Le Show; 2003-07-20

From deep inside your radio. Every edition of the show is special, but this one is particularly special because I am sitting in a studio with, I'm going to embarrass him. He's one of my idols. He's one of the people who inspired me to get on this crooked path. And he's the dean of American satirists. I hope that's not putting you on a pedestal of inactivity when you're still out there doing the work on a constant basis. Mort Saul. Thank you for coming in. Oh, Harry. It's good to see you again. Too long. Well, you know, when I was in Australia, they called me the father of stand-up comedians. I want to slice it first. You got started as to my can in San Francisco, or you came to National Awareness in San Francisco doing a series of gigs at the Hungry Eye, yes?

Yes. And totally by accident, and I left here because there wasn't anything happening here. I tried here in 51. Really? I followed a girl to Berkeley, and she said to me, after a period of long unemployment, she said, go to the Hungry Eye because the crowd that goes there, if they like you, our troubles are over. And if they don't like you, the laugh anyway, because they'll think it's whimsy, gloomy. She was pretty gifted, and Susan. And then Enrico didn't want to fire me. You know Enrico. Enrico Banducci. Yes, he's still up there. Really? He was very good to everybody, and it was kind of the soul of your rock of North Beach. Were you there every night? Yeah, that's all I learned to do it.

What happened was the man that wrote that somewhere, Jack Brooks, married Dorothy Baker, who was an actor, and she left for honeymoon, and he gave me the week, and then he told the manager to fire me, and the manager said, you don't ever get your hands dirty. You fire him. So I just kept staying there in my desperation, trying to get it, to get it together, to trust my own instincts, instead of doing an imitation of movie stars, wearing a tie. And I stayed there, and you know, we did shows for two people. The audience was pretty barbaric. Really? Yeah, I was terrible. And they were... They didn't think you were whimsical. Not hard. Yeah, you talk about wearing a tie. The standard comedian, Garb, in those days, was Susan Tire Tuxedo. You came out in a sweater with a rolled up newspaper, and talked about what was going on

in the news that day. Was that the way the act started, or did it evolve? The act started. I had a suit that Stan Kenton gave me. You know me with the jazz. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I had a suit from the lift over from the band, and I came out, and because I thought of Will Rogers, I had the paper, and Rico told me to take the tie off, then the coat off,

and then I came up with this idea of the perpetual graduate student with the sweater and the loafers and the white shirt, and I tried, you know, everything I knew. But the sides were getting the laughs when I dropped the prepared material. So a lot of it is accidental. You know Castro says that he looks back and he realizes the revolution started six months before he realized that he was up in the hills, and so you know, I finally went to what I cared about, and the first political joke was every time the Russians thrown American and jail. We thrown American and jail on American activities. And the Eisenhower jacket made into a McCarthy jacket with a flap from the pillow would go over the mouth, and people were livid.

And because of my obtuse nature, I thought if they were livid, you were good. I was always that way though. When I lost the amateur shows, I was angry. You know, never change, never change. So you have to listen to the voice within unless it's your father's. I don't know. How long were you doing this in San Francisco before you became a national figure, started doing record recordings. So you started there in Christmas of 53, and in 58, I came down here and I met Lawford's manager, and then Joe Kennedy called me and asked me to write for the president, who was then the senator, and I did. And then I hit the time cover in 60, and then the old man turned on me, got mad because I kidded his son, and the old man, what do you know about the old man, a tough guy.

And interesting background. Yeah, and all the time, I thought I was in love with all the starlets, and I wanted to escape what I came from. So then I met a lot of the candidates, and I had it to myself because the Democrats had nobody. In fact, Stevenson had said to me, the Democrats are the most depressed majority in history. And then I began to work for a lot of people, you know, and a lot of it became a mystery to people when I knew Reagan and I knew, hey, but the party got taken over by the Democratic Conference, and so that's when it all, it all began to run down here. So I was imported back here, and New York, which I'd failed in, imported me back. So there's some kind of a lesson in that.

