party.”

  That was generally the idea of what I said to him, and he looks at me and goes, “Huh. Well…I’ll take your word for it, but it was funny as hell, man. We play it all the time.”

  Then he just walked away, and I went, “Oh…Okaaaay.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: I can’t help wondering if that may happen more often than you’re aware.

  STEPHEN COLBERT: I think maybe you’re right, too. I don’t put much stock in things like the Pew Research Center study that says young people get more of their news from me and Jon Stewart than any other place. However…Harvard did a study at the Kennedy School about Jon Stewart’s and my demographics. Basically, it said that traditional Democrats watch his show 46 percent to my 29 percent, something like that, and traditional Republicans watch me 49 percent to his 25 percent. So there might actually be some “I identify with what that guy’s saying.” There might be a little bit of that in there.

  PAUL PROVENZA: And does it matter?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: Oh, it absolutely doesn’t matter to me. I’m not crafting my work for a demographic. I’m just glad people watch, and I don’t suppose they’d watch other than to laugh. So if they’re laughing, then that’s fine with me.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Given that “willful ignorance” is bipartisan, do you consider yourself Left-wing or Right-wing?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: There are times that my character’s ignorance of himself allows him to say liberal things or even hold liberal ideas without any knowledge of it. In reference to my character, he’s generally conservative.

  I myself sometimes agree with him. It doesn’t matter to me if my audience knows when that is, but I do sometimes agree with my character. But generally speaking, if you slap me across the face at three A.M. and say, “What are you?” I’d say I’m a liberal.

  PAUL PROVENZA: If your audience doesn’t know whether you’re making fun of a Left-or Right-wing position at any given moment, does that not get in the way of the point?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: I think sometimes it could muddy the sharpness of the satire, but I’m also creating a character, and I e
njoy that occasionally the audience gets a whiff of my personal honesty out of the character’s mouth, and they may not even be aware of it.

  PAUL PROVENZA: So you let your own views slip through—

  STEPHEN COLBERT: They don’t slip through; they’re purposeful. I like jumping over the line between who I am and who the character is, to confuse the audience. If my game is continuous, if I’m continually merely saying the opposite of what I mean, that becomes a well-worn rut. From the beginning I’ve wanted to do things that are (a) self-critical, and (b) also reflecting my honest beliefs at times. It’s not all that often, but occasionally, because I think then the audience will listen a little bit closer.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Does that soften the character?

  STEPHEN COLBERT: It adds a layer of reality to it.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Doesn’t playing a character create distance? Can people not take the point seriously since it’s just from a quasi-fictional character? And if they hold views you mock, can’t they just say to themselves, “Oh, that guy’s just a joke?”

  STEPHEN COLBERT: I try to wear his mask lightly, but never really take it off fully, because it allows me to say things that you would not forgive me for saying. For instance: “That Rosa Parks is overrated. Let’s not forget she got famous for breaking the law, okay? Last time I checked, we don’t honor lawbreakers. I think that gets lost in this whole back-of-the-bus thing. Don’t get me wrong, it took a lot of courage, but I think we’re burying the lead, here. She’s a criminal.” I can get away with that through the mask of my character.

  I suppose many comedians keep some level of mask between themselves and the audience, and the audience agrees to let them get away with it, but I wear it all the time on my show, to various thicknesses. That’s how the character helps me. I can get away with shit. Most of the time.

  PENN JILLETTE

  AS THE BIGGER, louder half of the Las Vegas magic duo Penn and Teller, Penn Jillette not only performs magic, he often deconstructs it for the audience. As co-producer and co-creator of the comedy/documentary The Aristocrats, he deconstructed not just a joke but the art of creating comedy and of being funny. On his Showtime series Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!, he and Teller put the lie to all manner of urban myths, old wives’ tales, and other commonly held truisms. In this interview, he calls “bullshit” on icons of satire itself. From Jonathan Swift to Lenny Bruce to Borat and Stephen Colbert, Jillette opines on why irony, sarcasm, and ironic detachment will never be a substitute for speaking from the heart.