the comic's comic

Harry Shearer: Novelist, blogger, Simpsons voice

Harry Shearer is a man of many voices, to be sure. And that's just on The Simpsons, where Shearer voices the characters of Mr. Burns, Smithers, Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, the Rev. Timothy Lovejoy, among others. You've heard him for years on Le Show, his weekly public radio program. Seen him on Saturday Night Live (that synchronized swimming sketch alone is legendary). With Christopher Guest and company, he's been in both This Is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind, and now For Your Consideration. He even blogs, for crying out loud — he started the "Eat the Press" feature on the Huffington Post. And now he has delivered his first novel, the satirical "Not Enough Indians."

I spoke with Shearer about the book and everything else.

OK. That's enough of a build-up. Let's bring Shearer down a notch. First question: How come Le Show still isn't on the air in Boston? Does it even matter, since you can listen to archived shows online? "I wish I knew," he said. "I guess it's people calling 'BUR, 'GBH saying what the hell is wrong with you people. Like they say, you know Boston isn't really a big college town."

"I have the perception that not being on the air in New York City affects the perception of people in the media business as to what I do. People in the media business are so freaking lazy. They want it served up to you on a silver platter…It affects the media profile of the show. But that's just about New York. It's such a provincial place."

What about the blogging? "I know Brian Williams has told me in a public encounter that he was reading the Eat the Press blog. But sometimes I feel…most bloggers are talking to each other. They feel they're part of a very lively center of the universe type of thing. But inside the heart of every satirist beats a desire to basically say, 'Why don't you guys stop doing this?'" Case in point: "How the national media really missed the story of New Orleans." Shearer has a home in New Orleans.

What about Indian casinos…do you want to make them stop? Is that why you wrote the book? "No, no. Social satire is much different from political satire. Look at what a wacky species we are…look at the motivating impulses there…if you were walking through a human zoo, what kind of animals would we see?"

Well, what kind of animals do you see in your zoo? Caught him off-guard with that one. Almost Barbara Waltersesque? Let's move on. "What I try to poke fun of in this book is small-town boosterism, the bizarre historical switcheroo that turned Native Americans from victims of a near-complete genocide to casino magnates, and how government works — or doesn't."

Did you go to Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods to research the book? No, he said, though he did spend time at a California tribe's casino. And he is painfully aware of how Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods have become the largest casinos in the world, and are only getting bigger. Because, as he pointed out: "There may be a bigger on one Mars. So you never know. I loved the moment where Mohegan Sun became the franchisee of a WNBA franchise. That was a major moment. I'm waiting for one of them to form a major orchestra. And then for one of them to declare themselves the 51st state. Well, they can't do that. That would be too…but something else grandiose. The notion that they're a sovereign nation. OK, but then they have to go hat in hand to Washington to ask for recognition."

But casinos do seem to the big easy answer, don't they? "Yeah, build a casino! Do you remember that was Mayor (Ray) Nagin's first suggestion on how to rebuild New Orleans." Before turning New Orleans into a Chocolate City, 'twas casinos.

How much of an influence was Jack Benny on your decision to become a satirist? You performed on his show in 1953 when you were only 10. "I think you'd have to say it was, in a sense. I have this very strong visual memory supplemented by a photograph of the first time I made Jack Benny laugh, which was on a read-through," he said. "Right away, it was like, oh my God! I do have this theory that people go into comedy, everybody as a child has this…a lot of people have, they feel that it's an unpleasant experience to be laughed at by the other kids. The moment you can control that, it's very intoxicating."
"That was totally one of the first times, yeah," he said of working with Benny. "I was doing the fake comedy shows with friends that I was tape recording. It was very important to me because I got skipped in school, so I was two years younger than anyone else. I needed something. I wouldn't beat anybody up. I wasn't a class clown. Don't get me wrong, it helps to be known as someone who did that, but that wasn't me."

Katt Williams

Katt Williams is one n—– a roll. Wait. Hold on, hold on, just hold on one second. What's with that "n-word"?! Oh, right. That. Avert your eyes now if you don't want to know what it is, even though you know all too perfectly well what the word is, and as Louis CK will tell you, just saying n-word puts the actual word in your head.

That word has been in the news and in comedy debates in the two weeks since Michael Richards (not Kramer) went off on a rage-filled rant at the Laugh Factory in L.A. And considering what's happened since, with club owner Jamie Masada saying he'd ban and fine comics who utter the word, the Rev. Jesse Jackson calling for a boycott of the word in entertainment circles, and veteran comic Paul Mooney saying he'd stop saying the word that has made him so much, I just had to ask Katt Williams about it.

Especially since his HBO special, Katt Williams, The Pimp Chronicles pt. 1 (now out on DVD), was, to quote Williams, the biggest hit "in the history of niggerdom." Suffice it to say, Williams isn't afraid of Masada's edict.

"No, they shouldn't have done that," he told me. "They were as wrong as (Michael Richards) was. As a comic, you're allowed to say whatever. A comic can do 30 minutes on the intricacies of the vagina, or doing bowel movement. Thta's the comic's right. But if you get to the point where that's offensive, what's next? You can't talk about fat people or slow people or offensive people or retarded people? I think if you can get in front of black people and say something bad like nigger and get away with it without something bad happening to you, you've done something right."

Note: On Saturday night at the Orpheum, Williams told the sold-out crowd that he would've had to punch out Richards if he had seen him that night, just on principle.

But about Paul Mooney…Williams was incredulous. "What? A white man said it? Now I'm not going to say it again?! It's so retarded…It was a light-bulb experience for him?" Williams is quoting Mooney's description in recent interviews there. "What? Because a white man said it?" Williams said he could understand why Jackson and others would want to take back the word nigger. "I understand that. That part I can understand. The other part I can't understand is Paul Mooney said he'd never say it again because he heard a white guy say it." Williams pauses to laugh about that some more. Why the laughter? "Because I know Paul Mooney. You'd have to know Paul Mooney to get this joke. It's one of the most hilarious things ever."

"This is what we do. If it wasn't offensive to somebody, it would just be a guy onstage saying pleasantries. (Adopting a dorky voice) 'Hey everybody, life is wonderful!' It's not…You have to really go out of your way to make life wonderful."