Well people ask me all the time, you know, kids ask me about show business and stuff, and I have nothing to, no, no useful information to impart, but I always feel like I have to say something, so I say, well, talent is good, luck is better, but nothing beats persistence. You know, and you're a standing example of it. There's a quote of yours that I've mangled repeatedly over the years, and I want to check that you've said it first and what the authentic version of it is, but it has something to do with whether it's accurate or not, assume the audience's intelligence. Yeah. Tell me what the real version of that is, and then... Well, the real version was that I, you know, because you know how grandiose I am. I thought I was the attorney for the damned. I thought I was Clarence Darrell, because you couldn't discriminate against Jews, you couldn't discriminate against blacks or Indians or women, but if you discriminate against everybody, like a network executive, and said people are stupid, so I was going to prove that they're not.

And of course, they're not, and as Freud says, if you express what's on their unconscious, you'll reach them. Men know there's a war with women, an uneasy truce, maybe, and they knew who Nixon was, and they knew who McCarthy was, and they knew there's certain things that wouldn't accept Harry, in all honesty, for instance, they would never accept Nixon as innocent, even if he had virtue. And they wouldn't accept Reagan as guilty, even if he was. They stopped you. When it came to the terrible thing, the Warren Commission, they wanted you to present them as a bunch of bumbling bureaucrats, rather than a conspiratorial, in other words, a consensus rather than a conspiracy. And that's when they come from, and then later on, I learned a lot of other things.

I learned that you can say there's something wrong, and everybody would cheer you. But if they thought you were also saying it's their fault, they wouldn't turn you. And Vietnam taught me that it wasn't altruism that would do it. I found the liberals to be very righteous. But it was when mothers didn't want their sons to go. You mentioned a couple of times, President Kennedy, and the Warren Commission, so, and off the air, you said somebody had said to you that assassination not only killed President Kennedy, but it killed your career career. Kill my career. Let's talk about that. All right. If you want to. Well, if you don't want to, we don't have to. No, I mean, I don't want everybody to proselytize the people anymore. You know, we presented it and they made up their minds and if they can. But what effect did it have on you? I mean, do you? I want to talk about it.

It's a fact on you. Well, what it's, what it's a fact that had was that people didn't want to hear about it because if they, if they acknowledge murder, it was incumbent upon them to do something about it. So they tried to attach a thing that I love them, Joan Rivers of all people saying I loved them and I couldn't get over it, a far from love, but the liberals were the angriest of all. They tried to discredit them. He started the Vietnamese war and I thought it was the unraveling of America. That's what it felt like to me. And it felt like I always believed they executed them in public to fracture the spirit of the people that survived so they wouldn't try to do anything good. And I took a difficult position and then I tried to make it funny, which is your department. I tried to make it funny. And I read the report on the stage at the suggestion of Charles Lawton who said to me,

you don't want to look biased. So pretend to read the report. So I said, I know it by heart, you said, well, I know, sure, but I pretend to read it. So you know, there's an emotional engine driving you and a political engine. Most of the people think it's a political engine or they say he was self destructive. And of course in this town, you know, you should be able to get somebody to do that for you. But my son, you know, went to uni high and the teacher looked at the seating chart and she said to him, is your father that guy who keeps saying they keep the government kill the president? He said, yeah, that's him. And she said, when you see a father dinner, then I tell him that I don't believe a word of it. What do you think of that? And he said to her, that's what they got away with it. By the way, when people position it to me now, which are rarely, they said, they killed

the president. I said, and got away with it. I want them to remember that and what it means. And then that took me to, that took me to New Orleans and I got to, I had a great fellowship down there in a human sense, the people on the case. And we developed a black humor, which you'd be interested in, which was a defense against the fact that we were in a hopeless situation. Jim Garrison had a very, very black humor. The mother's brothers told him that every liberal in Hollywood was with him and he said, what phone booth do you all meet in? You know, he was like that. But he was like Sandy Meisner, the acting coach. He'd say, now that we know it's hopeless, let's junk it and get on with it. And anyway, not to dwell on that, but he was, he was a wonderful man.

The bravest America I ever knew. And Stevenson was probably the most noble. You did the noblest in the bravest. Who's the hippest? Kennedy was very hip. He said that sex was nature's joke on men and love is nature's joke on women. And he knew what was going on. But of course, he thought, well, we all fight, which is to be our father's sons. I don't know if you'll fight it. I tried to live up to what I thought it was and you know, it's still around, Harry. You know, Stan Kent was like my spiritual father. He shaped everything about me. And to this day, the guys that were on the band, they're like my brothers, the ones who damn the old man and the guy who defends the old man.

