 Huge parliamentary election on Thursday in Great Britain, and it now looks like the conservatives are expected to lose big, because Great Britain, unlike America, counts all the votes. It's 3 a.m. on Friday, June 9th. I'm David Feldman. We have a lot of show, and I mean a lot, so let's get right to it. This is the David Feldman Radio Network. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman. DavidFeldmanshow.com. Please, friend me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. On today's program, From the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Comedian Corey Cahaney. From the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Comedian John Fish. Also, comic writer, lawyer, Azhar Osman. We've got our Miami bureau chief, the funniest man in the world, Bruce Smirnoff, and we talk Comey hearings with constitutional law professor Corey Bretschneider. By the way, Laurie Kilmartin was on Tuesday. Congratulations, Laurie. You were brilliant on Conan last night. Feldman, the cloud. All right. Joining us from Chicago, Illinois is Azhar Osman. He's been on this show before. We love him. He's back. Azhar Osman is a stand-up comedian, actor, writer, playwright, producer, and I guess I have to mention this. Don't hate him. He's a lawyer. You're a lawyer. Former, former lawyer. Yeah. Once a lawyer, always a lawyer. Azhar is one of the hottest stand-up comics based in Chicago. CNN calls him America's funniest Muslim, and Georgetown University identified him as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. But more importantly, Dave Chappelle, for whom Azhar has opened more than 50 times, Dave Chappelle calls Azhar Osman untouchable. You can watch Azhar in season two of Patriot. Congratulations. Thank you. It's been picked up. It's on Amazon. You are joining us in Chicago, but you will be in New York on July 20th. You're doing an hour at the comic strip at 9.30, July 20th, as part of the last show of the third annual Muslim Funny Fest, which is organized by the great Dean Abedaya, who's also a lawyer. Also a lawyer. That's true. All Muslims are lawyers, right? It's part of the religion. We have a lot more in common with our Jewish cousins than you might think. I should also mention that Azhar wrote the historic White House Correspondence dinner performance for Hasan Minhaj. Congratulations. Thank you, but I wouldn't say I wrote it. I was one of the team members. I did contribute heavily toward the closer, which I was quite proud of, but thank you. Well, I like to get writers in trouble, because it's just, you know, everybody says that. My mother has friends. When I go to a party, they'll say he writes the triumph the incel comic dog show. No, don't do that. I'm just, by the way, now we met, you just told me, we met in Iowa, right? Correct. Correct. God, when was that? Last year? About this time. Summertime, I think last year, Smigel was working on his triumph 2016 election coverage, you know, Peace for Hulu. And I know you were a writer on that project. And then I just got a call out of the blue. God, was it for my agent? This sounds so Hollywood. I don't think it was for my agent even. I think it was just one of the producers on the project was trying to find a guy to play like, you know, generic Muslim looking Arab dude for this gag that you guys were doing at a gun show. And I think you, I think it was, what's his face? Isaac. Isaac. Yes. Yeah. Isaac Federer. He so he just started Googling and they couldn't find anybody. And then he told me the story that Smigel was like, look, look in Chicago, you know, it's close enough to Iowa. So he just typed it like Muslim, comedian, Chicago. And then he's like, stumble to find me online. And so that's how it happened. He just hit me up and he was like, can you be in Iowa tomorrow? And I was like, sure. So yeah, it was an honor to meet you. And like I said, I started telling you before we started rolling, you know, I have a very, I'm on the fringes of show business. And I've been a very, I've been very deliberate about maintaining kind of like an indie underground standup career. Well, by doing this show, you'll remain there. Yeah, that's exactly what that's precisely where I reached out to. I consider you an underground legend. You know, I looked at I'm tongue in cheek on that one because I do have so much respect, man, for, you know, the veteran comics who have found their own way. And you know, look, you're balls deep in show business and you have been in a million things and written down a gazillion things. And you know, you're a comics comic man. But as far as like being able to maintain a pretty private life, you know, you can still walk around and people are just like, think you're another person. Yeah, it drives me. It drives me crazy. Yeah, I mean, I could see why it would drive you crazy if you want to be famous. But I kind of see that I see it as a nice altitude, man. I'm not gonna lie. I want to be really fat. I want to I want to have a reason not to be able to leave my apartment. See, it's easy to say that though, man, but be careful what you wish for. I know you're joking. You know, famous people like the trade that famous people make, I feel like which they don't often don't realize they're making until it's too late is their privacy for celebrity. Yeah. So I realized recently, like I would like to be like a solid sea list famous celebrity. Like that's a life goal of mine. Like I want to be able to just maintain and make a comfortable living doing stand up with an audience that wants to come and see me. But at the same time, like when I don't want to have anything to do with it, people just leave me alone and I can live my life with my four boys. Yeah. Well, for me, fame would be nice. I'm going through a divorce and they just dig through everything. They want the lawyers just they want stuff on you. And I'm an ascetic, you know, I'm not hot, ascetic, ascetic, ascetic. You know, as I pointed out to opposing counsel, you can dig, but the reason I'm getting a divorce is I'm boring. There's nothing on me. But you keep searching. How long were you married if you don't mind me asking? I was with her for 30 years. But, you know, I'm like, there's there I'm an open book. I mean, I probably don't want my porn sites looked at. I mean, I wouldn't, you know, probably wouldn't want people to know, you know, I don't know. I don't even care about that. I'm just I think it's generational also, by the way. You realize that in our lifetime, like probably since the advent of the internet and certainly social media, you know, privacy is over. Like people, young people, my kids who are like 15, 13, 10 and eight, they don't even have a conception of the notion that there's a distinction between public and private space. Now, can I just interrupt you for one second? Sure. I said the same exact words. And you know what they said? Put down the binoculars, get off the ladder and stop looking through that window, Mr. Feldman. You are nonstop. I love it. You're such a joke writer. I think Jackass is amazing. They have no sense. They have no sense of privacy. They have no sense. It's no, but it's I'm being I know it's funny and it's all that's a hilarious joke. And I'm being genuine, like the let me give you a perfect example. If you are at a party, okay, you're whatever. I'm assuming I don't know how old you are, but whatever. You're you're in your, let's say 50s. I'm being generous. What? I can't hear you. Who am I talking to? Let's say you're in your 50s, right? Who are you? In my 40s. I'm in my early 40s. So who are you? Who am I? Are you here to change me? No, not at all. Oh, okay. So my point though is you and I still have this shared understanding of like, if we're at a party, you know, what's happening at the party pictures being that are being taken, first of all, just the notion of like, I have a right to take a picture of you. That that that is a generational difference. Like that was not okay. Just go and take a picture of somebody in a private space. You know, in my lifetime, not until, I don't know, 10 years ago. Whereas my kids have grown up in a world where it's like, they don't even get the idea that like somebody would object to being filmed and inside a private space. It didn't even understand that idea. It's so weird. I have a friend who's famous. He said to me that it's impossible to date women being famous because they stalk you on Facebook. God forbid you're at a party chatting up another woman. A picture is taken and you get hell from her. Yeah. I mean, that's a very practical thing. And what about the more fundamental problem? Which is, you know, once you're famous, like, you don't know why people like you. Exactly. But I already am there. Right. People don't like you anyways. Right. That's the other thing. On this show, I talked to Bruce Smirnoff about this. I'm already screwed up. You know, you can like me because I'm funny. You can like me because I'm nice. Or you can like me because I'm famous. And some of it will rub off on you. I don't care just as long as you like me. Sure. I mean, there's different ways to live. That's certainly a way to live. But I think there's a lot of people who are hung up on like, you know, I want to be loved for me. And I don't want it to be because of my, you know, money, power, fame. Those are the three things that once you have, if you're a rich person, you're a famous person, you're a powerful person, part of the problem becomes, you know, you're always suspicious of people's motives. Why do they want to be around you? What do they want from you? You know, I have enough rich, famous, or powerful friends that I'm just like, I don't know. It seems like it's not all that it's cracked up to be. If you had a pick, if you said, all right, I can have a wife, which you do, but she's going to love me either for my money, my power, or my fame. Of those three, what do you think is the most innocuous? Right. The least grading on myself. Yeah. I would say probably money. You think money is a nice thing to be loved for? Not, no, I think it's a horrible thing to be loved for, but it's the least horrible of those three. Why? Because money is really a stand in for security for most people. Go on. So I think that, you know, what people want, everybody wants to be loved. That's this is my starting point. My thesis is that everybody is after the same thing, which is that everybody wants to be loved. And part of feeling loved for every person is different, but in general, it's the feeling of you're being taken care of. This person cares about you, and they care about your well-being, and they want to help take care of you. And money is such a thing that enables in a very practical kind of way, more than fame, more than power. Money enables a person to feel like, okay, at least I know I'm taking care of. My needs will be met. I'll have a roof over my head. I'll have clothes on my back. I'll have three meals to eat. If you're actually rich, then it's like I'm living a comfortable life. I have luxury in my life. I can take vacations. I can have a pool. I can have a fancy car, blah, blah, blah. So all of that ultimately to me is just a branch of feeling security and comfort, which is the least of the three things that I could knock on, because everybody wants that. You're saying money is security. I'm saying it represents for a lot of people security. I agree with you. And yet we live in a country where nobody has financial security anymore. We have a time of economic slavery, man. Yeah, and we have Homeland Security. I'm being serious here. Yeah, no, I know. And Homeland Security is all about making us feel secure against Muslims. Against phantasms. Phantasms, black people, Latinos, they make us feel secure against, you know, we don't have to worry about Muslims and Mexicans and black people. But the one thing that we're truly insecure about is our financial future, that they won't address. They won't address. In fact, on the contrary, they will give hundreds of billions of dollars of tarp bailout money to a small group of bankers who basically danced on the grave of the U.S. taxpayer. That's what happened. Yeah, absolutely. But now that, okay, so now we... It's Orwellian, man. It's Orwellian. We're living in a, you know, it's a new speak. So much of the terminology, the labels used by both media and government, they actually indicate the opposite of what they are. That's just a mark of the time we're in. You know, it's like you can deconstruct... I was just talking to a friend of mine recently. He's like, you know, he goes, I get it. He's a very, he's a left-wing kind of liberal, but he's like, I get all this hatred of so-called political correctness coming from the right. He's like, you know, why do we use the term trigger warning? He's like, that's what you use when you're about to shoot somebody. Mm-hmm. Trigger warning is a microaggression, microaggression. That's what you call when you drop a smaller bomb rather than a larger bomb. That's a microaggression. So he's like, you're using these terms, trigger warning, microaggression, safe space. Like, wait, are you unsafe? Like you're at a college or a university. You're at an elite private Ivy League university. Somehow you're unsafe. So the terms we use end up actually producing the opposite effect. You're using these terms. I want you to give me a trigger warning. I want you to watch your microaggressions. I want to have you in a safe space. But all of that terminology is actually just making you feel less safe, less secure, and more paranoid. Do you play colleges? I play a lot of colleges, yeah. Is it possible