BARRY CRIMMINS — American political satirist

Barry Crimmins

The New American Dream Interview

[First published Feb. 2, 2009]

BARRY CRIMMINS, 55, is an American political satirist.

He worked as a stand-up comedian for over thirty years, retiring in 2007.

In 2004 his first book, Never Shake Hands With A War Criminal, was published by Seven Stories Press.

He was born and raised in Skaneateles, New York, and after years of big city loving returned to an extremely rural portion of upstate New York where he continues to comment on current events.



NAD: Barry, hello, welcome.

Your piece that was recently published in Vanity Fair about hunters and hunting season, what's that all about? You don't like guns?

I meet far more people sick
of armed morons
than you might expect.

BARRY CRIMMINS:

The piece was linked by James Wolcott on his Vanity Fair blog.

It was posted on barrycrimmins.com.

I never liked guns, that doesn't mean I would suggest that they be rounded up or something.

That would be an unrealistic aspiration in a country so full of firearms. I just want laws enforced. Hunters will always have their long guns.

No one is coming for them, although living where I do, I meet far more people sick of armed morons than you might expect.



NAD: What if they take away our guns? How will we be free?


BARRY CRIMMINS:

Well we'd be free of having to worry about cretins with guns, but actually I never said anything about taking away guns in that piece.




NAD: When you were growing up, who did you want to be? Bob Hope? Johnny Carson? Milton Berle?

Who did you eventually become? Why?

I am myself for a living.

It's a pretty cool job, but I never get any time off.

BARRY CRIMMINS:

A funny Hall of Fame baseball player who eventually became president because people loved him for writing the most powerful essays since Mark Twain.

Eventually I became myself to the point where I did it professionally.

I am myself for a living. It's a pretty cool job but I never get any time off.




NAD: I'm going to take a chance and lump you with Bill Hicks and George Carlin.

And I'm going to guess that you are trying to change the world, right the wrongs through comedy, that comedy is your method, that it's the means, that the righting of the wrongs is more what its about than the laughs.


BARRY CRIMMINS:

I love Bill and George but hope to avoid being lumped in with them in for at least the immediate future.

I snuggle content under the cover of humor.




NAD: That's a lot of words to show that I really have no idea why you do what you do.

Could you tell me?


BARRY CRIMMINS:

As I said above — I am myself for a living.

I wake up and do what I think is most important to do each day.




NAD: What is your passion today?

When you woke up this morning, what did you feel you had to get done before supper time?

Lunch time?


BARRY CRIMMINS:

I am finishing work on a screenplay that is about an important and oft-overlooked political issue. I work until I can't do it any longer and that has to be enough until my brain regenerates.




NAD: Did it work?

The fighting injustice, speaking truth to power?

Did you have fun giving it a good try?

Or, maybe you have just begun to fight?

The age is inevitably stupid,
the ages are where the hope is hidden.

BARRY CRIMMINS:

The only thing we can really hope to accomplish is the appeasement of our own consciences and that only might happen if we are relentless in our devotion to justice.

I try to play to the ages, not the age.

The age is inevitably stupid, the ages are where the hope is hidden.

And the idea to me is perhaps take one stand, do one thing that helps someone I will never meet, long after earthly vanities such as public acclaim are meaningless to me.




NAD: Is the Obama presidency the end of leftist comedy?


BARRY CRIMMINS:

Considering how the President-elect and his transition team have failed to throw so much as one bone to the left as of early December, it should mean the beginning of a resurgence of southpaw satire.

All the geniuses capable of noting Bush's stupidity and Cheney's evil (and McCain's age and Palin's impertinence) now may actually have to learn how to comment on policy via their humor if they want to remain relevant.

By the way, only a fool fool would ignore gifts such as Bush's stupidity, Cheney's evil, (and McCain's age and Palin's impertinence) as jumping off points for satirical commentary.

It's just that you'd like to see some sort of dive executed from such an obvious jumping-off point.

The pros who do this every day will flail about a bit until they find a toothless way to go after the new regime.

This material will look very edgy when they replay it on the vapid morning news shows.

But they never did leftist humor in the first place. They just point out and exploit foibles.

The pros who do this every day will flail about a bit until they find a toothless way to go after the new regime.

This material will look very edgy when they replay it on the vapid morning news shows.



But they never did leftist humor in the first place. They just point out and exploit foibles.

NAD: Why won't Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert talk about 911?


BARRY CRIMMINS:

I don't watch Stewart and Colbert.