But it was a family. And I'm afraid of it at this late date. And because I think it might be that I want to keep the personal stuff away, I made it into a joke. I made it into a joke that the Jews changed the way people think. I started with Moses who gives them a law, and they'll obey the law, because they want what they stole. And then Jesus was like forgive the people that stole and people say I can't. I'd become too attached to what I stole. And then a Mark who says, can you share it with other people. He said absolutely not.

And then Freud comes along and I'll tell you. And he says, can you understand people who stole it and won't share it. And they say no. And then I come along at the bomb. He says, I know how to blow all of this up, and this catches on. Well, along with the joke, it's a good joke. I mean, as a technician, sometimes I wonder, I said to myself, can I get this down? Because Bob Hopi has talked to me about cutting the fat out. You know, I saw Rodney Dangerfield working on jokes before he went on the air at Saturday Night Live

when he was hosting, and that's the first time I saw a joke of a technician at work doing exactly what you're describing, cutting the fat. He was just obsessed with getting any extra word out of the joke. I've seen you recently, I saw you a few years back at the Westwood Playhouse, and I was still amazed that not at your intelligence and your interest and knowledge of current affairs, but at your technical prowess as a joke writer. You constantly retain the ability to turn all of this into technically expert jokes. You don't, they don't wander, and they're deft and they have that cogentry. I think a lot about the audit, you know, if you come along and you say to me, or you hear a joke and you think it's facile, but not really digging, I worry about it. Oh, I don't think it's facile. I just marvel at the fact that you have the ability to take a complex thought and the desire

to the desire and the talent to hone it in that way. And how much, when you're doing that and act, how much work do you do on trimming the fat of these? It won't come, you know, it would make me more secure if I could prepare. It won't come until I get up there and you don't have the risk you've done it. It, you know, if you're off or you're physically ill and the rigidity that I have, you know, I'm still running into kids who say to me, you really helped me. I went backstage at Mr. Kelly's and I said to you, people say I'm not really zeroing in on the audience and I immediately jump in and say, they're wrong. I've probably destroyed their lives, you know, it's funny and that's what appeals to me about it. But, you know, putting what I was saying earlier about pushing away people that are getting too close personally

by a joke, sometimes you don't need it. You know that, you're married. Sometimes women need an answer. My wife's mother was out here from Atlanta and she ran out of zealothed and I went to the doctor and got some and I came down and I gave it to her like the miracle worker. She kissed me on the cheek and that would have been enough. But immediately I went into a long thing about, you know, put it in the drive and stuff on the gas because when he finds out I stole it, I'm already constructing something that will, well, I don't know. That's what the analysts say. You're pushing people away. You and I, I'm sure, thought that the quickest way was the joke. I thought there certainly when I was a kid that there was something liberating about saying something you really thought in a form that could get a laugh, you know.

Well, when we started, I thought so too. Maybe there's, maybe there's too much understanding in heavy italics. There's an army of a bad psychologist in Los Angeles. You helped invent something else that you probably don't deserve the blame for at this point, but talk radio. I remember a show you did in Los Angeles. That's very generous. And it was a remarkable show. It was a remarkable lineup of people, but you were sort of the capstone of it and you were on every day doing a mixture of comedy and what was on your mind and taking calls from listeners back, basically, in the dawn of all this. When you hear the guys who are doing talk radio now, what do you think they, they're not getting about? Well, you know, they're, they're lazy. If we were in the hall and not on the air,

and I postulated something to you and you thought about it and you differed with me about the conclusion, that'd be it, but they're so transparent in thinking that this side is going to win and not necessarily. They never win. If you remember the watergate hearings, I'm sure you've got a long day. As I do, you know me well. When John Mitchell was arguing with Sam Irvin, Irvin said to him, don't be think because of a momentary financial advantage that God can be mocked. You were, you did daily radio for how long? Well, I did it. I did it in here in 67 from Metro Media, KLAC. Then I did it for a WNBC in New York briefly. And then I, 79, I went to Washington for NBC, WRC.

Oh, I didn't know you did it that, that, that. Yeah, they hired me because they were, you know, 33rd in the market. And by the way, two things happened on that show. Harry, I'm glad you asked me. One kid called me up and he said to me, Bush, the first had come up with a neutron bomb, remember? It killed people, but, but save buildings. That's right. And the kid said, the Republicans have come up with the perfect weapon. It'll wipe out your immediate family, but leave your mortgage intact. Who's going to top that? And the other thing is the CIA people called me in the afternoon and were amused. They said, we listen and it's engaging and it's funny. And at a secondary level, your illusion that you can win is amusing around here.

