Lewis Black: Red, White N Screwed
10 tonight
HBO
There's a phenomena that happens with this special that also happens with stand-up legend George Carlin's comedy shows on this very same network. Black will be riffing on politics and religion and how diseased certain people are and I'll think to myself, “I'd love to show this to my dad. He's saying stuff ol' Pops would really appreciate.” Stuff like: “Dick Cheney. And that's all I got to say. Isn't it great that we've reached that point? You don't even have to say Dick Cheney, the vice president who shot his friend in the face. . . . Going quail hunting is like saying I'm going fishing and going to a gold fish pool and going, 'Got it.'” Or: “It's not like I'm saying Kerry would have been any better. Let's face it. When you went into that voting booth, you had a choice between two bowls of shit. The only difference was the smell. How did you Democrats find Kerry? What's the matter with you people? . . . The first time I heard him speak, I thought . . . 'I don't have enough bread crumbs to get me home.' The fact of the matter is the Democrats not being able to find somebody to defeat George Bush is beyond belief. It's stunning. It would be like finding a normal person who would lose in the Special Olympics.” In one classic moment, Black tries—on behalf of his beloved Jewish people—to wrestle back the Old Testament from Christian fundies, who moosh together their selected passages of Christ from the New Testament with the Old's fire and brimstone punishments for those who defied God. Yep, Dad would get a kick outta that. But then, like Carlin, Black ventures into graphic sex talk—not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that in talking about some straight people's fear of gay sex, Black will mention something about inserting sticks into rectums—again, hey, to each his own. But, uh, it's just not the kind of stuff you like to blare from the tele for your 79-year-old father, especially with your saintly 76-year-old mother in the same room.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.