In honor of election day: Will Durst

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on November 5th, 2008

It’s the first Tuesday in November of an election year. Back in October of 2001 we interviewed the man most associated with political standup (perhaps, even he will concede, after Mort Sahl), Will Durst.

It won’t take but a few minutes to read the whole thing. Here’s an excerpt:

Q. You’ve never been shy about your liberal political leanings. There seems to be a spirit of bipartisanship in Washington and among pundits and the like, do your jokes need to be more bipartisan as well? How long before this dissolves into rancor?

A. A week. No, I think you might have that perception wrong. I’m not strictly a liberal. For twelve years I railed against a Republican administration and I can understand the rep, but I did the same thing as an opposition butt burr during Elvis’ reign. I’m a populist. A blue collar schmoe who tries to translate the government blah blah into layman’s language. I’m the “Will of the People.” Yeah, right. But as far as mocking and scoffing and taunting the President, that will have to be put on the back burner for awhile. He may be a pinhead, but he’s our pinhead, Goddamit and I’m going to support him. For a while.

SPECIAL BONUS: If you hit the “Shecky Home” link on the upper lefthand corner of the page, you’ll be taken to the index for the October 2001 issue of the magazine (back when we published on a monthly basis!). We can’t guarantee that any of those links will work, but have fun clicking on them and trying!

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