Miller interview in Politico

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on August 10th, 2008

From Jeffrey Ressner’s interview with Dennis Miller on Politico.com:

A lot of popular comedians seem to be conservative: Drew Carey, Adam Sandler. And SNL creator Lorne Michaels has contributed to the McCain campaign. Why do you think many comics tilt this way, while liberals seem to dominate the film and TV business?

We’ve been heckled. And I view terrorists as really aggressive hecklers that we occasionally have to shut up. For the good of the show, they have to be silenced [laughs], dispatched with extreme prejudice, as we say in the trade. There’s pragmatism in stand-up comedy– it’s really Darwinian, it’s the Serengeti Plain, you exist from moment to moment, living from joke to joke. If you’re an impressionist you can turn around and nobody is really going to boo; singers have the trappings of the song. Comedians are out there foraging for the truffle that is the laugh and it makes us pragmatic.

Ressner’s mistaken when he says “a lot” of high-profile comedians seem to be conservative (note that he only cites two while talking to a third). If there are more, they’re keeping it real quiet. Miller’s theory, however, is interesting.

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