Q&A: Tim
Slagle
Tim Slagle says he feels like he’s lived in Minnesota ,
albeit one week at a time over twenty-plus years. The Detroit-born,
Chicago-based political satirist not only tears into government in his stand-up
routine, he’s also a contributing editor for Liberty Magazine. In addition to
appearing on C-Span, Showtime, and MTV, Slagle produced and starred in “Mudslingers
Ball” with Lewis Black. The pilot, which aired on local TV station KSTP, came
in at #2 in its timeslot.
Q: When did you first get interested in politics?
A: Probably since I was old enough to vote. I had
been doing comedy for a few years and I saw Will Durst’s work. It amazed me
that he could take something like politics and elicit laughs from it. I started
going in that direction after that. Looking back, it probably wasn’t a good
decision. Especially now, that things are so polarized. With any political
joke, you have a good chance you’ll alienate half of the audience.
Q: Is there a tactful way to handle that?
A: If there is, I haven’t found it. Whereas most
comics, when they upset people in the room, they say, “Oh my gosh, I have to do
something to get the audience back.” I say, “You don’t like it? You can leave.”
Q: What are the biggest mistakes our country is
making right now?
A: Putting too much confidence in Washington .
People get into government nowadays not because they’re the most qualified or
the most intelligent but because they’re the most convincing on TV. Our
government is now being run by used car salesmen and slip-and-fall lawyers who
are selected by people stupid enough to believe that you could lose 100 pounds
in 10 days without diet or exercise.
Q: What would your ideal government look like?
A: A ghost town. [Laughs.] Government should
be there for minimal purposes: to protect you from me and us from them.
Q: What do millennials need to know about politics?
A: To not take it too seriously. It’s a joke. It’s an
accident created by imperfect beings.
Q: Do you recommend voting?
A: In the past, I always believed everyone should
vote but I’m starting to think no. If you don’t know why you should vote, why
should you vote? There’s a popular refrain that says, “We have to get more
people out to the polls” and I strongly disagree with that. If you pay
attention, yeah, good, go to the polls, but there’s no reason to think that you
should show up just to show up and vote for the people whose names look
interesting.
Q: You’ve been doing comedy for a long time. How have
you seen the industry or the craft change over the years?
A: When I first started, there were probably only a
dozen people making a living at comedy. It seemed impossible for anyone unless
you’d been on The Tonight Show. Then you were knighted as a comic. I saw it go
from that to hundreds of people making a living to thousands of people making a
living at comedy back to a couple dozen people. It’s classic supply and demand.
When I started doing it, it was a unique thing, like, “Wow, you’re a comedian?
That’s really interesting.” Now it’s like, “You’re a comedian? My brother does
that.”
Q: What makes a successful comedian?
A: If I knew that, you wouldn’t have had to go on my
Wikipedia page [before the interview]. It’s really hard. In the beginning, a
good VHS tape would get you booked. If you had a popular MySpace page, that
would get you booked. Today, there’s so many ways to crack into the industry,
who knows. There’s comics that are only popular because people heard them on XM
stereo or their podcasts. I have no idea what the next big thing is going to
be.
Q: Everyone’s been talking about the death of Robin
Williams. Is there a link between the desire to be a comedian and depression?
A: There’s an old joke I remember from when I was a
little kid: a man goes into the psychiatrist and says, “I don’t know what to
do, Doctor. I’m thinking of killing myself. I’m so depressed.” The doctor says,
“You need to go see Grimaldi the Clown. He’s the funniest clown I’ve ever seen.
I died laughing.” The man said, “Doctor, I am Grimaldi.”
That’s kind of been the stereotype for the longest time. There
do seem to be a lot of comics who suffer from depression. I think a lot of
comics believe that success will stop the pain. I know a few comics who have
said they thought that’s what was lacking in their lives.
Those of us who don’t have fame or success or money, we have
something that people like Robin Williams don’t have—and that’s hope. We hope
that if we win the lottery, it’s gonna solve all our problems. We hope that our
YouTube post goes viral. We all have these hopes and we put these little
candles on paper boats and send them afloat on a pond, hoping that this one
will end the pain. I think what’s most striking about Robin Williams: he had
everything that anyone in the world could dream to have, except because he had
all that, he had no hope left.
Originally published on Vita.mn in Aug. 2014.
Originally published on Vita.mn in Aug. 2014.