for a Muslim comedian to be politically incorrect? As an experiment, I would love to do this. I wish... Wow, my show is getting pretty... I did a very kind of, you know, PG, Disney, you know, friendly, family friendly, you know, pardon the reference, but Cosby-esque kind of friendly show for a long time. And then my stand-up just started getting more political and more honest. And it's gotten to a point where it's pretty... It's a pretty political man. I mean... But is it politically incorrect? One of the things that Triumph did in Philadelphia during the convention is he decided this was one of the... This is the hard... Anyway, I just love Triumph. I love Triumph. What did he do? So during the Democratic convention, we go to Philadelphia and riding the Hamilton craze of African-Americans and people of color playing our founding fathers, we hired an African-American comedian in Philadelphia to dress up like Ben Franklin. And we said... We have, ladies and gentlemen, in front of Independence Hall, in front of all these white Democrats, we have the guy who plays Ben Franklin from Hamilton. And the guy wrote a rap, right? And it was... It answers my question. Can a person of color... Be politically incorrect? Politically incorrect. So he talks... He does this rap about... It's Ben Franklin. This is the Ben Franklin rap about how freedom and the Constitution and independence is all about taking white women from behind and just stuff about the booty and the police and going down and get any... And to some people's credit, they were offended. It was like... It was like... And we're sitting in a truck watching this. It is... They are constitutionally incapable of seeing a black man as politically incorrect. And I forgot the name of the comic who did this. He was so funny. And he was just trying to prove that point. Do you get history? So you're at a... Let me tell you something. When you were telling the story and the kinds of offensive things the guy was doing, I have to confide in you. I have a confession to make. Okay. How long has it been since the last time you were here? Forgive me, Father David. Felt all the clowns. I have committed many comedy sins. Among them the fact that I... I love the fact that a Muslim is confessing to me. To a Jew. Perfect, yeah. That's America. What I was going to say was what I saw what happened to... What's her face? Kathy Griffin. Griffin. Kathy Griffin. Yeah, Kathy Griffin. What's her face? Actually, that's what a lot of people said after her plastic surgery. Oh my God. That's so mean. Please tell me your friends with her. I love Kathy. Okay, good. I don't know her. So I don't... I love her. And she's beautiful. I really don't like to do that. You know, there's so much of that. You remember that VH1 show where they were just like diss celebrities? I forgot the name of it. Yeah. So I got her asked to do that. And I was just like, I don't want to be part of this whole... I think that's part of what's wrong with celebrity culture. It's just like, you know, lowest common denominator making fun of the way celebrities look or whatever. It's just stupid. Anyhow, she... The gag that she did of holding Trump's bloody head. Like I had a thought. Like I had thought of that idea as like imagine me doing that shit. And that is like, to me, it's experimentally just in my mind as an artist. Like, isn't it... Isn't an idea like that the very limit of free speech? Testing the limit of free speech? You're the lawyer, not me. Well, yeah. I mean, I think that it's legal, but I wouldn't do it because it would basically sabotage my entire life and career and probably, you know, put my family's safety at risk. But ultimately, like, you know, it's a perfectly legal expression of political dissent, you know? I mean, it's... And she's a comic and it's an artistic photo taken by a provocative, you know, photography photographer who is doing it as a piece of political art. Like, I honestly don't have any problem with it. It's fake outrage to me. I was not offended by it. I don't think Kathy Griffin is going to sneak over the White House fence with a guillotine. Why did she apologize? Yeah, she's not going to behead Donald Trump. I think the right wing, when they come for you, they're pretty scary if, you know, if you're a public figure. Right, so you either at that point choose to double down, dig your heels in, and be like, no, I'm not going to apologize, or you just have to cave to all that pressure. Yeah, I think being scared is scary. I mean, when you're scared... Was she scared like for her safety or scared for like her professional career? I think just the issue of have you ever been scared? Have you ever been paranoid? I think that's the difference between Republicans and Democrats. I think Republicans are scared all the time, so they don't realize that they're scared. I think Democrats are occasionally scared, and when they do get scared, it's terrifying, so they relate to other people who are scared. I think Kathy is pretty fearless. I think she had a moment of fear. Interesting. When it's human, it's, to me, it's the hate crime argument. I believe that certain things are hate crimes, and they should carry a larger sentence or a stricter sentence. And I always say, anybody who doesn't understand the necessity of a hate crime has never been frightened before. Interesting. I haven't figured out how I feel about hate crimes. Have you ever been frightened? Have I ever been frightened? Yeah, of course. Yes, I'm a human being. I think that every human has probably been frightened. I mean, besides, I think I'm pregnant. Have I ever been frightened? Have you ever been frightened on stage? I guess frightened is too broad of a question like, frightened that I might bomb or frightened that I might get killed or attacked. Have you ever been frightened for being a Muslim in America? That's a great question, man. You don't have to answer that. But I mean, I think the answer is yes. There's been only a couple of times. But yeah, there have been times. I was, okay, I'll tell you one time, I went to this event. I was performing, actually. It was like a Muslim conference of educators or something. It was like a really nerdy kind of thing. But they booked me as a part of their entertainment, wherever. And it turns out they had gotten some local press. So a bunch of Muslim hater groups turned out to protest. So I was like, yeah, let me just go out there. I'm a comic. I'm just going to have fun and just meet these people and see. They were like the Westboro Church, Westboro Baptist Church type people holding these huge signs. You're going to burn in hell. And I was like, okay, whatever. So I just went and I was having fun with this guy. And I already know that I can talk to people. I'm a comic. So it's like, if I'm going to be funny and there's something funny about the whole situation, I'm going to talk about that. I had people laughing, even people from some of their protesters were just like seeing how funny the interaction was. But then this guy, like one of the head guys of their group, he started getting really, you know, like when you're busting some of these balls and then suddenly they'll be like, yo, you want to take this outside type of thing. So he just flipped on me. And he started just like looking in my eyes and like, yo, I want, he's like, you want to, you want to, you know, we could, we could do something about this. So like he said something to really cryptic. And that was the only time in my life for a moment. I was just like, dude, this guy could have a gun right now. You know, like I'm standing outside this venue. This is unsafe. I should just back down and leave. So I just like smooth it over. And I was like, no man, it's all, we're all good here. You know, I respect your right to your views and wish you the best. And I just left. But that was one time where I thought to myself like, wow, this guy seems like one of these crazy people that, you know, the, you know, there's, where their lights go out. When you look in their eyes and all of a sudden the lights have gone out. Yes. Yes. That's exactly what it was. It was one of those moments. And by the way, let me also mention, I don't know if people know this because it's like it hardly gets reported on the press, but you know, there's been multiple instances of this type of protest or group I'm talking about showing up outside of mosques in America with weapons armed to the teeth. Like in, you know, in parts of the country where you can carry a weapon if you have a, if you have a permit, they will show up with weapons like strapped guns, rifles, ammunition, like rainbow type outside of mosques, man. Little women, little kids going inside to pray. And these people are just like chanting and shouting outside of a mosque, fully armed. And that doesn't get reported on, but that stuff is extremely frightening to them. It's interesting that you bring that up because on the triumph show that you were on, we went to a gun show and the idea was what? Well, as I, first of all, when the gag never happened, right, because we got kicked out. Yeah, we got kicked out of the gun show. But the idea, as I recall, was to go with triumph to actually, no, triumph would have his own booth at the gun show. So it's like all the other regular sellers and normal, you know, vendors of various rifle and gun products. And then triumph has a booth there. And then throughout the gun show, there would be multiple characters planted by the producers, like myself dressed as like looking like basically a terrorist from the Middle East. A black dude looking like basically a thugged out gangster, you know, a Latino guy looking like he's a criminal or a part of the criminal element. And, you know, playing up basically all the stereotypes that are typically the kinds of people that, you know, right wing Republicans kind of hate on are scared of and certainly don't feel should have a gun. And basically these guys going from booth to booth trying to get a gun, everybody turning them down. And then him going to triumph, who's of course like, yeah, we're guns for everybody. You know, we believe in their arms. And it's an elaborate, it's brilliant. I would say. But wasn't it also the idea that you were dressed sort of to look like Osama bin Laden and weren't we going to charge people to hunt you down or something? Well, I think that I was never going to do fully in on the range of the gang. I was I think Triumph was going to charge. I think as I recall, Triumph, we did a couple of. We tried with a couple of people where we would give people an actual gun to hunt me. That's right. And then and then you'd get involved. The gang evolved into that because we got kicked out and then we tried to make the best of it outside. Do you remember that? We set up set up the van and tried to have Triumph's booth outside. And at that point, pretty much all the other actors had gotten nicks like it was just not going to happen. But I was just standing around watching and then you were like, yo, go just go in there and go in there. And I just like creep into the frame and then Swigel was operating Triumph telling this random white guy like, we want this man. You got to give him a three minute head start. But he's a slaw. I remember Triumph said, but he's a slaw runner. You can you can hunt this Muslim. And then he triumphed turns to me and he's like, convince him to hunt you. And I just wanted the character. I was like, you know, my family is my family will get paid and taken care of in Afghanistan. I want you to kill me. I don't know, man. And the whole thing we got cut out, obviously. Well, we got thrown out of the gun show. That was it was creepy. It was that gun show. Guns creep me out. They really do. And I walked around. I took pictures of what they were selling. It was a lot of borderline. Plastic bomb making paraphernalia stuff for that. You would stuff that looked like it was for destroying buildings, you know, construction type equipment, but it was obviously just to blow things up. And some, you know, borderline Nazi paraphernalia. I took pictures of it. Oh, yeah. A Confederate flag. Yeah, because I mean, yeah, it's it's it's. I remind it reminded me of my mother's basement. Wow. Hello. Yes, I'm here. What I'm saying is my mother collects Nazi paraphernalia. Go ahead. I'm sorry for everything. Please tell me you're joking. Of course. Strange things have happened, man. I've met people who collect all kinds of weird stuff. