I posted a few things in the last six months about wanting to provide frequent light fare palate cleansers to wash away the intense bitterness of politics. True, we're not bitter here on the right, but being vigilant over the left can be a bit of a downer. Who better to crank out videos, podcasts, and columns to dispel the darkness than the dude who's both a stand-up comic and a snark-slinging political pundit?
It was a sound theory with just one problem that took me some time to figure out: I'm kind of a dark guy.
Back when I first started headlining clubs, I would often get to one that I'd never worked before and find that they had billed me as an "angry comic." That truly perplexed me, because that was not in sync at all with what I thought about myself onstage. Hey, I was having nothing but fun by that stage in my career. Then I remembered the first published review I ever had from the very early days in Tucson. It said that I was an "intense young comic who had great instincts and prowled the stage like a bull in a china shop."
OK, I can see a leap to "angry" from there.
"Angry" and "dark" are interchangeable for the purposes of this post. I hope I've had an epiphany here. My humor has always come from a darker, perhaps even angry place. I take a lot of stuff that people — or I — don't want to talk about and wring a joke or two out of it. Maybe the reason that I haven't been producing diversionary, humorous content is that I've been trying to look for the fluffy clouds and puppies who look like they're smiling.
If done properly and with skills that I have in my wheelhouse, I should be able to take a political topic and twist it to the point where the dark humor in it is a pleasant diversion for everyone. It has to be cathartic for me if we are to do that, however. And who knows? One of those fluffy clouds stories might pop up from time to time.
Probably not until I've had Abigail Spanberger doing something awful with a witch's cauldron and some funnel cakes in Keith Olbermann's rumpus room, though.
Click the button to get the Morning Briefing emailed to you every weekday. Have your coffee with me, people. It's free, and it supports conservative media!