Wow. And I wasn't hurt by it. They were, and all the feminists. You were enough of a radio person that every listener counts, right? What was your feeling earlier this year when you heard the Democrats and the liberals talking about forming their own answer to right wing talk radio? Well, I'll tell you what I did. Boy, you're really, you're really zeroed in. I tried to find out who's doing it. So I called Craig Kitchen, whom you must know, at Premiere. And he gave me the name of the guy that did the New York Times interview. You remember the New York Times covered it? Yes. There'd be an all and he said, he's an Atlanta. Well, I couldn't find them. But then I found out there's a money man that keeps him going who is a philanthropist in Oak Park, Illinois. An elderly couple. And then he said, Kitchen said something really profound to me.

He said, if they can't get Al Franken, they might not do it. And he said to me, Kitchen said, I had tremendous success by focusing on a person rather than their philosophy. And he said, I document this with Laura's, Dr. Laura, and Rush. And Rush brings me to the fact that, you know, Rush's brother manages Drudge. Really? As well. Wow. And I had, if you ever wonder, how are you where I am when you don't see me? I had dinner at the airport, Sheraton, with Drudge and Roy Masters. Oh my God. And Rush took the hat off and put it on the side of the booth. He said, because I'm me now. I'm Matt. I'm not Drudge. You saw it parenthetically. Stanley Tucci as a, as windshield on HBO.

No, I didn't. They did an autobiographical movie. And the director, good thing we're not on television. The director. Had him play windshield like he was a maniac. Did you know windshield? Are you old enough? No, I'm not old enough. I know him. He was very good at what he did because Lico arrived in his wake. In fact, that's one of herb sergeants remarks. When Rupert Murdock bought the New York Post, he said, that makes Earl Wilson the most serious writer on the paper. But I'm digressing. Getting back to your original thing. When I was on radio, it was the same thing. You know, it's having trouble digging up work. And I thought it would create activity. And I had the weekly show on television. And the radio show, 15 hours a week. And I told myself that there are a lot of young people out there who want to hear that it's OK not to go to Canada

instead of Vietnam. So at that time, I don't think it would be as easy now with the culture driving crazy with kids in Beverly Hills going to movies in Westwood dressed as gangbangers. All of that insanity. You remember Dorothy Parker's great quote that she watches a movie, She of Horace. And the guy next to her says, those horrors, why don't they write the best they're capable of? And she said, that may be it. Maybe if they could do better, they would. Although I find myself unconvinced by this argument. Yeah, I'm going to put this in the same file with the Hori Klee Shea. Nobody ever sets out to make a bad movie. I've been in a movie that people set out to make badly. It was called The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh. And yes, they did set out to make it.

Jonathan was in that, wasn't he? Yes, he was. And Stocker Chan. He had a great cast. That didn't stop it from being a really horrible movie. You know, there's a quote from somebody I bet we all enjoyed. Ed Gardner and Duffy Starrer. Orson Well system. Nobody said everybody comes to that set and they report hoping to make the best movie they can. And Archie pauses and he scratches his head because I was there when they did the show. That's what he was to do. And he says, then there must be a guy with a passkey to the studio who goes in and makes the pictures I see. Yeah, exactly. The working man is spoken. What was your, what was your very first gig and show business? I worked at the lighthouse near most of Beach. I bet you know. Sure. With a bunch of my friends, Shorty Rogers and Bill Bernard. They kept an alumni, Shelley Mann.

And I went on Halloween. He paid me $10. Howard Ramsey said I was terrible at getting the money back. Angry, of course. Yeah. Angry. Angry. Angry. Angry. Angry. Angry. Angry.

Angry. You were, you were opening for the band as a comedian. Yeah, and of course I didn't know what I was doing. But I also worked with a group called Theater X for experimental at the Los Palmas Theater in 1951. And Alvin Sargent was one of the actors. And I did the best I could, but I was writing mostly them.