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, Bruce Smirnoff is on the show today. He collects World War One memorabilia, which is acceptable. German pith helmets and those kind of things, you know, that's that's passable. Hey, yeah, you know, gun control started because of black people. And this is I remember how we came up with the idea to go to a gun show with Trump. We were talking about the Second Amendment and how gun control began first under Dred Scott when Tawny, Chief Justice Tawny, I don't know if he wrote the Dred Scott opinion, but he was the Chief Justice when that issue when that was issued. One of the excuses for not freeing slaves was if they become citizens, then they can gain access to guns. We have a Second Amendment. We can't allow freed slaves to go in and buy guns. So that was like the first. Well, let's complete that thought. They'll have access to guns and then they'll come back and kill us. As well. They should. That was the fear. Let's let's be clear about what the fear was. Yes. So that's why we can't let these black people get guns. That was the logic. What often happens is we project our fears and our thoughts onto others. In other words, Tawny is thinking, hey, if I were a slave, Exactly. That's what I would do. Yeah. So gun control started in modern history under Ronald Reagan in the late 60s when the Black Panthers showed up in Sacramento. Yeah. Toning rifles. The famous Malcolm X speech worth listening to because it's still 100% relevant today, the ballot or the bullet. And what is that? I don't know anything about that. Oh, you got to listen to the speech. I mean, it's brilliant, but it's basically his thesis about how the big debate that activists ultimately run into is whether they believe in intra systematic versus extra systematic change. I don't know what that means. Working within the system or opposing and saying the system itself is fundamentally corrupt. We need to basically burn it down and start over. Okay. It's it's it's unresolved. It's unsolvable. It's unresolvable. It's irredeemable. It is fundamentally corrupt and Trump would believe that. Well, he would say that. But he's also, you know, chosen to within the system work it become the president. Now occupies the most powerful seat in the, you know, the American democracy. So, you know, he's he's done a wonderful job. It's back to the point I was making earlier, like using words that to mean their opposites. You're going around talking about condemning, you know, the takeover of American democracy by corporate interests and banks and billionaires. And it's like, dude, you're one of them. You are a billionaire. You're you're me. How can you talk about anti globalist agenda when your name is on buildings all over the planet? How does that make any sense? Well, your name is on buildings all over the planet, but that's because you're tagging. Go ahead. That's the extra systematic change. Yeah. So, so, so yeah, I just make bad jokes on the show. Have you noticed? It's all right. You've got to try it, right? They can't all be home runs. Anyway, nice if some of them were. Anyway, my point is that the ballot or the bullet, I mean Malcolm X's speech. And so basically his thesis, which I still believe, by the way, is that black people in the United States, if they ever want to do anything, as far as making real significant progress from within the system, the legislative and the governmental system that we have, they must become a block. And then he says register to vote, but don't vote. Be courted by politicians as a block. I think the population of black people in America is what, 12% or 18%? What is it? Yeah. So imagine if that entire block, on the basis of really nothing more than, than yeah, people say, well, you're just being reductionist and looking at it from a standpoint of race. It's like, yeah, yeah, we are. Yes, because. So you're saying, let me get this straight. You're saying that Malcolm X wanted African Americans to register to vote. And represent a block and become a block of 12% of all registered American voters. And then. Not vote. Not vote for the explicit purpose of, you know, sort of leveraging that power, the voting power in a real way, this is like getting politicians, you know what this is down and actually actually sit down and talk to them. Find out what is their agenda? What are the policy issues they really want? And the fine politicians who will in exchange for getting this voting power will actually implement real change. You know what this is exactly like every woman I've met on J date. Okay. And they say they, they, they register with J date, right? They won't go on dates. They're down with the J part, not the date part. They're down with being courted. The power, the influence, but. Yeah. And they won't vote. Right. So that's interesting. I'm sorry for that. Oh, that's great. I mean, I mean, look, and the reality is you keep trying to sell them and get them to vote. So it's working. So that was his thesis. But anyway, it's, I'm summarizing it, but the idea of the ballot or the bullet, the notion of, you know, if you want a violence to stop, right, the thing that gets ignored, I would say, in the vast majority of civil conversations in this country when it comes to politics is the fact that out of one side of the mouth, we want to moralize about how evil violence is, which of course it is. And the other side, our country, our foreign policy, our military behaves in arguably the most violent manner of any state actor on the face of the planet Earth. Right. Hey, a couple of questions. I'm tired of talking about it, but I haven't had a Muslim on the show this week, except for you. Okay. And Bruce Murloff, Bruce Murloff. And Brother Bruce. And Brother Bruce. Bill Amar. Yeah, man. Bill Amar is in some hot water over that comment. So I've had Dean Abedaya on the show. Brilliant guy. And he wrote a brilliant takedown of Bill for having Milo Yaponapolis from Breitbart on earlier in the year. I read Dean Abedaya's piece and it was just so well written. He's a lawyer. He just made the case. I think it's called Iraq when lawyers make a, right? Yeah, right. God, I haven't thought about this in a long time. What is it? Issue, rule, application, something. Conclusion, yeah. And I thought I was going to make an Iraqi joke. I apologize. But it was just so well written. And he does not like Bill Amar and Bill Amar doesn't like him. I think Bill is brave, but I think there's mental illness when it comes to his anti-Semitism. And by anti-Semitism, I mean the Muslim stuff because they're Semites. I don't know that he's, okay, here's my take on it. I wrote something by the way as well, but agenda, which I chose not to publish. I'm happy I didn't because my thoughts have been evolving. But do you remember when Bill Amar and Sam Harris had that kind of face-off with Ben Affleck? And Ben Affleck was pushing back on what they were saying. And he was saying you're being basically racist. You're being a phobe here, phobic. And you're painting all Muslims with a very broad brush. Now go see my movie about the Iranian hostage. But they had this very interesting exchange. And I would argue that actually that exchange was perceived as less nuanced than it actually was. Because I would argue that Sam Harris made a more nuanced point. He said, if you go back and watch the tape, and I have very carefully, he says a comment he goes, Islam today is the motherload of bad ideas. Okay, the qualifying term is today. So he's actually commenting, and if you read his writings that I have, you know, what he's critiquing is politicized religion. And, you know, the only beef, the only exception I have to his arguments is like, hey, Sam Harris, I hear you loud and clear, but let's be even more clear. It's not just a Muslim problem. Religion has been hijacked by politics across the planet Earth. Zionism is hijacked Judaism. Right-wing evangelicals of hijacked Christianity. Islamists have hijacked Islam. The BJP and the Hindutva movement in India has hijacked Hinduism. The violent extremists in the name of Buddhism, I forget the guy's name in Japan, who's like literally led, like had made violent terrorist attacks in the name of Buddhism. It has hijacked Buddhism. Like this is a global problem of religious fundamentalism. So if you say Islam today is the motherload of bad ideas, and what you mean by that is politicized political religion that is basically Islamism or Islamic fundamentalism, then you and I are in complete agreement. And I would argue that's pretty much all of the critiques I've ever heard of a Bill Maher of quote-unquote religion, even including in religious his movie. It's all you're doing is proving over and over again that Muslims do bad shit. Yeah, of course, they're human beings. That has nothing to do with the doctrine of the religion or the teaching of the of the of the prophet or the classical teachings of scholars or what have you. Like he completely glosses over any mention or any discussion of actual substantive, you know, questions of faith or morality or religion and just wants to talk about politics and identity. We have no, I have no disagreement with any critic of religion who has identified this problem of identity politics having hijacked religion. I completely agree. And all religions, not just Islam. All religions, exactly. Religion in the modern world has become synonymous with identity politics. Hasn't it always been, haven't they always said, hasn't it always been praise the Lord and pass the ammunition? No, seriously, hasn't it always been the crusade? It's a valid point of view. I mean, I would say that religion, the history of religion has is a complicated, complex nuanced history that has definitely one huge aspect of it is what you're talking about this empire, empire building violent kind of usurping religion for purposes of the state. And then it has this parallel track of like, you know, producing beauty and spirituality and art and music and some of the greatest scientists were deeply religious people. Some of the greatest artists were deeply religious people. So religion has a complicated history. I think that judging, you know, something as gigantic as a sphere of human life as religion and everything that historically that encompasses in a sound bite is precisely the problem. And he's not really helping. I'm talking about Bill Maher. I don't think he's helping by having this conversation. He's free to have the conversation. You know, I don't know. I don't know Bill personally, but I think it all comes down to I suspect that he is, you know, simultaneously, you know, a great comic. There's no doubt about that. I think he's a very sharp and bright person. And at the same time, like, you know, he's kind of nihilistic about the fact that, you know, he wants to be, he's a celebrity. He's a famous guy. He's got a platform. He likes being provocative. It's good for him. It's good for publicity. It's good to be provocative. You know, I started watching Bill Maher's career carefully ever since he made that comment about, you know, back in when he had, when he had the show on ABC, correct. And he called the 9-11 hijackers, you know, brave. Right. And said, they're not the ones who are cowards. We're cowards. Wasn't it Dinesh DeSousa who started that, the right wing bigot who kind of intimated, as I remember it, I'm politically incorrect. It was Dinesh DeSousa who kind of intimated that they weren't cowards. And then Bill picked up on it. Oh, is that right? I think so. Yeah, I think so. That's funny because Dinesh DeSousa is that, you know, he's a right wing piece of Doug. Yeah, we consider him in the brown Indian community as basically one of our uncle tops. And what would his religion be? He's a Hindu as far as I know. I mean, I think he grew up Hindu. He may have converted to Christianity. I remember reading something online, but suffice it to say that he's a demagogue. He's an ideologue. He puts the do in Hindu. And now I need to Google this. By the way, I mean... That is what you're going to look about? We don't deal. We don't... I'm obsessed with, I'm obsessed with, here we go, New Atheism. Dinesh has been critical of New Atheism, by the way. All right, if you want to bring facts into this conversation. He grew up in India. So if you're going to, and what is he like? Did he go to Dartmouth or something? Christianity and religion. Dinesh attended the evangelical church Calvary Chapel. Did he get Laura Ingram pregnant? Did he? Look it up. As long as you're gonna... Well, I can tell you it says Dinesh... D'Souza says that his Catholic background is important to him, but he's also comfortable with Protestant Reformation Theology. So he identifies himself as a non-denominational Christian. Did he go to Dartmouth? Did he go to Dartmouth? Good question. Just make it up. You know, this is the David Feldman show. We don't deal with truth. Just say yes. Say he went to... Did he go to Dartmouth? I'm not gonna lie to him whether he went to Dartmouth. Come on, man. I think he was part of this right wing cabal at Dartmouth. You believe in that stuff, man? Cabals and like Illuminati type theory. Well, I'll get to that in a second. Can you tell me whether or not he knocked up Laura Ingram? I think... I don't... We don't want... Let me do this. Dinesh, Laura. While you're looking that up, I should mention that we are talking to Uzzur Usman this July, July 20th. He's gonna do an hour at the comic strip on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Come see him at 9.30. It's part of the third annual Muslim Funny Fest organized by our friend Dean Abedaya. And now back to Uzzur Usman. With the answer, was Laura Ingram knocked up by Dinesh D'Souza? It seems that there is some relationship here. Laura Ingram was previously engaged to Indian American political commentator Dinesh D'Souza. They were definitely romantically linked. Whether or not she was impregnated by him would require further research and investigation. The rumor... The rumor is... Laura Ingram remains unmarried, fending off any issues of husband or divorce. Wait a second, wasn't she married at one time? She was, yeah. Well, the rumor is that she and Dinesh... What's the... How do you pronounce his name? Dinesh. Dinesh made a baby. Is that right? That's the rumor that I'm trying to get started. No, I had heard a rumor that she... No, I'm just, you know... I want no part of this rumor, man. Yeah, I hear things. What they're saying out there is Dinesh and Laura Ingram made a baby that didn't come to term, even though both of them are right-wing and pro-life. That's what they're saying. So that's the... That's the talk. So that's the... If true would prove hypocrisy to an nth degree. But I doubt it's