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Will Durst is a San Francisco-based comic, satirist and pundit. He and I first met when we performed at a Laughing Liberally show in L.A. (I'm a comic too.)
A year later, we got a chance to reconnect in New York, where Will is making everybody laugh with his new one-man show Will Durst: The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing. From left to right and everywhere in between, from the New York Times to the New York Post, the critics are raving.
When we met on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Durst was reading the sports section over a cup of black coffee. No doubt he had finished reading the latest issue of the Nation magazine and drunk his chai-organic-double-vegan-latte before I got there. But he wasn't fooling me. And soon we were talking about getting flipped off by Olympia Dukakis, helping the terrorists win, necrophilia and other things liberals enjoy.
Katie Halper: Why do you hate America?
Will Durst: I'm not an America-hater, I'm an America-lover. Dissent is the ultimate patriotic act. Just like every liberal commie pinko weenie says.
Halper: When did you start hating America?
Durst: I started loving America right away. Free water. Water fountains everywhere. Refrigerated, cold, refreshing water. You try getting that anywhere else. Try getting that in France, not gonna happen. Go head, I dare you. It's $5.
Halper: Funny, I was going ask you why you don't move to France. But I guess it's the whole water thing. Anyway, you have moments of redemption when you praise Bush, calling him a father figure.
Durst: He has been like a father to me. Just in terms of providing.
Halper: So he's a good provider?
Durst: Yes, not just a decider and a commuter; he's also a provider. Not just for me, but for editorial cartoonists, columnists, anyone with a speck of consciousness. He is very fecund and fertile.
Halper: He is very virile.
Durst: He's like a rising tide. The rising tide of Bush lifts all boats. It's a wonderful rain, it's a hard rain.
Halper: I saw Olympia Dukakis sitting right in front of me in the theater [at your show] and I knew I was in a scary place: a theater in New York, a woman who represents the unholy alliance between the Hollywood elite and liberals. But I was impressed when you got into a hissing match with her. Because anyone who hisses at a Dukakis is a friend of mine.
Durst: Yeah, I told a tough joke about Hilary, which I thought was fair, and then she hissed at me. I got her back on my side by doing the second part of the joke. I didn't know it was Olympia Dukakis at the time. But then when she came backstage, I recognized her. "Oh, my living god. I got heckled by an Oscar winner."
Halper: I think you got flipped the bird too.
Durst: Oh really? She flipped me off?
Halper: Yeah. How does it feel being flipped off by a Democrat?
Durst: Well somebody's gotta do it. I feel like Dennis Miller.
Halper: You make fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger for signing a law outlawing having sex with corpses. Why do you want to legalize necrophilia?
Durst: It's a freedom issue. Like the sanctity of life. It fits into the whole pro-life thing. It's actually part of the pro-life movement.
Halper: Right, the right-to-lifers for necrophilia. And then you're not wasting the seed either.
Right. Although I'm not sure exactly how that fits in, so to speak.
Halper: In your show you provide immigrants and terrorists with a plan for getting across the border. Why do you help the terrorists win?
Durst: I am of two minds about putting that portion in the show. I understand it could be considered aiding and abetting the enemy to let them know they could go around the 700-mile-long, 16-foot-high wall that covers a 1,952 mile-long border. Or they could bring a ladder. But since they have already started building tunnels, they probably already thought of it. But I really hope that you don't make a big deal of it. Maybe you shouldn't even print this.
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Katie Halper is a co-founder of Laughing Liberally, a political comedy group and one of the national directors of Living Liberally and artistic director and comedy curator at The Tank a nonprofit performing and visual arts space for emerging artists. Katie blogs regularly for the Huffington Post, Working Life, and the political comedy site Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
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