And then I had to conquer this fear of thinking up on the stage because I realized as long as you bring these premises to comedians that don't understand it, they're going to demoralize you. They'll never buy it. And they'll demoralize it under the guys that the average man won't understand it. They understand the average man. Jerry Lewis used to say it to me all the time. You know, I could be Thomas Wolf. He said, but I know it doesn't pay. He said to me. You were afraid to get on stage. I was very, very timid. In fact, Truman Capote once said to me, some people in San Francisco were talking about my courage of what I say. And Capote said, if he was really courageous, he wouldn't have made a joke out of the statement. And then he said, go back to that split in comedy that you sort of represented

the Vanguard of, because you get credit for sort of blazing the trail for what was called, it's weird to remember this now, a sick humor. Time magazine called it, it's sick comic. Somebody used that Monday is a Skirmann. Really? Yeah, I quoted hope on the Nobel Peace Prize for Kissinger. Yeah. He's the first German I ever met who stopped the war. So a guy would think German accent, excuse me, I'm making a sick joke. Sick. Where did that usage come from? Do you have any idea? Yeah, I do. When Jonathan would tell somebody, you know, I worked with him in 54. Jonathan.

No. At the Blue Angel. Wow. We were together. And I remember it because I never left when he was on, because I didn't think it out. And the real stuff happened. I mean, people didn't throw in the hats. And say you're an African explorer, Jonathan. You're the captain of the African Queen. It wasn't like that. Mm-hmm. Jonathan would make this real graphic joke. And then as a demiapology, he would say, sick, sick. Ah. So that you wouldn't say it. Uh-huh. And then people like Joe Heim's, you know, Joe? Yeah. In an attempt to encapsulate the era, we're looking for a term like Beatnik. Mm-hmm. And then he's fixed on sick. Lenny? Yes. You know, anything about people being a handicapped. But it encompassed Shelly Burman, who was... Yeah.

You know. Their history... Their history is confused. Yeah. Jerry Nockman's new book, which did you see seriously funny? No. He's written about the whole period in San Francisco. You'll enjoy it. Mm-hmm. And, um, 672 pages. Exhaustively researched. Um, Joe Rivers is in there. Yeah. Cosby is in there. Well, you know, there's a certain extent to which you're trapped by the time in which you come up and you're lumped with the people that you came up with. Nichols in May? Yeah. Regardless of whether you have anything in common with them or not. But you really represented something that opened the door for people to do comedy in a different way. And what I was trying to get to was, did you... Did you feel antagonistic towards the suit wearers? My wife is so fat. The comics. Did you ever join the Friars Club? Did you maintain a stance of... I never asked. Is that true? Yeah.

By the way, that's one of... That's a... We're back to an example of Garrison's humor. He was interviewed by Reed Collins on CBS Radio. And he said, Do you know a comedian named Mort Saul? He claims he knows you. And Garrison said, Oh, yes, I know him. And he said, Would you say he's bitter? He said, yes, I would. And I know the roots of it. He said he was in Berkeley seven years. And all those classmates were recruited by the CIA. And he was never invited. And he grew more and more resentful. You were never invited to join the Friars Club, though? No. I have to tell you, Harry. Nobody ever offered me a swimming pool if I were right of musical. I have never, as much as I'd like to remain heroic here, I have to the audience. I never, either somebody hires me, who knows what I do, or they keep away.

I've never been offered a big compromise. I don't know if that is an all fiction. Rods surling us. But did you see yourself as the antithesis of the suitwares? Did you ever... Not in the beginning. I was just glad to be able to pay the rent. Which was $18 a month in Berkeley. Who makes you laugh? Well, who made you laugh when you were coming up? Herb Schreiner. Henry Morgan. Wow, yeah. Fred Allen, sure. Dinner at the Waldorf. Walk in with Fred Allen. It says, The National Conference of Christians in Jews. He says, Notice the Billings. But cynical, Harry, which broke my heart at the time. I was only in my early 30s. He kept saying to me, You never make it.

People are too dumb. And it'll never work. And Pat Weaver said to him, You're wrong, Fred. He will succeed. And he will have everything he wants. And about the time I was about to smile, He said, Whether he wants or not is a different issue. Wow. What a good guy. Did you know him? I met him a couple times. I don't think you'd have been disappointed. I was a huge fan of his. And he loved talent. And he would go to the mat for talent. I just read his book. I just read his, Oh yeah. It's a wonderful book. Yeah, did you read it? No, what's the name of it? The best seat in the house. He wrote it in 1993. And it's just this wonderfully chatty account of his life. And it's really fascinating. A remarkable guy. Yeah, yeah. A widely ignored. And when he died, I thought, Nobody even gets who this guy was. He was their nemesis. Yeah. He really was.