true, just because a lot of people who went to Dartmouth say that. Interesting. You know how people talk. People who went to Dartmouth in particular. Yeah, they're nasty gossips. So let's return to that question asked. Do you believe in that stuff? Do I believe in cabals? I think that... Sculling bones. I think there are cabals to get things. I think there are conspiracies to get money, power. I think you can conspire among groups of individuals who will all work together and remain silent to further their own financial or military or violent ends. The Mafia has shown that there is omerita, that you can kill and murder and steal and people will die before they turn anybody in. Jimmy Hoffa. There was a conspiracy to kill Jimmy Hoffa. And somebody did it? Do you believe... Have you heard of this thing called Bohemian Grove? Where I was naked with Richard Nixon. Where industrialists meet near Stanford in the woods among the eucalyptus trees in the redwoods and they commit homosexual acts to gain each other's trust. Yes, I do believe in Bohemian Grove. I think that our spy agencies require men to have sexual relations with other men because it builds trust. It goes back to Plato's symposium. Alcibiades, the great Greek general, says in Plato's symposium. That the best love is the love between two soldiers because they're willing to die for each other. That transposes into current-day homophobia in that if Usher Usman and David Feldman were conspiring to rob a bank, it would be in our best interest to have gay sex because of the shame associated with it. And then we'd have a special bond. I would have something on you and in you. And that's what Bohemian Grove is about. Wow, really? Oh, yeah. It's like bringing, you know, you bring Richard Nixon up and you say, look, we can fund you. We have all these industrialists who want to back you but we got to trust you. Now take your clothes off. And I need you to blow General Westmoreland. Interesting. But I don't want to. Do it. But I don't blow General Westmoreland. Let me just, the reason I'm curious to ask you- I'm being serious, by the way, I'm being absolutely serious about this. I know you are, but I realize that some of your listeners might also be like, he can't be serious. I'm absolutely serious. So my question is, how do you hold those beliefs when obviously so few people are even aware that Bohemian Grove is a thing? And do you feel crazy saying those things out loud when most people would hear you say that and be like, that can't be true. Are you kidding me? I'm not saying it works. No, just the fact that it happens. I'm saying that people, what I'm saying is that there are some lunatics who go up to Bohemian Grove as part of some club. Well, are they lunatics or are they the most powerful? No, I don't think they're that powerful. I just think that they try this crap and occasionally some people fall into line. And most people don't. But I believe there are these attempts to create loyalty, to create fear. And I think the Bohemian Grove is the framework for a conspiracy, the same way the Carlisle Group is the framework for a conspiracy in that we just gave Tony Blair a couple of million dollars because he went into Iraq. We'll give you the Carlisle Group is this investment house. They own Dunkin' Donuts. They do, but they do the bribe expost facto. In other words, you invade Iraq and you kind of know that when you're done invading Iraq, there's a job waiting for you at the Carlisle Group. Is that a cabal? Is that a conspiracy? Yeah, it is. Is it a successful one? Is it pervasive? But it's a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy to bribe political leaders into doing something venal first and then collect the bribe afterwards. So then, okay, here's the next question. Okay, if everything you just said is true, and I personally have no problem with it, and I actually think that a lot of this stuff is happening, it's almost like open conspiracies. Like anybody who bothers to do a little bit of research and reading, these are facts, right? I like to distinguish between what I refer to as... Was 9-11 a conspiracy? Yes. Well, hold on. Well, let me finish. Could people use the term conspiracy theory? And I like to distinguish between conspiracy theories and conspiracy facts. Okay. Okay. The fact that Carlisle Group exists is a fact. The fact that it has roughly $10 billion in assets is a fact. It's involvement in multiple political events of recent memory is a fact that can be established and demonstrated, etc., etc., right? Same thing with Bohemian growth. People will hear about it and be like, ah, that can't be true. These are facts. Like this exists. There's footage. By the way, Alex Jones, as crazy as he is, you know that he went into Bohemian growth and has footage that he put online really the first-ever footage captured of the actual retreat of these people that go and participate in this gathering. So anyway, the point of all this is how do you then, knowing that information, kind of not agree with Trump that it's all fake news? Well, let me address that before... You know, when I said 9-11 is a conspiracy, what I mean is how many planes... You had two planes flying into the World Trade Center, one crashing into the Pentagon and the other one crashing in the field in Pennsylvania. That was a conspiracy. Now, there's no question that that was a conspiracy. Now, the question is how big a conspiracy? How many Saudi Arabian princes were involved? By the way, before you even get to that level of questions, even the way you set it up, you already... There's a lot of question marks because where is the plane that hit the Pentagon? I've seen those... That, to me, in all honesty, once you go there, I have a theory about this. We frame the discussion in America. You look into the abyss and then you question, are you willing to call the premise of America? In other words, the Kennedy assassination, you dig, you dig, you dig, and then you go, okay, I am not going to question the premise of America. And the same applies, I think, we're going to find to Putin. We're going to dig, we're going to dig, we're going to dig, and then suddenly there are going to be breaks and people are going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. Now you're questioning the whole premise of America. And I think once you ask where that plane went at the Pentagon... It's like you're asking, you're questioning the premise of America. You're... That's the big question. Of all the things that one I can't answer, and that's the third... For me, that's the third rail. And when you bring it up, I'm going, no, no, no, I don't want to get... Let's just make sure... I got you. But I don't want to do the kind of... No, it's fine. I mean, it's a very interesting... But do you know where that plane went? I think it might have... I was going to make a joke, but no. No, please, please. No, the answer is I have no idea, but I think it's very bizarre that nobody has seen a picture or footage of that plane, or even the fuselage, or like... Whatever has been leaked is like so unpersuasive, fundamentally unsettling, unpersuasive, and leaves too many questions. And then when you add that up with all the other question marks, you know, building seven, I mean, whether explosions or not, all the footage of all the eyewitnesses from the day it happened saying, I heard explosions, I heard explosions, I heard explosions. Like, okay, and then all of that is just swept under the rug, ignored, and we not a lot of talk about it because the Muslims are the bad guys. Like, I'm sorry, that is really, really a bad... It's highly unpersuasive. Well, yeah. The position I've settled on is, I don't know what happened. That's it. And what happened? I can't tell you, I don't know. But I can tell you, I don't believe in most of the fairytale that's been pushed on the American public. I mean, oh yeah. The planes hit the towers and melted. Everything, the jet fuel was so hot, everything was destroyed. But they did manage to find a passport of one of the hijackers in the middle of the rubble in Manhattan because it was made from a magical substance called bullshit. Fuck outta here, man. I'm not that stupid. So... Well, let me ask you a question about that. And I hate having this conversation because I'm a coward. Yeah. And I always, right now, my listeners, there's a segment of my listeners now who are gonna just start writing about this. Sure, turn against me. Not you, but just in general. And two things about this. I think 9-11 is like the Kennedy assassination. Yes. There was definitely a conspiracy. There were rogue elements within somebody's government who let something happen. In other words, I think the Saudi princes turned a blind eye to Osama bin Laden. They may have contributed money. I'm pretty sure. I think the Bush family and the bin Laden's and all that kind of stuff is very complicated. And I think the same thing happened with the Kennedy assassination. I think a lot of people turned a blind eye to protecting Kennedy and Dallas. They weren't... It was more a sin of omission than commission. It's the war and omission, not the war and commission. They didn't care. Oh, the president has the bubble top down. Ah, you know, what a case or I think that there are these passive, aggressive conspiracies that often happen where you remember in elementary school when somebody was about to get beaten up and you knew it was wrong, but they kind of deserved it. So we'll see what happens. I don't think they're really going to fight. Well, let's see what happens. That's what I think happened with 9-Eleven and I think that's what happened with Kennedy and it's pretty horrible. And it has to be looked into. I think the passport that you mentioned is kind of like OJ's bloody glove. Right, OJ, right. In that, Furman may have had his own little conspiracy to frame OJ and left the bloody glove there and tampered with the evidence, but that doesn't mean he didn't do it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's, let me tell you something. As a Muslim, because I've obviously heard, you know, this debate happened both in public and private, you know, with people who are fellow Muslims, people who hate Muslims like just 9-Eleven and unpacking all the different layers of it. Right. And what is annoying to me is when Muslims will try to be like, well, this is all just, you know, a conspiracy and 9-Eleven was either an inside job or was, you know, kind of what you're saying. It was like a JFK assassination type plot and, you know, Bin Laden was just a useful idiot and the Al-Qaeda was, you know, was co-opted for the purposes of this larger conspiracy and they were just used, they ended up being classic examples of what in the Cold War were considered useful idiots. They wanted to attack America. So it's like, okay, we'll let them do it and we'll advance our own interests. So that's the thesis that I've heard from, you know, some people make and my pushback on that and my big problem with that is like, yo, any interpretation of the effects of 9-Eleven that tries to absolve Muslims and the religion of Islam on the planet from the fact that there are very dangerous radicalized extremist violent elements who are in the name of religion committing mass murder is, to me, a very disingenuous position because these people do exist, number one, they are a massive problem and by the way, number three, they are killing Muslims more than anybody else. So this idea of trying to dissociate Islam and everyday Muslims from terrorism, which is a noble effort and I applaud that, at the same time, should not venture into this almost like naive pretending reality is not reality when in fact, there are indeed extremely violent elements on this planet who have, as I said earlier, hijacked religion for the purposes of politics and are indeed committing horribly atrocious and barbaric acts in the name of religion and that is a cancer within Islam that needs to be rooted out and so when I hear some of the comments made by whether it's Sam Harris or Bill Maher or even Trump and his ilk, it's not like I don't understand what they're saying. It's that their language is so sloppy they are often painting with too broad of a brush. Yeah. Trump needs to be, you know, what Trump's big push for, we need to call it Islamic, what does he call it Islamic terrorism or something like that, right? It's like, you know, the problem people have with the terminology is because no, the whole argument that is being made here is that the terrorism is not Islamic. It has nothing to do with it. It is not sanctioned by the teachings of Islam. It is a perversion of the teachings of Islam. So to call it Islamic terror, you know, does a great injustice and does a great deal of damage, even just cognitively and psychologically by constantly associating this thing, the violence and the political violence in the name of religion with, you know, whatever a billion plus people who have nothing to do with it and in fact, by the greatest victims of it. So this paradox, this tension, I would argue, is at the center of so many of these debates, whether it's Islamophobia, quote unquote, from the right wing or it's sort of the left wing sloppy language being used by people like Bill Maher or Sam Harris, that I think is both of them are ultimately doing a great deal of injustice to the actual conversation that they both want to have. Right. That's just unfortunate. So I think that's a function of, you know, that issue will be addressed when more talking heads enter the fray who can push back on that narrative. Right now, there's