Lewis Black, the fiery comedian known for his rage on the stage, is back in Florida for shows in January 13-19 in Bonita Springs, Coral Springs, Clearwater, Orlando and Jacksonville.
He got on the soapbox with the Watermark to discuss, you guessed it, the President-Elect (the one who likes to Twitter instead of learn intelligence briefings) and how he, a man known for his contempt for politicians, feels about our current situation and how we, the people, can survive the next four years of The Apprentice Takes the White House.
Watermark: How are you doing this morning?
Lewis Black: I’m good. I don’t have to work, so I’m good.
Excellent. Have you read the papers yet? Have your papers come in?
Yeah.
Anything that is chapping your ass, so to speak?
It’s just continuous now. It doesn’t matter what it comes now. It’s just continuous madness. What do you say? It’s beyond. You just start … Wherever you pick a point in time, you can go from there. He says he’s going to be the president and he’s going to be the executive producer of the new Celebrity Apprentice.
Is that legal?
I don’t even … It doesn’t even matter if it’s legal. It’s just profoundly stupid. Basically, it almost … First up, it sounds like it’s equating the two. Which is really what’s wrong. He doesn’t have time to read the security briefings, but he has time to be the producer of … It’s not only the … It’s the new Celebrity Apprentice, like the new Match Game or the new whatever. It’s Arnold Schwarzenegger. Seriously, you have to ask every morning, “What drug did I take last night?”
Right. I have to take drugs to make sense of this anymore. I thought it was bad when it was the Bush situation, but looking back on it now and re-listening to your old stuff, I’m like, “It wasn’t as bad. It’s gotten shittier.” You called it.
Yeah, it just gets worse, but this is really beyond anything I ever imagined. I just didn’t think it was possible. Now what makes it even weirder is it’s just, we were in California, it’s like going to a different country.
Because of the liberal situation over there?
It’s like, “I’m liberal on social issues.” To me, it’s not liberal. It’s just, “Sorry, we’ve entered a new age. Goodbye. Goodbye. You’re standing on the shore. The boat is taking off. Goodbye.” Nothing liberal about it. A lot of the experiments are over. They started when I was a kid, and the thought of them started way back, and now they’ve come … When I was in theater school, people weren’t out of the closet, and that’s 35, what is it, 40 years ago. Now they are, and now they’re married, so we’ve gone. The ship has sailed.
Exactly. He waffled on that. I don’t like to give him any credit. It’s hard for me to do it, but he surprised me when he backed off on that offhandedly.
Yeah, but he doesn’t … It’s whatever day it is. That’s why the people who voted for him in part went, “Wait until tomorrow.” Good luck. They wanted … I said, “Look, I get it.” In the same way that the Sanders people wanted to blow Washington up, only the difference is that they sent somebody who didn’t know where to put the sticks of dynamite. You can blow it up, but you’ve got to know what you’re blowing up. [Trump] has no clue. I don’t even believe the guy took a fucking civics class. All you got to do is listen to him speak. First, he’s not a good speaker. That doesn’t upset me really. What I have a real problem with is when an ego is on steroids. It’s hard enough for me to watch the physical body on steroids, but an ego on steroids I can’t abide, and I’ve not been able to abide it since childhood. Call it a prejudice on my part. I don’t care what you call it. I find it appalling, and I find it appalling in any human being, and I’ve dealt with it.
It’s offensive, is what it is.
In terms of living the entertainment industry, I’ve dealt with it. It’s something that I find offensive.
Honestly, for you to find it offensive, people don’t think about that but that is what truly offensive is. It’s when somebody has absolutely no moral center or complete disregard for anybody except for themselves, and he’s unapologetic about it, which I try to make with my parents about it. My parents voted for him, so I have to tell myself, “Okay, maybe they like that he’s unapologetic, but it’s for the wrong reasons.”
They’ve also probably been … You’ve got to realize, they’ve been disenfranchised. How do you say, “Fuck you?” He’s the easiest way to say, “Fuck you,” and a lot of people wanted to say, “Fuck you,” and they had a right to. In part, what’s happened to is people of my age who don’t seem to be able to reach kids who are younger, it’s the same way in which Nancy Pelosi can’t reach the working class. There’s no common ground with Nancy Pelosi and the working class. There may be, but she is unable to express it, the same way Hillary was unable to express it.
Exactly, and now that it’s over, I could lose my gay card for saying this, but it bothered me that everybody was celebrating her as if she was some sort of gay icon, some sort of the people person, when I was like, “No, I’m not buying it, and quit talking about the pantsuits. They’re horrible.” It was frustrating, so frustrating.