And he came from within. That's the thing. By the way, very good. Very good. That's exactly what was going on with Kennedy. There was a hatred that you and I together could not muster because he was a traitor to his class. You know, I had the same theory about Clinton. Why the Clinton haters went after him. Tell me because he was a traitor to his race because he was a feminized white southerner. And a traitor to his gender. It's longer of theory than I can kind of capitalize here. But I wrote a little book about it. Well, you think that was the genesis of the resentment? Yeah, because you think, well, what, you know, Bill Clinton didn't stand for enough to generate this kind of hatred. That's right. It's going to be something symbolic. So they were mad at him from the last movie. Yeah, right. That's really good. That's really interesting.

The CIA. Yes. Here we live in a time when intelligence analysts are leaking to the media. We told them the information. It's what they did with it that the battle between the finger pointing that's brewing between the politicians and the intelligence people. How do you see this? Well, there was a big argument in Garrison's office. The big wit there was Andy Shambra, who was the chief assistant. Garrison would say, this was a dumb move. And Shambra would say, they know exactly what they're doing. And I would say, why are they so arrogant to try and do this? That's a typical morgue. And my wife would say, maybe they became arrogant as they continued to succeed, which of course is true.

And Garrison finally went to the position of they've got all the money in the world, hours, and all the time in the world to think up the schemes. But I came to believe in later years that very little of this is spontaneous. The idealistic part of me always thinks they will go too far, but there's really no evidence to back up this devoutly hell belief. Have I answered your question? Yeah, in a way. I mean, if you had to say which side you believe between the politicians say, well, we haven't put the thumb on the intelligence scale and the intelligence analysts who are going, they've cooked our stuff. Do you come down instinctively siding

with one side or another in that argument? If it was a guy like Jack Brooks, I would believe him. I wouldn't believe too many of the people that are around now. And Jack Brooks, the ex-Congressman. Yeah, from Texas. From Texas. But I don't know that... That's a different generation of Texas politicians, isn't it? Quite so. Henry Gonzalez. I don't know that they've got this thing so will orchestrate it. A CIO officer said this to me. I said, Fuji Mori and Peru wants to buy planes from Lockheed. We don't want to let them do that because human rights Jim Baker says. His human rights are hate. So he says, well, I'll go to the Russians. And the CIO officer said to me, he'll still be buying from us. I've heard some wild stuff here. That's pretty global. Well, yeah, you've hung out with your friends include Alexander Hague.

I heard you one day with that. Yes. I heard you one Sunday talking about that. Yeah. And I can tell you, you deserve real honesty. He knows something on the gag. And he likes the fact that I'm perceptive. The attraction of the right-wing people is that they think I'm pure. I don't know how they came across, but somehow they believe that. They think I'm pure. And so they're drawn to me. Who are you going to say? Who else? No, that was the one that always had my attention. But this goes back to something you were saying earlier about Joe Kennedy's reaction to you. And this is one reason why despite my affection for the idea of sometimes knowing these guys, I've kind of stayed away from it. The idea that they turn on you and surprise when you're making fun of me.

Well, yeah, that's the gig. That's what I do. Why would I stop? How do you avoid the danger of being co-opted by these friends? By having friends who are actually the objects of your humor? Well, it depends how bright they are. Hague is very bright, so even though he made his choices. The following went on with us at dinner one night. He said to me, I'd just come back from this trip to Russia. He said, Moscow is really something. It's booming. I went to the aircon at a hotel. And the 600 Mercedes would come up these SCLs. The boomer would get out with an 18-year-old blonde on his arm and a Rolex. And he'd go in and order an apple martini, not vodka. And,

why, my God, I might as well have been in barely hills. And I said, except there weren't any communists. So, he laughs. In other words, he allows me to be me. Of course, we can't say that that joke is cramping any of his style. Certainly, Kissinger is openly suspicious. He doesn't want to be my friend. But... What do you get out of people in show business are normally friends with people in show business. It's rare that people in show business are friends with people at that level of government. You know, you find that sometimes they'll they'll pal around with the more glamorous front guys in government. But you like hanging out with the guys who really know what's going on. Is that the thrill for you? Is that you get to talk to people who really know what's... Well, some of them came with work. You know, writing. Yeah. Some of them came with writing. Some people just approached me about Biden. He's going to make a run at it.