just not that, you know, hello? Yeah, I'm listening. No, that's the NSA. Right, right. They're triangulating this conversation. We've been talking about the Pentagon plane and building 7212 long. So anyway, the moral of the story is, man, we kind of got lost from one question I want to ask you, though, which is that if one becomes aware of the level of collusion between the hyper wealthy, the ultra rich, eight billionaires, according to Oxfam, have more wealth than the bottom half of earth combined. Right. Okay, if those, if that level of collusion or cabal does exist, and then further add to that the fact that, you know, media conglomerates own basically the mass media in the United States. When Trump says, you know, it's fake news and he's always talking about he's good for, you know, his ratings are so great. I think he's speaking in code. I think he's actually saying, hey, don't forget media executives. Trump is good for business. Hey, all this Comey, all this Comey hearing today and, you know, even the impeachment. I mean, if they if they decide to impeach Donald Trump, the ratings will be through the roof. All the executives, all the networks will make money selling ads because the eyeballs are worth money. That's the business that the media is in. And we shouldn't pretend it's other than what it is. And so when he says, you know, hey, it's all fake news and I'm good and the ratings are great when I'm on television, I do your show. It's like he's saying, you're all fake news. And, you know, I'm good for business. So just everybody keep the mouth shut. Let's keep the racket going and keep the people, you know, bread and circus talking about me and Russia and this that and the other. And, and, you know, Katie, Kathy Griffin having to apologize over this stupid picture, whereas in fact, what's happening on the ground, whether it's international or it's, you know, local domestic policy, they're continuing to ramrod the policies that they want through Congress. It's still happening. So it feels a little bit like bread and circus. And I feel like I don't know. I don't know what, how an intelligent, serious person is supposed to take the media discourse seriously, because it by and large seems to be that Trump has a point when he says it's all fake news. Yeah. And the listeners to my show know that when I'm discussing Bill Maher, Kathy Griffin, and to some degree, even Comey testifying, I feel guilty because it's easy. It's not really policy. It's, as you said, bread and circuses. And I think podcasts are so powerful. Yes. Because you can have these nuanced conversations. Sure. And television by by its nature. Are you familiar with this book by Jerry Mander? Yes. The killing of television. I met Jerry Mander. Oh my God, really? Yeah. I would love to meet him. Yeah. I read his book as a teenager, man, four arguments for the elimination of television. Yeah. And I kind of read it. It really affected me. And I didn't know the TV for like a decade in my life. And I just was whatever. I was in my own universe. And then I kind of ended up in show, you know, in comedy and kind of tangentially in show business. But I've been seeing it now, you know, really up close and personal, like every argument he makes in that book, the fact that television as a medium is a reductionist medium that forces every conversation into a soundbite. And it is almost like impossible to have a nuanced position, let alone articulated in a meaningful way in a television ecosystem. Right. And I would argue that really, you know, smartphones and short form content, whether it's on YouTube or on Facebook videos now, they've become really extensions of the same phenomenon of television. So it's a reductionist medium. By the way, it's advertising driven. So television is nothing more than a platform for the delivery of ads for the delivery of ads and its reductionism and soundbites and conflict. Yes. There has to be conflict, not information. It has to be conflict. And that's the service that the false equivalency provides. It provides conflict because you just can't tell people the truth because that's too much of a responsibility. Interesting. That requires too much. No. So I really struggle with this, man. I think that podcasting, it has a tremendous possibility as a medium to really rival this other type of medium, all these reductionist mediums. And I honestly don't know if the same thing is going to end up happening though, because it's already seems to be happening. The commercialization of podcasting, the practical need to have to make money off of it. So you got to get a sponsor. And before you know it, the same advertisers who are putting $60 billion of ad revenue in Google's pockets every year and funding the entire ecosystem of all these hundreds of channels and movies and pop culture and it's a handful of advertisers. That's the great point. That's what's being missed about newspapers. I think you read the same articles I've been reading in that newspapers are making money online. I'm not talking, the New York Times is making money through subscriptions. They've kind of abandoned the advertising model for online. They're like HBO. Yeah. But your local newspaper that covers your little city, those newspapers make money, unfortunately, not for themselves. They make it for Google and Facebook. In other words, the Des Moines Register, they run ads on their website. They make money. But Google is selling those ads and Facebook is selling those ads. And that's a multi, multi, multi, multi, multi billion dollar business. Absolutely. In fact, it's not an exaggeration to say. Some of the most sophisticated technology that exists on planet Earth, including the algorithms and the guts of the Google architecture that runs Google. Some of the most sophisticated technology on the planet Earth exists for only one purpose, and that is to figure out how to commodify human attention to collect ad revenue. Right. That's all it is. And they have to be broken up. Google has already set itself up to be broken up. That's alphabet. Yeah. And they have different divisions. They have to be broken up. As does... That's what you believe, huh? I believe, yes. And Facebook, it's a... It's a monopoly. It's not good to have... That much power. Yeah. And it's good for everybody if you break it up. Antitrust basically is... Antitrust is good for people who own the company that's being broken up. How so? It forces diversification. When you break up AT&T, that was the last big breakup ordered by the Judge Green, I think in 82 or 83, that was beneficial to people who owned AT&T because they broke AT&T up into five separate bells, five separate companies. Well, if you owned AT&T, you've got stock in five separate companies. You own AT&T. We're breaking you up into five separate companies. The owners now have stock in five companies plus AT&T. It's good for everybody. It's good for the consumer. And it's good for the stockholder to break these companies up. You're not destroying value when you break up a monopoly. You're creating it. That's what people don't understand about antitrust. When you enforce... Was it the Sherman Antitrust Act? I can't remember. It's one of them, yeah. Or the Sherman and the Peba, I don't know. You're creating... When they broke up Standard Oil, the owners of Standard Oil got 12 different companies that they now own stock in, and all those companies start competing with one another. Which is bad. So if you own stock in all 12, one of them is going to break through and become ExxonMobil. And you own stock in it. And then it will break that one up. And then you break... Well, actually what's happened is all the companies that got broken up after the AT&T antitrust action have all gotten back together again. If you trace the companies that got broken up in the 80s, they're back together again. Yeah, that's the humor that's seen in Network, in the famous boardroom thing. Ned Beatty, Ned Beatty. Yeah, that's everything, man. He summed it up. He summed up the world that we are not living in. We already were, but it's just even more in your face now. Yeah, Standard Oil, Rockefeller's Standard Oil was broken up over... It took about 100 years. It's back together again. Did you know Patty Shasky? I'm not that old. I thought maybe you met him when you were young and he was old. I think... But I love Network. I love Hospital. Did he write Marty? He wrote Marty as well. I think those are the three movies he won. He's the only three-time Oscar winner for original screenplay. Really? Solo screenwriter, yeah. There's been a few others, but they had co-writers. The only solo screenwriter who won three times original screenplay Oscar. It's amazing. You're a writer, a playwright? Well, I wrote this. I did this one-man show in Chicago, which I ran in September. It's called Ultra American, a Patriot Act. And I did it with a little theater company, this equity theater company. And then they told me at the end of it, like, oh yeah, by the way, we published the script as a play. I was like, what? So I became a published playwright. And the show was actually recommended for a Jeff Award. I don't know if you're familiar with the Jeff Awards. I had never heard of them. But Jeff Awards are basically like the Tonys for Chicago Theater. Wow. So yeah, I was really excited. I got recommended for Jeff Award. I don't think he got nominated. I don't even know what happened after that. But anyway, it was a fun experience. I did 18 performances of it. And my plan actually is to sort of update the show because I did that pre-Trump, you know, that was September of last year. And then he won. And you know, obviously I have some new material that is relevant to the same subject matter. So I'm kind of updating the show right now. And then I want to do a run of that in New York and possibly LA. And then I would like to actually use that as the basis to fill my first ever one hour special. Well, the one hour show that you're doing at the comic strip on July 20th. It's a preview of that. That's the third annual Muslim Funny Fest at the comic strip 930. I guess people would go to Muslim Funny Fest on Google, Google that, and you can buy tickets. You can also just go to my website. I'll have a link up and all that other.com. Before you go, you'll come back? Bro, I love you. I'm honored to be on your podcast. Hey, brother, man. Happy to come back whenever you'd have me. You got it, brother. A fan of yours. You know I love your brother. Hey, brother. Yes, brother. Can you speak for all Muslims? I want to end on one note here. Of course. I'm having you on the show to speak for all Muslims. I will speak for all white people. Although I'm not white. You get to speak for Jews. You don't get to speak for all white people. Yeah, that's, you know, I'm kind of, that's what I'm told. How do Jews become white people in America? Can we talk about that? What did that happen? Shixes. Because that is, that is one of the greatest magic tricks ever. That is fantastic. Well, you know. You can speak on behalf of all Jews. I don't know. You have to get a license to speak on behalf of all white people. On the show, we're going to talk about Jackie Mason with Bruce Murnoff later. My big argument with Jackie Mason on the streets of Manhattan in 2008, it was near Columbus Circle. I stopped him. We'd start talking. We didn't really know each other. And he looked at my then wife and said, you married out of the religion. And I said, yeah. And he said, you've killed more Jews than Hitler by marrying out of the religion. And we got into it like a two hour argument in Manhattan. Was he trying to be funny? Yeah, he was trying to be funny. And I was trying to be funny. And I actually convinced him that intermarriage was the best thing. What's better for Jews, right? I said, at one point, I said, do you think it really helps us if we have more people looking like you? Don't you think it's worth diluting the stock a little so we can have my kids? Do we really? There is. How did the argument end? I made him laugh. I told him that Abraham was the first Jew. And that means he had to have married out of the religion. The religion. He also had multiple wives, though. He had multiple wives, none of whom were Jewish because Abraham was the first Jew. And he married non-Jews and had children. He had Isaac and Ishmael. And if he had children with non-Jew, the mother wasn't Jewish, which means that Isaac and Ishmael, who founded Islam, they're not Jewish. Judaism doesn't exist, Jackie. You're Swedish. You're a Methodist. You're a Unitarian. That made him laugh, so it was OK. Hey, so here's my question. So you're going to speak for all Muslims that are going to wrap it up. It's Ramadan, by the way, right now, so. Is it? Yeah. Are you observing it? I am. I'm fasting right now. Now, how does the fast work? It's 12 hours of fasting and... Well, it's not 12 hours. It's sun up to sun down, so it depends what part of the world you're in. Right now in Chicago, I mean, if you start my fast, like a roughly 3.30 in the morning, and I'm not eating until about 8, almost 8.30 at night. So basically... It's a $17 fast, I guess. And then you eat. Then you eat at sundown, yeah. And then you can... So it's sure to be called like... You should still exercise discretion and some type of restraint, but people just pardon the pun, pick out. Without a pick. Picking out, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I call it... Well, it's Ramadan. It's kind of like bulimia. It's hilarious. How holy is Ramadan? How holy is it? What does that mean? What does Ramadan mean? Well, it's actually