It is, because the other thing was, I felt … Part of me sensed it was over. Bernie may have been my candidate, but I’m not stupid. Bernie wasn’t going to win, but when Joe Biden said he wasn’t going to run, I went, “Ball game’s over.” The other thing is to remember that it’s not a majority who like him. This is not even the electoral vote. 48 percent of the people voted. 60 percent of the people didn’t like him. 60 percent, and 60 percent didn’t like her. That means literally if you start doing the math, 18 to 20 percent of the American people really voted for Donald Trump and didn’t vote against. You’ve got to get it into perspective. A lot of people voted against. More people voted against than voted for.
That is a good point. It certainly makes walking down the street less terrifying, because the idea of everybody liking him that much, and with the Twitter … Obviously, you don’t go on the Twitter a lot.
I’m on it, but I don’t pay any attention. I don’t pay attention to Facebook. I can’t read that stuff. I find it hard.
I can’t imagine you doing it.
Even when I do, I’ll have done a live stream and then I’ll go to see what people have said, and they literally find something in the middle of the sentence and go off on it. I just find I can’t read this stuff. And he’s working on Celebrity Apprentice. That’s the other thing. I don’t care if politicians think, “I’ve got to be hip.” I don’t need a president telling me in 140 characters. Somebody put that to me one day. I need him … You want to say something, say it. If you’re the president-elect, come out and say it. Don’t hide behind your phone. Come out and say it and face the music. He never faces any music. He expressed upset about something yesterday while Aleppo is going on. Where are your priorities?
I bet he doesn’t know where it is, or doesn’t care, most likely, but yeah, it’s a frustrating thing. I guess you have to live with it, but do you have despair?
All I give is a shit about is the middle. We got to get back to the middle. We went to what some people felt was too far left. Now we’re going way, way back to what’s too far right, and we need to be in the middle. We don’t have time for this anymore. We haven’t had time for this since we got into the 21st century, okay? We’ve got a group of people wandering around who claim to be the leadership, who have no clue that we’re living in a different age. None. We’re in a different age now. I’m not even connected enough with what’s happening now, and now these jackasses who are my age are pretending, “Yeah, I get it.” No, you don’t. You don’t get it at all. This fucking shit is happening in terms of technology that is way beyond your understanding. It’s beyond any understanding. None of us understand..
Actually, one thing I wanted to segue to: I wanted to know lately what you would recommend to everyone as far as good places to donate to. You always seem to be spreading the goodness, so to speak.
Instead of giving gifts I’ve dedicated to the library … I’ve given money to the library, because that allows you to give a gift. The problem is, you give it to the ACLU and people go, “Fuck you and the ACLU.” You can also earmark where it goes. There’s voting rights. There’s all sorts of things within the ACLU. Basically, I think you’ve got three choices gift-wise. One is you can go the book route, which basically allows you to do
Basically, I think you’ve got three choices gift-wise. One is you can go the book route, which basically allows you to do something, because it looks like knowledge is going out the window so you might want to keep books around. I think libraries are a real good place, and it also is the middle-class vault of knowledge. It’s where it gives access to everyone. I think it’s going to be the most litigious four years at least in my lifetime, so the things that you believe in in terms of legal, be it LGBTQ rights or Planned Parenthood, if you think of women’s reproductive issues, voters’ rights, the list is endless. There are all sorts of groups that you can give to that are going to need the money to go to court to do these court cases. Separation of church and state, huge. That may even be the one that is … In a sense, a lot of what I’ve been saying about the other things is that a lot of this stuff comes from the fact that these idiots can’t separate church and state, and that’s a pretty simple one. There’s a really good group. I’ll tell it to you. The head of it is retiring. He’s a guy named Barry Lynn, and he’s just great, but I never remember the name. It’s Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. They’re remarkable, because it’s just one case after another.
Yeah, it’s mind-boggling that this is even an issue still. We’re still talking. It seems like it’s the same thing over and over again, and it’s stupid.
Then the third is groups that have to do in your community in terms of autism, makes you think within your community, who’s going to do right by your community, and the myriad diseases, and mental health.
Right, that’s a big one.
I talk about that a lot in the act. I think in part there is a collective decision by the entire population that if we weren’t going to deal with the mental health issue, the best way to do it is if we were all crazy, so we decided to drive ourselves crazy.
Tickets are available at LewisBlack.com.