But... The hair plugs have finally grown in it. The hair plugs, yeah. And it's going home in the train every day. It's over. I think your point is is very well taken about what the price would be to be accepted there. For instance, they're all friends with Mark. Russell. Yes. Exactly. And I suppose the Democrats, I understand Wolfowitz through a punch at the correspondence dinner at Franken. Really? Yes, I heard that too. And I didn't know who to root for. And Reagan never demanded... He was puzzled by it all. He said to me once, you know, Paul Newman. Don't you know what I said? Yeah, he said, why is he a liberal? And he said to me, you know, Norman Lear, I said, he's a liberal. I said, yeah, he is. He said, well, can't you talk any sense to those guys? I said, sometimes it's guilt. Why? I said, the Jewish Gulf. I said, feeling they don't deserve what they have. Then I covered it with a joke.

I said, well, I agree with them. They don't deserve it. But he couldn't understand it. Well, you don't take what you find in American and exult in it. So I haven't seen an awful lot of them lately. Sometimes they just see in the media, some of the CIA guys were interesting. They liked the idea that they understood heavy quotes, intellectual humor, and that that separated them from the mass. But I agree with you. Clinton never did anything dangerous enough for them to vow the rest of their lives to pursue him and bring them to ground. Hague never asked me to question anything. I was in his house once. I was doing an impression of hope. And I said, hey, those guys in Amway are something else, aren't they? And he put his figure to his lips, and he said, more please,

they paid for the chandelier. I guess he feels there are a lot of people that he couldn't say that to. I don't know what would happen on the other hand. Roger Ails was my manager. I didn't know that. He was my manager for five years. Wow. But I don't see myself getting hired at the fox. Well, they're fair and balanced. They have room for you. You quoted Garrison, I think earlier describing you as bitter, is that the way you describe yourself now? No, I certainly would not. You also describe yourself as optimistic, are you still optimistic? I'm still optimistic. And I don't know if it's just a fight, but I'm certainly optimistic. I, yeah, I think there's a lot of bright young people. Does those people in the middle I don't know about? You know, all those Jewish guys that lawyers that want to run studios are all named Eric. I worry about them, you know? And things don't seem to be getting any better

between men and women, or do you think they are? I'm celebrating my 10th anniversary, but as a general principle. That's remarkable. Thank you. We owe it all to caffeine. It's the only drug we have in common. You know, I don't talk, I don't talk and think a lot about this issue. You really do focus on it a lot more. Oh, it's time. You get loansome? Not as much as I used to. You get depressed? Not as much as I used to. And what form does it take? Because you're always productive. It takes the form of just like going to bed and sleeping for a month. And that was what my last depression was. Elaine Maythal, that was a funny premise. I wonder if you and I are forgiving. May, I think neither one of us is very forgiving of no talent. I'm regarded as an Old Testament kind of a guy. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to cross me. You know, when people, when you ask people who were on a show and you're alumni, and they answer about anybody, this isn't necessarily direct you, but when they say, oh, you know what they do in a react like that? That can mean anything. You may have held out for not going along with compromises or were never elicited. And I think that rage comes out of deep sadness. I mean, real disappointment. They raised exponentially. And the expectation must have come out of the movies. But I think expectation is a legitimate form of employment. I like it. I'm all for it, you know? And the women want to fight, but they don't want to win. Something in them is very wise,

which they manage to control sometimes. But I'm not easy. I'm certainly not easy. And I do a lot of judging. But, you know, we've come to a time where real satire is interpreted as being unkind. And should you spend your time as an artist, which is eventually really limited and precious to be indulging people who don't have anything to offer? You remember, Harry, when Churchill said courage is the greatest virtue because it makes all the others possible, maybe with both of us living in LA, maybe envy is the worst sin because it's freeing. It is indeed. And then there's all the marginal resentment. There's all the people managed by Brad Greyhorn getting as much attention as the guy who sold the home box office. But they've misled a lot of people.