considered a very, very spiritual time of the year. I mean, so for one month out of the year, which is a lunar calendar, like the Jews follow, so the Muslims also have a lunar calendar, which means that it kind of rotates throughout the Gregorian year, right? So it moves up about 10 days every year. And that means that in every part of the world, over a period of years, Ramadan will end up being throughout the different seasons. So the winter fast is obviously a lot easier. The sun sets pretty early, summertime fast. I mean, we're talking about, man, we're in the middle of June right now, and in Chicago or a place like California, I mean, you're getting a pretty long, hot day. And so you don't eat or drink anything. If you're married, you don't have sex until during the fast. So you have to abstain basically from all these animal appetites. And the idea behind it is, number one, developing some type of self-restraint over your animal appetites. And then also an ancillary benefit is the idea that you're also cultivating empathy for people who are starving and people who don't have food to eat every day. So I think in a time like this, with all this refugee crisis going on and everything that we're here about, I mean, even just in America, man, it never ceases to amaze me that we have homeless people in the United States. And if they're enterprising and scrapping, I'm sure they can figure out how to put together a meal every day. But there are people who legitimately are below the poverty line in this country and are not able to get a decent meal every day. Yeah. And you know who I blame? Tell me who. Dogs and cats. My sister sends me these videos from Dodo. And they're these adorable videos of people dressing up their pit bulls and matching pajamas and bathing their cats and giving them deep tissue massage and feeding them birthday cakes. Wow. And Americans have so much love and empathy to give for cats and dogs. They've become substitute children in many ways, substitute humans. It's become they've anthropomorphized their pets to the point where they no longer need to take care of humans. They take care of cats. There's a direct correlation between the number of people living on the streets, children requiring food stamps, and the number of cats and dogs that are being rescued by people who are incapable of loving other humans. Wow. I cannot tell you the number of, by the way, at one time we had... That's really depressing, man. Yeah. Well, we've had eight. I mean, my house when I was married, at any given time, four cats, three dogs, plus the kids. And there's a virtue to having pets. I'm a borderline vegan. I hate herding animals. I love animals. Right. People say to me, I go, how are you doing, David? I go, wow, you know, I'm in New York. It's single. It's lonely. People automatically say, get a dog. They never say, get a whore. I mean, no, they never say, oh, you should, you know, meet somebody. It's all, get a dog. It's just, this is, and I see it. I see women once they get a cat. That's it. That's all they need. Women of a certain age who I know, my experience is, you give them a cat, a subscription to Netflix, some candles, and they're done. Wow. So my question... Yeah, all right. Sorry, what's your question? My question for other is, I hear a lot of white people saying, oh, I'm so tired from Trump. I just can't, my gastroenterologist actually told me to stop watching MSNBC. I mean, it's just so, I just don't know what to do. I just, we're going up to the Hamptons and I said, just cut the cable. I just need a week without this. I'm just so miserable. Do you hear Muslims talking that way? Speak for all Muslims. I have heard, yeah, the answer is I have heard that. Really? Yeah, I would, I mean, I think that they're the people who are kind of influenced by the very cultural, you know, frequency you just referenced. In other words, they're also being influenced by that same attitude. But yes, there are people like that. Yeah. I would say that the majority of Muslims that I know in the United, certainly in the United States. I mean, first of all, Muslims outside of the United States, I mean, they're looking at, like America has just become a big joke. It just looks like a, it looks like a reality show. I was doing a bit about this before Trump won. I was like, you guys realize what's happened? I mean, he has used his years of knowledge of being a wrestler, a professional wrestler. You know, he was inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame, right? No. Yeah, that's a real thing, dude. I was reading it online. I thought it was the onion. It was the New York Times. Okay. Donald Trump was inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame as a wrestler, by the way. Is it Linda McMahon, Vince McMahon's wife, like undersecretary of commerce or something? It's amazing. If that's true, I would not be surprised because he, so he's talked about publicly about how that happened because he, he was basically getting into the wrestling game because he owned the build, you know, owned venues and stuff. And then the next thing you knew, he was becoming very friendly with, you know, Vince McMahon and other leaders within the, at the time, WWF. Anyway, long story short, they had this thing they promoted called the Battle of the Billionaires. You could watch Donald Trump put it in Google, put it in YouTube. Donald Trump wrestling, he will see him legit like clothesline, Vince McMahon. I've seen it. Yeah. Shave his head in the ring. I mean, it's absurd. So this guy used all of his knowledge about that. Then he, of course, became a celebrity, bona fide himself as the host of Celebrity Apprentice and learned just kind of even more about how show business and reality shows work. And then he decided to hijack the world media and give us all the best reality show ever made. It's called America, starring Donald Trump. Okay. And season one was when he won and now we're in the middle of season two with all the twists and the Comey situation and the Russia investigation. And, you know, like season two finale is going to basically be probably, you know, once he's been off, once he's been in office for a year. Yeah. So suffice it to say that this guy is a living reality show and the rest of the world is just looking at, I talked to friends of mine who are Muslims and even other people are not Muslims, certainly comedians like the America is a joke. This guy is a complete buffoon, a clown, and everybody in the world is just laughing at how did you people let this happen? And it's really entertainment for them. Yeah. It's a political danger to it all because this man has access to nuclear codes and, you know, has already rattled the cages of other world leaders. I don't know if you've been following what's been happening with Germany, but I mean supposedly Angela Merkel is very openly talking about how, you know, we need to, Europeans need to protect themselves and not pretend that America is necessarily the same ally that it's always been. And unfortunately, the Breitbart people like Steve Bannon hear that and they say, good. Yeah, they love it. That's what they're all about, you know. So anyway, I would say that Muslims around the world kind of fall into that bucket, which is like, you know, this guy is a clown and he's a dangerous clown and it's unfortunate and they feel bad for Americans having, you know, having, for being stuck in this situation. Muslims in the United States, I find, are of sort of, you know, two or three types. Either they're the crying, whining type you mentioned earlier or they're like activists, like, you know, we need to be in resistance mode and hold the feet to the fire and be collaborating with activist organizations and the ACLU and challenge, you know, Trump's travel ban and blah, blah, blah, like they're on the case. And then there's the third group, which, you know, I would say I kind of belong to, which is sort of like, you know, I just don't take politics that seriously because it has become part of the celebrity game. Christians are celebrities. And the whole celebrity game is just this, you know, what we were talking about earlier. It's a fake news, you know, commercially driven ad driven platform of television and news media that is basically owned by a small group of people. And as Jerry Mander talks about in his book, you know, television is anti-democracy because it's the idea of allowing a few people to have control over this incredibly powerful medium that is basically brainwashing people 24 seven and advancing the narrative that this handful of people want to advance. All of them could fit in a single golf cart with Donald Trump, by the way, and Mar-a-Lago. So I just don't take the whole thing too seriously. And I resigned myself to more of a, you know, history is in good hands because I do believe in God and this too shall pass. And if it doesn't, then we're dancing on the Titanic. What are we supposed to do? Very good. Uzzur Usman, how do people reach you? I got a website. It's just my name, Uzzur.com. It's spelled A-Z is in zebra, H-A-R.com. Great. You'll come back soon? I hope so, brother. Thank you. Stay on the line. Oh, very quickly. If you want to see Uzzur perform, go to the comic strip at 9.30 on July 20th. And he's part of the third annual Muslim Funny Fest, organized by the great Dean Abedaya. Stand the line. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Corey Kahane joins us. She recently appeared on a late show with Stephen Colbert. You were one of the first comedians that he put on the show. Early, early comedian. Yeah, yeah. Corey Kahane was a... Kahane. I will, already, it's starting. It's already starting. Kahane. Kahane. Kahane was the nutcase who, you know... Meyer Kahane. Meyer Kahane. No relation to Meyer Kahane. Supposedly way, way back, there's some kind of... Eighth cousin removed. Corey Kahane. Thanks. Corey Kahane. Mr. Douglas, what can I do to talk you into this chuppa? Nobody gets that. Little green acres. Corey Kahane. That was Mr. Haney. Yes. I was doing Mr.... I get it, I get it. Okay. Corey Kahane, recently appeared on the late show with Stephen Colbert. You were one of the first comedians. Early on, that says a lot. And you were hit on the 2016 season of America's Got Talent. You've been featured in Catskills on Broadway, which I'm going to ask you a lot about. I want to talk about Mal Z. Lawrence and Freddie Roman and Dick Capri. Sure. Corey has been seen on the late show with David Letterman. You performed a record seven times on the late, late show with Craig Ferguson. One of those performances, I called you. No, you called me after Letterman. And you teased me. It was really cute. You said, maybe you did both. It's possible. But after Letterman, it aired on Young Kippur. And you said, too bad, none of your fans will actually see it. And I cracked up. It aired on Young Kippur. Yeah. And I hardly knew you. We were friends, I think, on Facebook. I just watched and go, God, she's really funny and good. And I just reached out to you kind of anonymously. That's how we kind of became friends, right? Maybe deeper friends. But I certainly knew you in LA. I mean, I always admired you and thought you were amazing. Yeah. But I didn't want to be your friend until I saw how well you did on Letterman. Then I thought, OK, this is somebody worth my time. I remember there was I sat on your lap once. Yeah. And there was there was a flirtation. You have no recollection of that. It was a low chair, too. So it really forced me to really dig in deep with the lap sitting. Are you serious? Yeah. It was when we were doing something, it was like, it was like some panel show in Los Angeles. I'm trying to figure what it was, where we like, I don't know. Kindler was there. And you were on my lap? I sat on your lap. Well, you're married. Yes, you were at the time, too. You were at the time, too. I would remember a woman sitting on my lap. I sat on your lap for a little bit. Did I ask you what you wanted for Hanukkah? Little girl? I would remember you. I think my sitting on your lap was a gentle sort of a flirtation. And I don't think you picked up on it. You were busy at that. You had a lot going. You were working for Bill Maher at that. And you know what? Here's the thing that happened. You flirted with me? Totally. But you're married. I know. But you know, I'm not dead. I can flirt. You were very committed to my ex-wife. Yes. I didn't look at other women. I was totally devoted. I think you're so funny. And my husband thinks you're so funny. I think I would have been forgiven for the flirtation. Okay. Are you throwing me off my game? I'm so sorry. Here's what happened, though. Because if you sat on my lap now, anyway. There might be knee problems. Oh, dear. I thought this was going to be different. Yeah, I never flirted with women. And a lot of guys had acts to get laid. I have an act to push women away. Because I never wanted women to walk up to me after a show. I didn't want to be tempted into cheating. Really? With the Jeffrey Dahmer bit? Okay, we go way back. I mean, that really was, that was a panty moistener. By the way, Corey's album, you'll come back to do the show, right? Right, of course. You want to dismiss me? No, no, no. I'm thinking, why hasn't she been on the show? TV Clean, we're going to talk, speaking of panty moisteners, we're going to talk about TV Clean. Seven appearances on the late, late show with Craig Ferguson. You can see her on The View, Fox and Friends, and The Moms. She was named Best Comedian New York City by Backstage and Best Film, having trouble saying the word female