Last Monday, a group of comedians and writers sat down with Vinson Cunningham, staff writer for The New Yorker, to discuss The Power of Political Satire on TV. The writers included: David Cross, Lizz Winstead, Elayne Boosler, Felonious Monk, and Dave Smith.
During the panel many topics arose, the main surrounding The President and whether or not certain jokes surrounding the presidency were still considered humorous after four years.
Other topics included the daily life of these comedians and the criticism they receive for their joke making. In addition, they spoke about being judged on their comedy based on their respective race or gender.
Overall the panel was a fantastic learning experience. More than anything it taught the mindset of the writers, trying to navigate a mine-field of criticism over things taken either out of context or that may be received as offensive.
Before the Panel, we asked each of the comedians a few questions, the first of which being if they believed any topics were off limits to which each answered “No.” followed by their own further explanation.
David Cross added that “I do not think anything, any topic is off limits. I think when you’re punching down, my own personal limit, is victims. I leave primely victims and innocent people alone.”
Below are exclusive interviews with the aforementioned comedians:
Dave Smith — comedian and political commentator
The Knockturnal: What is your key to taking taboo topics and making them funny?
Dave Smith: No.
The Knockturnal: Why?
Dave Smith: What would be considered off topic? I think making anything funny is about pointing out the absurdity in it. If you can find the absurdity in it, it’s gonna make people laugh.
The Knockturnal: Can you tell me a little on how you approach these topics in the writing room?
Dave Smith: I’m not really a writing room guy. I do stand up and podcasts. I’m not good at writing jokes for other people. All I do is try to find what I think would be funny and try to give that to an audience and then you judge whether or not they are laughing. And if they’re laughing that’s a pretty good sign that other people find it funny as well.
The Knockturnal: Why do you think political satire is such a widely popular form of news absorption?
Dave Smith: Well number one, we live in a really dumb society and they’re not gonna spend the time reading books and educating themselves. They’ll listen to a comedian and figure stuff out from that. Number 2, because we’re in the fall of an empire, and we live in this empire that’s completely collapsing. So it’s hilarious. There’s just a lot of material for comedians.
Lizz Winstead– co-creator of The Daily Show
The Knockturnal: When it comes to political satire, do you feel any topics are off limits?
Lizz Winstead: No. I don’t think anything’s off limits because i think that how you tell a story or how you want to expose hypocrisy, I think, is important to do that. And I think the topic isn’t taboo no topic should be taboo but there’s always hypocrites in every single topic and there’s always wrongdoers in every single topic so find them, define them and hold them accountable.
The Knockturnal: What is your key to taking taboo topics and making them funny?
Lizz Winstead: I think the key to making them funny is find the bad guy and make fun of the bad guy. There’s always a bad guy.
The Knockturnal: Ok, and can you tell me a little on how you approach these topics when you write them?
Lizz Winstead: My first check in is what’s my personal experience? Check in there. And then check in with the experience of others. What have I observed if it didn’t happen to me. I look at, depending on how it goes, if the topic is controversial, and theres a policy written about that, then I’ll break down the policy about why it is utter bullshit, and then go from there. Disprove the theory, basically.
The Knockturnal: Why do you think political satire is such a widely popular form of news absorption?
Lizz Winstead: I think if political comedy is done well, the narrator, or whoever is doing the comedy, doesn’t hold back no matter who. If you screw up, doesn’t matter if you like them or not, gotta hold them accountable. So I think if you’re a trusted narrator like you can be the winner. I think that literally in times that are so hard and dark, people are still laughing. it means they still have hope, so it’s a really good barometer as well.
Elayne Boosler– comedian and writer
The Knockturnal: When It comes to political satire do you feel any topics are off limits?
Elayne Boosler No topics are off limits. You have to judge your approach. Here’s a great thing. People say “Oh, money is the root of all evil. Blaming money, the subject. The bible actually says the love of money is the root of all evil. So it’s not money an inanimate thing can’t be the bad part. It’s your approach to what you’re talking about and that can be good or bad depending on what your subject is.
The Knockturnal: What is your key to taking these taboo topics and making them funny?
Elayne Boosler Well I do trust my judgement, and that’s important. I know I have a good heart and I come from a place of love and truth and if you don’t then you’re just putting garbage out there. So I think if you bother to educate yourself and then try to use your powers for good you have a chance to put out good stuff that works.