They still think they're going to take the mic off to stand and say, how are you guys tonight? It's painful. You know what I used to do, Harry? I used to go, we lived in Southgate. Wow, kind of hopeless. And I used to wander up there and I'd get extra tickets of radio shows and when they dropped the pages, I'd take them home. And then I had an art student extorting me who made a rim velocity mics with the triangles and would make me the logo. And then I'd read the scripts when I was 10 years old. And I saw, at CBS, speaking of CBS, I saw Burns and Alan there and I already saw his band. Let me, let me,

yes sir. Speed to the inevitable conclusion by saying, you are still active, you still work, you still can be seen doing what you do. Yeah, as a matter of fact, that you needn't send you a flyer. Yeah, I know. That's why I was reminded to say this. And I'm also going to work in Chicago and... Do you know your dates? We're on the air in Chicago. We might as well say all this stuff. And of course, on Thursday, I'll be an Uncle Funny's Giggle bone for one hour. You know, it's interesting. All the club owners wanted to discover New Tallinn. I think that was there. The premise of their search. They wanted to be butt-free. They grew up. Yeah, thanks a lot. You guys have been great. Yeah. And on the other hand, when anybody was established and want to be paid, they thought that was onerous. Ha! You can't really find too many people

that really endorse capitalism, can you? Not in practice, no. I mean, we're all G8 protesters. Yeah. We're in accounts. So, you will be in LA in Chicago anywhere else that we should do. I'm going to see Adel and I'm going back to New Jersey for a club date, an organization. And then I'll do the Letterman Show. I'm not sure the date. And, you know, try to keep it going. What I'd really like to do. I'd like to take a bus, a motorhome, the Freedom Bus, and go to every borders, and every Starbucks, and every junior college, and talk Vox Pop to people about what do you really think is going on? That's, I'm working on that. And I'd really like to, I'm told anybody, stuff my wife, that's what I want to do. And I'm going to ask Norman Lear if we can put this,

if we can put this together and not do what hardball does, where they go to a college and they watch us and they throw a thought, let them talk. It will see if you and I think there's anybody out there in the dark, if we're right. The hardland. Yeah. The hardland. That's where, that's where all the, the folks are. Yeah. And, you know, and some pretty noble folks, if there weren't, you and I really ought to take a robot and go to Denmark. I mean, come on. At the, you know, that, you know, Garrison used to have a saying, he'd say to me, when I talk to a witness, if he says, I love Kennedy, I leave, bring my car around the front. He says, if he says, I voted for him, I step in the accelerator. He said, if you're wearing a PT-109 bike clip, I'm ready to kick a kayak and go to Europe, which, of course, was his way of expressing

his broken art. Who did he laugh at? Jonathan Winters, who was the ultimate anti-authoritarian. Would you agree with that? Yeah. But he's the real thing. But the authority figure was, was inside him. That's, that was the big fight for him, wasn't it? Very good. I was with him recently up there. Yeah. And he should go out with me. People that love the ear. Oh my God. Yeah. Who are you voting for next year? Well, either Dennis Cousinature, or Dean. By the way, I noticed they call Dean Reminisson of McCarthy. Do you read that? Yeah. Yeah. The Gene McCarthy is in a retirement home open. I saw, yeah. But he called me and he said that it's never been this depressing. It's like unmoving, you know,

maple syrup. It's a torpor. And what's the simple joke? Bush is trying to land on the deck of the summer in New York. I hope we can resuscitate the Democratic Party. That's how desperate I am. That is desperate indeed, sir. Thank you, board. Oh, Harry, it's a great pleasure to be with you. Music Ladies and gentlemen, if you're in the Los Angeles or Southern California area in mid-August, Mortsaw will be at McCabes

and he'll be around the country as he indicated on the broadcast. I'm my thanks to Bjorn Schaller and Warren Dewey Studios for recording an engineering today's interview. That will put the cap on this edition of the show. The program returns next week at the same time over these same stations of our NPR worldwide throughout Europe on the U.S. and 440 cable system in Japan. Around the world through the facilities of the American forces network up and down the East Coast and North America on the short-wave triad WBCQ the planet 7.415 megahertz and un-oatlas across North America on serious satellite radio and on your computer via the internet around the world whenever you wanted at two different locations. HarrySherer.com and KCRW.com. It would be just like me being back here live. Next week, if you'd agree to join with me then, would you already thank you very much? The show comes to you from the Century of Progress Productions and Originates through the facilities of SAS, a satellite service of KCRW

Santa Monica community recognized around the world as the home of the homeless. The show comes to you from the Century of Progress Productions and Originates through the facilities of SAS, a satellite service of KCRW Santa Monica and on your computer via the internet with everyone from the Century of Progress Productions and Originates through the facilities You