today. Best Broad Comedian, is that bad? No, I love Broad. Okay, there's a great Bobby Slaton. I was opening for Bobby and he says to this woman, where's this Broad from? She goes, I hate the word Broad. And he goes, you're Seaward. How does Broad sound now? And he didn't say Seaward. No, I know. I love Bobby. I do too. He's been going through a rough time. We could talk about that. You know, I called him when his wife died. Yeah. The day his wife died, he goes. Oh, you mean you called him without knowing? No, I called. Oh. You're just jealous because it's my wife and not yours. I started laughing so hard. Corey Kahane, Kahane, Corey Kahane. Are you mad at me? Not at all. Corey Kahane. It's like Shapiro, Shapiro. And they change it on you all the time. Constantly. Corey Kahane also teaches at the Manhattan Comedy School, which is run by our mutual friend. Our mutual friend, Andy Engel. And I have filled in for you. Yes. And I taught a class at the Manhattan Comedy School. We should plug the Manhattan Comedy School. You are a great teacher. You are somebody I should study with. Seven times on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Stephen Colbert, David Letterman. So few comics have been on both Letterman and Stephen Colbert. That speaks volumes to what you know about comedy. Can comedy be taught? I don't think comedy can be taught, but I think if you are funny, I can help you shape it into a five-minute set. For TV. Well, I can, yes. Well, that's a separate thing. I'm really good at grabbing the five minutes and cutting the fat. But that's for people who are a little further along. But if you come to me and you're funny, and you've got some funny thoughts, I can help you shape it into a five-minute set that can be part of the bucket list of life. Or see if it's something that you want to pursue. They're two different things. I mean, one is your first time on stage where you're going to kill because you invite your whole family and friends and whatever. And the other is, really, that's something that took me years to learn, which is just that. I mean, every ah, every ah, every mm has to be considered and thought out. Right, right. When you're doing four minutes, 60 seconds. Yeah, it's very important. And then how does that inform your club act? How does it inform... Do you find that once you do a TV shot, then you bring it back into the clubs? Yeah. It remains as tight. You don't loosen it up anymore, do you? There's a period where you feel like, oh my God, I have no material because I cut everything that needed to be cut out of there, and nothing needs to come back in. I don't need to put back in the extraneous stuff. Do you find that once you cut it down and you bring it back into the clubs, it improves your timing that you're able then to focus more on the performance and the pauses and you listen more to the audience because it's so tight, you fill up the space by really dancing with the audience? Sometimes. I think when I've really cut a bit down to its perfect kernel core gem, if you will, that when I then put it back in my act, which is more fluid, like for a 45-minute set, it feels stilted. It feels too polished. It doesn't feel like stand-up. I think stand-up in its best is a sloppy art form. So when you tighten it to the point where it's perfect for four and a half minutes, for a Tainto, for a Letterman, for a Colbert, it's great and it's great for that moment and it fits perfectly. But I think that it's a little stilted when you then put it back in the act so tight and neat. What do you mean it's best as a sloppy art form? I think the moments that I've enjoyed comedy the most when I'm watching it and no, no, and doing it is when it's been sloppy. When something has just- I've never heard this before, especially from somebody who teaches comedy. Yeah, but that is something I really stress to students, that I'd rather you not be perfect. I'd rather you just be present, because if you're present and you're already a funny person, chances are that joke's gonna work. Sloppy as in over-speaking a joke, not having it phrased properly. What do you mean by sloppy? I'm saying that if you do a joke the same every single night, I don't think you're a real comic. I mean exactly the same every single night. But if you alter it a little bit or at that moment you feel like punching the beginning much more than the end or you feel like just letting the end slide, not even enunciate it that well. I mean if you play around with jokes every time, they have a life, don't they? Can't you kill the joke eventually? Eventually you should kill, but I- No, what I'm saying is if you play with a joke too much, yes, you can. There's many cases where I've messed with a joke too much and it's no longer funny and I threw it away, for sure. Do you have it written down somewhere in its platonic form? The way I catalog jokes is it's just like one word. It's like, you know, I'll say like Girl Scout Cookies or something like that. When you do Colbert Letterman, do you type out the set? Word for word, but I have to send it in for standards and practices. And do you perform it word for word? Almost, almost word for word. The nice, when I was doing Ferguson a lot, they'd never even asked me to, I didn't even have to like tape the set, I just wrote it out for them. They were very, they were very trusting, but that was Peter Loisalli, the producer. Who went to elementary school with Anne Frank? Oh my God, yeah. And I think he was on the Kindertrain. I think that's how he escaped. I think he was on the Kindertrain to want to, that went to England. Oh, what was the Kindertrain? The Kindertrain, it was Kinder Children. There was a train they got. They went from the Netherlands? I think they, you know, they took the boat and then they were on the train in England. There was a train where kids got out. Had he stayed, he would have been the published writer, like Anne Frank maybe. Possibly, yes, he did. That's not funny. I know. I don't know. Is his son also a producer? Because I see- I don't know. I met him at a party and I had just seen Franca La Mita's documentary called When Stand-Up Stood Out, which is the greatest documentary about stand-up comedy, Boston. It's a love letter to the Boston comedy scene. If you love comedy- I think I saw it. It's the one about Nix and- Yeah. Yeah. And now Steven writes big, you know, Hail to, yeah. And it's about Peter Loisalli. Yes. Coming to visit his son in college, because Boston has all those colleges. Right. And he popped into a comedy club. He saw Steven Wright and put him on The Tonight Show and single-handedly ruined the Boston comedy scene. When that happened, it went from an art form in Boston, a brotherhood, to you got to get on The Tonight Show. So when I met the son at a party, I said, you ruined the Boston comedy scene. And I tried to explain how, and he just was dough-faced, just not interested. I said, well, I guess I won't do the Anne Frank material either. I don't know. It could be argued that maybe Steven Wright getting The Tonight Show put everybody more on their game. Yeah. Sharpened their act. I'm not sure. And if you listen to Barry Crimmins and Kevin Meany talk about the barracks, it was time for, you couldn't continue to live the way they were living. They were going to. So you teach a class. I filled in for you. I believe the comedy can be taught. I think a certain type of comedy can be taught. I don't think Don Rickles can be taught, or Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters. But I think that- So maybe what we're saying is the joke writing can be taught. I think joke writing and performing, I think you can learn how to be a pretty good comedian and if you stick with it long enough, you can become a great comedian, as long as you're sick enough to want to do it. Right. You have to have that drive and not everybody does. I mean, there's a category of comedian who comes to me, who has been told every Passover, every Thanksgiving, oh my God, you're so funny, you should be comedian. And then I get them in my class. And it's like those people did you a disservice. Right. And I said in your class, remember Gordy? There's a young kid named Gordy. He drinks, he's about 24. And I said to him in front of everybody in the class, because I was filling in, so I was kind of reckless, in my opinions. I pushed Gordy. I said, Gordy's going to make it. He's just going to make it because he's a goofball. He doesn't give a crap. He doesn't care. He's young. And I can just see that he's working really hard. And then a year later, I see him barking people into the Greenwich Comedy Club. And I just gave him a big hug and a kiss. So I'm on the street barking comedies, because you've got to go through those. And I remember saying in the class, unless you're willing to get up there every night, and then you see him barking audiences in comedy, comedy, come in, come see comedy, he's going to make it. He may not be the funniest guy in the world. But he's got the bug. He's got the bug. That's what you need. The bug is more important than the genius, right? I think they're equally important. When did you start? Well, it's a two-part story. I mean, 29 was when I started. 1929. So the depression, the stock market crashed. And it was between strippers. You started at the age of 20. Fanny Bryce needed me to fail in. You know, they call her a stand-up. I get very frustrated because she did little sketches. She didn't do stand-up. I was 29, and I was by comedy standards. That was old. Yes. Yes. 29. Single mom, divorced single mom with a Manhattan rent. It was the dumbest thing you could possibly do. So why did you do it? I did it on a whim. I did stand-up at an open mic. And I said, it was so fulfilling. And I said, okay, let this be a hop. Maybe this could be a hobby. I don't know. I thought, oh, that'll be my hobby. I'll just stand-up once a week. And, you know, that lasted for two weeks. And then it was an obsession. But the first time I tried it, I was 19. And I did it in New York. I was at a place called Good Times. I don't know if you remember that club. And the very first time I was on stage, I got... I'm at East Side. East Side. It was where Pat Benatar was discovered. And I did stand-up. And the first time I was on stage, I got passed at the club. And people were like, oh my God, where have you been? You're going to be big. And that very first night, I went out with Paul Reiser. And he ordered French fries with gravy. And I'd never seen that. And he was hitting on me a little bit. I was hot once. And... Did you sit on his lap? Did not sit on his lap. I was really intimidated because he was very polished. And I said, why are you putting... Who puts gravy? Because he was a nice Jewish boy. I was like, who puts gravy on French fries? He goes, it's going to be huge. It was right before his... The movie was coming out. Oh, Diner? Yes, it was right before Diner. It was like Diner came out like a month later. But so I went and I did stand-up. It was amazing the first night. And then I came back and I bombed. And I bombed five consecutive times. And the stage fright that gripped me after bombing five times, I was destroyed. I couldn't go back up. I'd go to like, you know, I'd go to like the open mic to catch a rising star. And I'd just sit in the back and they'd call Corey Kahane and I would just... I don't know who that is. I just said, I couldn't get up. And so I was gripped with stage fright for 10 years. Really? 10 years. Stage fright or a anger that you had a way to... No, just utter stage fright. Because you had bombed? One bombed, did it? Five. Five bombed. I killed. They passed me at the club. It was like a lot of, you know, it was like exciting. It was, you know, beginners look. Sometimes people have that. That right away. And then I bombed five times. Not all at the same club, but different places. And then it was like, I can't do this anymore. And then I just... Do you know who Seth Godin is? He's one of the great marketing gurus. He's amazing. I recommend him. He wrote Purple Cow and Tribes. And I just read a book called The Dip. And he said exactly what you experienced is what everybody goes through. And it weeds at the weak or the undetermined, the dip. In other words, there's the beginner's luck in any pursuit. In a business or... A souffle. A souffle. Sometimes the first time you... Wow, you know. Dating. He says, you know, you fall in love and then you hit the dip. And the dip, you either quit it. You either quit what you're doing or you work your way through the dip. And if you work your way through the dip, he says you quit the things that aren't working and you skyrocket to the top. You chose to quit. But had you stuck with it, what would have happened? I don't know. Who knows? So what did you do? It didn't work out that way. I know that when I returned to it at 29, I had a thicker skin. You had a child? I had a kid. I had divorce under my belt. I had... You know, I wasn't the same sort of... Daughter, son? Daughter? Oh, that's easier. My daughter was nine. I mean, you know, every one who knew me from the beginning knows Ariel. So you were a single mom starting comedy. You fell in love with Tom Hanks. He was a medical student who quit to do comedy. I wore polka dots. No. Whoever I slept with in stand-up... No, I'm not in favor. ...that could never help me with my career. I'm thinking of the Sally Field movie. I know, but specifically throughout my career, if there was anybody that was remotely helpful, I would not be someone I was attracted to. I wish I could have, you know, I wish I could have been with less