The Knockturnal: How do you approach these when you’re writing these jokes?
Elayne Boosler I’ve never actually written jokes. What I’ll do is read tons of news all day, papers, magazines, whatever. I go on stage at night and whatever has stuck, whatever spaghetti is stuck to the wall. Because I’m pretty average. And i just figure whatever’s still on my mind is still on their minds in the audience. So that’s what I go for, I riff I always record you know audio record, and then pieces start to build on themselves.
The Knockturnal: How do you go back into the audio recordings and decide what’s useful?
Elayne Boosler You obviously listen to what gets a reaction and why. And if there’s a really good germ of an important issue a really good funny issue or something new that everyone experiences you remember that the next night and you try to build on that. I’m a talker not a writer so I just keep talking about the issue that’s really stuck with me and eventually you get a big long piece out of it.
The Knockturnal: Why do you think political satire has become such a widely popular form for news absorption?
Elayne Boosler Because the mainstream media has quit doing its job and everybody knows it. There’s such a lack of truth in media now that people don’t trust them. You can find out what’s going on. I think people know that comedians are nuts and will go all the way. And I think it’s our job to be the town crier because no one is.
Felonius Monk– comedian and writer
The Knock: When it comes to political satire, do you feel any topics are off limits?
Felonius Monk: No I do not. Because when things become sacred cows, that thing gets an opportunity to take you over, right? If that thing can’t get penetrated, then that thing becomes lost. Everything has to be on the table. Now some things should be respected, treated differently. But no, there should be no topics that are off limits. They should be topics that maybe you have to get gloves with. I don’t have any rape material. I don’t think rape is funny. However, I think within the context of a set, you can discuss rape. I don’t think there should be a rape joke, I think rape discussion. And I think in comedy, a lot of what we do is discussing and then finding the punchline to something else. So no I don’t think anything’s off limits, I just think certain people shouldn’t talk about certain things, especially if you’re not good at it. There. I said it.
The Knockturnal: What is your key to taking taboo topics and making them funny?
Felonius Monk I think having respect for the topic and having respect for my audience. I have to be able to justify my joke when it’s over. If I say something and I know it’s gonna be controversial then my argument afterwards has to be something stronger than “come on, it was just a joke. If i put that much effort into writing a joke, and I think comedians have to be honest about that. You put hours and hours and hours into perfecting a small amount of materials. If we can spend that much time crafting a joke, we can spend that much time justifying why we said what we said. And so for me, If I can’t justify it, If I cant walk off stage and say “well I’m saying that because of this” then I wont tell the joke. It’s not worth telling.
The Knockturnal: Can you tell me a little about how you approach these topics when you’re writing them?
Felonius Monk: Yeah I get pissed off, and then I go I have to say something about that but also I don’t want to get preachy so how can I turn something smart and into something really funny so that people don’t realize I said something smart until they get home. And then they go “ayyy, that joke about rainbow Doritos wasn’t about rainbow Doritos. That joke was about LGBT rights. I did not know that. I’m very upset with him now. It’s definitely the funny comes first, the message comes second when I’m on stage. When I’m writing: the message comes first, the funny comes second.
The Knockturnal: Why do you think political satire is such a widely popular form for news absorption?
Felonius Monk: I think we’re now in a place where you can get your news wherever you want to get it whereas before you get your three channels, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox as a regular network before the news. I grew up with no CNN. When I was growing up, there wasn’t a CNN until a Fox News, there was no MSNBC. You got your news from the paper and your local news station. On Sunday you had your big nationwide news. That was it, everyone sat down and watched it every week. And now you can get your news through whatever filter you want. In order for this to work so that the whole society gets it the comedians are the ones who make it entertaining enough to get lots of people to listen to it. I don’t want to watch that show cuz I’m not a libertarian. Oh there’s a libertarian comedian? Well I don’t know if he’s a libertarian. I just know he’s a comedian and he’s funny. So he gets to spread the libertarian message through his comedy and no one else could have seen it. So it’s a different time, comedy has always been a really good vehicle for any message to get across, I just am very protective that we don’t use it to become mouth pieces for the same oppression we’ve already had. So I hope to keep punching up, until I die, so my kid doesn’t have to do these jokes 20 years from now.