It sullies my palate.

That said, obviously they do pretty mainstream stuff, gussied up to look hip and cutting edge.

(I have gathered this from what people tell me and from the occasional YouTube clip.)


They are working comics who have found incredibly great gigs for themselves.

Good for them. They did, however suck for crossing the WGA picket lines.

No excuses there. No alibis.

They were just a couple of millionaires scabbing to help the corporation gain strength during a labor struggle by reopening revenue streams for bosses.

There's nothing hip about that.

But why focus on 9/11?




Why don't they discuss bread and butter issues
like real wages
and the incredible waste that is the military budget?



Because, to repeat, they do mainstream stuff in drag as cutting edge humor.

How about doing shows about the prison-industrial complex?

Why not discuss worldwide poverty?

Why not speak up for the billions of people who live lives of deprivation?

Because they do shows aimed at an upscale demographic that doesn't give a fuck about what's really going on.

They just want slicker people running the American empire so that we don't seem so obviously fucking evil that not even the chuckleheads at Comedy Central can avoid doing some programming about it.

Those issues all would come before speculation on 9/11 as far as I'm concerned — particularly because had we been paying attention to them before 9/11, 9/11 may have never come except as just another day.

So 9/11 doesn't do well with me when we triage the issues.

That barn has burnt.


But for you, Mike, I'll stick a toe into these murky waters.

I don't think we have ever had a proper open examination of what happened on that awful day.

My guess is that what was kept from us was information that would have made it clear that Bush and Cheney were negligent, panicky and incompetent on 9/11.

Our manly-men leaders couldn't allow themselves to be humiliated for such an incredible failure and the obfuscation followed.

Once the administration began behaving in a shifty manner after such a tumultuous event, those prone to ascribing almost supernatural conspiratorial powers to explain the success of political adversaries were given platinum cards for paranoia.

With all due respect to those who are dedicated to exposing conspiracies, I find that full-time devotion to proving long-shot theories can lead to some pretty dogmatic behavior.

People get deeply invested in this stuff and soon seem almost happy to go down with the ship.

The Kennedy brothers died 40 and 45 years ago and some extremely smart people have spent all the years since then trying to prove various theories about these murders.

Even if someone finally solved these crimes in an indisputable fashion, what difference would it make?

Would it feed more hungry people?

Would it house the homeless?

Would it fix and upgrade the infrastructure?

Would it reverse global warming?

No.

And if the truth came out and these killings weren't traced to reactionary forces, then what?

A new war of retribution? Further curtailment of civil liberties?

I think our nation's endless Kennedy obsession says that to Americans, rich politicians murders matter more than murders of people all over the world who have been killed right in front of our eyes by our own government.

And because we don't value lives around the world the same as we value American lives — particularly the lives of privileged Americans — we are setting ourselves up for all sorts of disasters.

There sure were a lot of privileged people in the World Trade Center on 9/11 (along with plenty of regular working class folks) and we sure did act as if their deaths mattered more than those who died due to carpet-bombing or death squads or because of the lack of medical supplies thanks to that most beloved of US tactics — sanctions.

The question I'd like us to answer is: could 9/11 been prevented had US foreign policy been less insensitive to how people all over the world feel when their innocent friends, neighbors and loved ones get massacred by heartless violence (or just killed by callous disregard)?

This of course is a question that doesn't require answering if you assume that the most powerful people in this country simply added the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and that airliner in Pennsylvania to the list of places where they killed first and faced questions about it never.

But maybe if all the bright minds that remained obsessed with the Kennedy killings for all those years had dedicated themselves to exposing the savages of domestic and international poverty and despair, then perhaps we wouldn't have sunk to the point where Bush and Cheney could steal the White House in the first place (and yeah, the sky did fall after the election of 2000).

But that's just a theory.




The question I'd like us to answer is: could 9/11 been prevented had US foreign policy been less insensitive to how people all over the world feel when their innocent friends, neighbors and loved ones get massacred by heartless violence (or just killed by callous disregard)?




NAD: Would you if you had the chance to be in their shoes?

BARRY CRIMMINS:

I would take the day off and avail myself of their swell health care plans.




NAD: Would you like the chance?

BARRY CRIMMINS:

I would have liked the chance a few years ago, now I would prefer an opportunity to write and produce good content for television and films while remaining a faint blip on the cult of personality's radar screen.


Thanks, Mike, for the opportunity to answer your provocative questions and good luck with this new project.