Catching Up With... Harry Shearer

Shot through the history of comedic cornerstones like The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live and Spinal Tap is comedian Harry Shearer. His newest project, Songs of the Bushmen, takes musical aim at the Bush Administration, lampooning Colin Powell (“Smooth Moves”), Paul Wolfowitz (“Wolf on the Run”) and Karl Rove (“Turd Blossom Special”) amongst others. The album’s cover even features a portrait of George W. Bush with a bone through his nose—offending Clear Channel enough to get banned from billboard advertisements.

As politics and entertainment continue to intertwine, Shearer's lifelong involvement with satire makes him an enlightening figure. And in a recent conversation with Paste, he shared some of his pointed criticisms about the apparatus of American political comedy.

Paste: Recently, Sarah Palin and John McCain have appeared on comedy programs. What do you think it does to satire when the subject of the jokes become involved themselves?
Shearer: I understand why they feel as if it's a good idea to show that they, the politicians, have a sense of humor, and to inoculate themselves against ridicule. But I have a hard time understanding why satirical programs allow themselves to be used for that purpose. Except for one word: ratings. Beneath the veneer, they're all sort of happening in the same filthy bed. Politicians are trying to increase their poll ratings. And ultimately the satirical shows are trying to increase their ratings, too. They're all in the same business. Who's the user and who's the used? It becomes the unanswerable question. Ultimately, the people in the audience are the used. The users use the other users and in the shuffle the audience gets used. Now McCain's on Letterman. Now Palin's on SNL. Does any of it really prove that they have any sort of a sense of humor? Does it prove that they're better than they were before? It's all part of a larger charade, a satirical enterprise that one week takes a politician apart and the next is putting them back together, allowing them to confer on the message.

Paste: How do you think this sort of “charade” came about?
Shearer: It's part of the great American cultural virus—that seems to be infecting everything these days—of crossing the line. He's a minister, but really a tap dancer. He's a politician, but really an actor. Those who cover these people, and even those who hate them—well, they hang out with them. Everything is crossed over into something else. In a way, it goes back to a great New York satirist named Jean Shepherd, who's sort of been lost in current memory. But right about the time that Jack Kennedy was at the height of his presidency being the rock star of his era, Shepard said that "Everything in this country is turning into show business." Everything that might be something is just fungible—easily changed into show business, if it wasn't already. Whether it's religion or politics or anything else. Whether Palin, or McCain, or anyone else goes on these shows, it's basically just becomes of question of "do you like this show?" It's like when a movie script needs some help and they bring in script doctors, often from SNL, actually. These satirical shows end up serving as script doctors for the campaign scripts of candidates. Whether it's a movie script, or a show script, or a campaign script, they're all scripts.

Paste: So what should satire be more like?
Shearer: If you're trying to get true satire, your goal state is not to hang out with the people you're making fun of. It all turns into a big Gridiron Club dinner, those things in Washington every year where the politicians gather to read jokes written but guys probably moonlighting for SNL. It's all in such good fun. It's part of the sickness, really. As a satirist, I find fun and fault in the fact that the Washington journalist elite is fatally compromised by the fact that they like to hang with the people they're reporting on every night. And now satires are sucked in the same vortex. "We're all media. We hang out together. Basically, we make fun, but all together." And it all ends up feeding the public sense of cynicism. A big hunk of wool is pulled over everybody when everybody gets together one night to poke fun and play nice, then the next night from both politicians or journalists or satirists it's, "No, no, no! I really mean what I say! I don't want to have another dinner together after all. I'm not doing this to get to know anyone. I really mean this." Maybe it's the really five-year-old idealist inside me, but I would hope that the goal would be that something that I would say comedically would be so well barbed that it might even make you think a little bit about what you're doing.

Paste: And a show like SNL should make more of a point to avoid this?
Shearer: I come at this a little personally because the last time I was at SNL, the cast sort of banded together and said, "This thing about having politicians and other people as hosts without comedy chops. Well, they're bad and not funny and it really blows." And so for the first year, that season, there were no guest hosts. And then by show three the host was Jesse Jackson and we were right back to that. His staff sort of commandeered the phones and stuff in the office and in the breaks between rehearsals there he was backstage, making Operation P.U.S.H. calls. So we were supposedly making fun of a guy who was using us like crazy. It's just not good for satire. I have an aesthetic problem with it, too, because they're no good as comedy performers. So you're seeing the overall level of comedy performance go down. In addition to the point about satire best being practiced like gossip—you have to do it behind someone's back, not face to face. If you're gossiping about somebody and they're standing there, you're doing something wrong. It's the same with satire. Something's lost if they're participating in the supposed satire of themselves. It's not right.

Paste: What do you think about the charge that more Americans are getting their news from satirical news outlets like The Daily Show?
Shearer: This is what bothers me about that construct. It assumes that these people who are watching those shows at some point were watching Brian [Williams] or Katie [Couric] or Charles [Osgood] or Nightline and gave up or changed viewing habits. I think that's a wild misinterpretation. The people who were watching nightly news, evening news, have been old. They've always been old, and they vastly outnumber the other demographics. I remember when I was a kid, I noticed that the commercials were all for denture cream and getting rid of gray in your hair. The difference was that TV networks in those day were less panicked by that fact.  They were less sure than they are now that that wasn't a desirable audience. The kids in that era didn't have shows like Daily Show or Colbert, so they were getting news from underground newspapers or other non-nightly news outlets. Kids never are a primary news audience. Somebody once said that the thing that makes you interested in the news is your first mortgage, and nothing makes you take this stuff more seriously than if you have kids.

Paste: Something like your album, Songs of the Bushmen—how does that fit in with the satirical modes you’re describing? Who is that aimed for?
Shearer: These people are largely on their way out. So my sort of glib response there is that it's just a musical impeachment because they're not going to get another kind. I had the feeling that in a time to come, when this recedes a little bit into the distance, we'll want to get the license trucks of the numbers that rolled over us. The hope of having a real effect with the album is the fond hope of a child, a disappointed idealist that lurks inside most satirists. Basically it's just sort of to name names and sort of to, in a not totally accusatory fashion, to get into the heads of people and imagine their state of mind as the curtain starts to come down. But to do so with a barb inside.

Paste: Can you guess about what the satire will look like right after Bush leaves office?
Shearer: There must be some period in the middle of the night when Obama wakes up and says, "George W. Bush is leaving the next president the biggest shitpile that's ever been left to a next president. We've got two wars, an economy in a golden toilet, not to mention environmental calamity impending." So if he takes office, on day two, Republicans will start saying, "See what happens when you elect one of them? Nothing changed like he promised, did it?" And I think if John McCain gets in, he inherits the same mess and Democrats say, "We told you it's not going to change if you elect one of them! Nothing changed like he promised, did it?" Either one of these guys has just an insane inheritance. It's almost like you look under this huge pile of problems and far underneath is this tiny figure of president of the United States buckling under the weight of all of it. That's the great cosmic joke of the next four years... These are sublime messes we're in. Political campaigns are devoted to the idea that there are plans, but when they get in, they're up to their necks in ooze. And it takes inhuman energies to move even a millimeter forward within that ooze.