integrity. You were attracted to people who could do you no good. Yes. That's why you sat on my lap. Yes, probably. And you know, it's funny, like sometimes when I kill, I'll say, is anybody here in show business and nobody will clap? And I'll be like, that's why I killed. Because nobody can do anything for me. Well, but look at you. No, I know. I mean, you have, you are in the middle of a terrific career. A terrific career. What do you mean by TV clean? Why did you call it TV clean? Well, because people are always asking, you know, are you clean as far as comedian? And I'm like, I'm TV clean. You know, because I can, the subject matter I can talk about on a late night talk show may not be clean enough for a cruise. What do you mean by that? Well, on a late night talk show, I can allude to, you know, oral sex without saying, you know, blowjob, if you will. And that makes it TV clean. I find this fascinating. There's such a thing called TV clean. You know what I'm talking about? I've been all my life. The whole thing is very confusing though, because after 10 p.m. now you can say Dick, you know, he's like, he's a dick. But on the Colbert, I had a joke and they bleep the word, you know, I was like, that was a dick move and they bleep that like, really? They bleep that CBS bleep. And it was, you know, it was on after 11. So the standards and practices thing is, is still very confusing. Somebody has to justify their paycheck. There's a bleeper who has to get paid. You create work when you curse. Seriously, I'm sure that Dick move was approved by the segment producer. Right. And I think Stephen has said it. I think Stephen has said Dick move on TV. But somebody at CBS, standards and practices, a lawyer has to earn their living. And you know what? I think it's great. I do. Who cares? Who cares if they bleep it? Yeah, no. The audience knows that you're saying Dick move. They bleep Dick instead of move, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's great. Kind of run the joke. I would have changed if I knew they were going to bleep it. The audience laughed. The audience laughed. But I would have said, you know, in the joke, I say, I could see myself making some Dick move. Now, I would, if I knew they were bleeping, I would have said I could see myself asking a lot of questions. I bring this up because a lot of people think I'm a boulderizer, you know, a pearl clutcher. Somebody who says, you know, we have to watch what we say and we have to, I'm not for censorship. Right. A lot of people misunderstand what I'm talking about. We are learning what happens when people say whatever they want, Donald Trump. I think watching what you say, just being a little measured at a dinner party with sophisticated people, you watch what you say. And I don't know if I'm on board with that. Well, all I'm saying, okay, and I don't want to have this argument because I have it all the time on this show. You want to talk about Catskills on Broadway? I mean, when I hang out with those guys, those guys, you know, like the Melsey Lawrence and the Dick Capri. Dick Capri in front of your room. Before you tell me that. But I love the politically incorrect conversations that they have, you know, and the things that they say, they're totally inappropriate. But they're so, it's like they're being themselves. The first night I did stand up comedy. This is about speech and TV clean. The first night I did comedy, Freddie Roman, Dick Capri had just gotten back from a Dick Shapp roast. They were wearing tuxedos. It was Danger Fields. And I thought, my God, what a great life to be comedians. They're in tuxedos. They did the Dick Shapp roast. Dick Shapp was a sportscaster. This is a life for me. And I told them, I'm going to stand up to this my first time. And they both, I have it somewhere. They both gave me their number. They looked at me and said, you're a writer, not a performer. I hadn't even gone up yet. They just looked at you and said that. They looked at me and they said, if you have any jokes, well, I'll pay you to write some jokes. But trust me, you're a writer, not a performer. I never forgot this. It was the first night. I, my first night at Danger Fields, I got on at three in the morning. I go up and they said to me, you're too dirty. You got to work clean. You got to work clean. You got to work clean. What year was this? Like 83, 84. Really? And was Danger Fields just the club that was letting people, that was asking people to work cleaner than say catch or? No, I just, no, I don't know. I was, it was Dick, no, Dick Capri and Freddie Roman said, you're too dirty. They watch me, they watch me go up. Yeah, no, they're, they're, they're very clean. They're very clean. And then, but then I watched Dick Capri. He went up like at four in the morning and did a joke about a paraplegic farting a dart. And I don't know what the joke was. I'll have to ask Jackie the joke. Let me make a note of that. It's a joke about a quadriplegic winning a bar bet by farting a dart into a bullseye. I could probably text Dick Capri and ask him. Well, later, but later. I would love to have Dick on the show. Not Dick Capri, just some Dick. I think, I think he would be glad to do it. He's here in the summer, so this is a good time. Okay, so you hung out with him. You did Catskills on Broadway, which was like this landmark show celebrating the Borscht belt. I, I filled in for the token female that's in the show a couple of times. That's all that happened. You see, the- The impressionist, right? Yeah, but they used different, they used, I mean, they'd used Marilyn Michaels. Marilyn Michaels. Another Louise Duart. She was the other female comic. And maybe they used Elaine Boosler, or they thought about using Elaine Boosler. I filled in a couple of times. But, you know, that show was, I mean, it was just, it was an excuse to have the four guys to stand up on Broadway. What was clever about that show was that they knew if they bust in their audience, they could pack the place. And so they spent the money and they bust people in from these retirement communities in New Jersey and Westchester and Long Island, and they were packed. And that word got out. You gotta see this show. You gotta see the show. Marketing. Yeah. Do you understand marketing? In hindsight. Seth Godin is the marketing guru. So I've, somebody said read him, so I started reading him. It's kind of interesting. I'll take a look. Marketing. Would you think of doing, you know, Rob Becker. I know. Defending the caveman. I know. Do you know how he marketed that? No. Rob Becker is a great comedian. David Letterman called him. He has one of the great stories. The phone rings one night. He had done an evening at the improv. I know you did Letterman, which is a great. Go ahead. Go ahead. But to get a call from David Letterman, he looked him up. Got his number personally. Got an invitation personally from David Letterman to come do the show. It was probably back when it was the later show, when it was the show that came on after his. I mean, that's when he was like hands-on. 12th, yeah, the NBC show. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you get a call from David Letterman out of the blue to come do the show. Yeah. I mean, there's no honor greater than that. I mean, my God. And then he went on and did a one-man show. Rob Becker defending the cave man. And he marketed it very well. He said it was about men and women. You know, it was basically men are from Uranus and women are from your vagina, whatever that thing. But, you know, it is what it is. And what he did is wherever he went, he would invite psychiatrists and psychologists and marriage counselors to the show. Give them free tickets. And that was like marketing genius. This was before the Internet. I never would have thought of anything like that. Oh, I thought you were going to say like he went to like, you know, what are those clubs that, you know, that men are members of like the Kiwanis Club or the Elks Club? I would think that's where he was giving away free tickets. No, he gave it specifically to what I guess you now call the taste makers, the influencers. This was 20 years ago. You give them to shrinks and the shrinks would say, you know, I saw this show, you should go see. And they would tell their clients. I hope he gave it to people with a big practice. Yeah. But is that so they were busing people in? Yeah. TV clean. You do cruise ships. The last time you and I communicated, I said, come do my show, come do my show. And you said, I can't, I'm on a cruise ship. I find it really interesting what you just said, that you can do jokes on television that you cannot do on a cruise ship. There are jokes I can do on a cruise ship that I can't do on television that are slightly politically incorrect. Sometimes. What do you mean? I have this joke. You probably won't love it. I talk about how, you know, the way I got my father to vote for Obama was I told him that he was in Shawshank Redemption. And it was one of his favorite movies. I can't do that on TV, but I can do it on the cruise ship because they're all, you know, they're all a little, you know, and it doesn't mean you're racist if you laugh at that joke. You're looking at an 80-year-old Jewish guy who's like, I love Sidney Pointe. Yeah, I like Morgan Freeman. Is it the same guy? It's the same guy, Dad. It's the same guy. You could do that on TV, though. Maybe. The way I just couched it, I could. Yeah, of course you could. But it's a sweet understanding joke of, right? But the way I get into the joke is I say, I have to explain something. My father thinks every black actor is Sidney Pointe. He's always like, that's Sidney Pointe. And I'm like, that's Wesley Snipes, you know what I mean? And we go through all it and all, that's Oprah, you know what I mean? And, you know, so it's clearly, it's part of that whole they all look alike, you know? I mean, that's the core of the joke. Yeah, you're not saying it. You're saying your father is a dinosaur, basically. Yes, I mean, you know, and this is all based on actually something happening where my father thought the guy was Sidney Pointe and it was Morgan Freeman. And I kind of culled the joke from that. Bruce Myrnoff, you know Bruce? Mutual friend. He does cruise ships. Yes. Has some of the funniest stories about cruise ships. I've never played a cruise ship. Never in my life have I played a cruise ship. It's never going to happen. I remember a comic named Paul Clay. This was in the 80s. The cleanest comic in the world. Everybody loved Paul. He got thrown off a cruise ship. I said, if they're throwing you off a cruise ship, ain't no way. So who... I don't work on the lines where it's that difficult. Paul Clay probably got thrown off of Disney or something where there was a lot of kids. I specifically choose cruise lines that people would never take kids on because it's too hard. I don't want to entertain people who are five years old and people that are 95. It's too much work. Where have you cruised? I do mostly those five-star high-end, you know, to $10,000 a week cruises. $10,000, they pay you $10,000. No, no. They pay to be on the ship. $10,000 to $20,000 a week. I go on ships where the people are on for 21 days. For 21 days? It's insane. These people have... I mean, they just... They don't even know what to do with their money. And, you know, it's... All the booze is included. All the caviar is included. They have the most spectacular linens and balconies. Those are the ships that I do because I prefer performing for an elderly crowd that has a lot of money because there's no kids. And I also, you know, I know those people. I grew up, you wouldn't know, but I grew up around a lot of privilege. What do you mean? I went to boarding school in Switzerland. Nobody knows that. I mean, it doesn't... It's not a parent for my act or even my voice, but I do know what fork to use. I speak French fluently. So, I fit in with that. Like, I know what outfit... Why were you in the boarding school in Switzerland? Do you want to talk about this? No, I'm happy to talk about it. I mean, you know, my father, you know, could afford it. And my parents were going through a really messy divorce. And it was what you... It's what people of privilege do. What did your father do? He had an optical company. And he, you know, sort of kind of invented some things. He's, you know, there was always a debate about his patent always got stolen. The Pinsnaz? He kind of... My father invented the scratch-resistant plastic lens that you put in glasses. Not even scratch proof, because that's... But he invented the scratch-resistant plastic lens that he was in glasses. And the patent was taken by Bosch. I mean, they screwed him and they took it for a while. Are they German or Boschalm, German or Swiss? Where are they from? Well, Boschalm, I don't know where they're from. My father worked for a company called American Optical, which was absorbed by Boschalm. Okay. So your dad was a lens maker? My dad was really a salesman, but he had good ideas. And I think when he was in China, he said, do you think you could make this? And he had kind of an idea and some guy made it and... Let me ask you a question. Why don't we stop tape? Sure. You go home and get your father in here. My father passed away. Even better. When did he pass away? About a year and a half ago. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, that's tough. Did you like him? I did. Yeah. I did. He was, you know, he was a... He's where I got the comedy. He was a very funny guy. My father was the cheapest man in America. It was like uncat... Like, we'd sit down at a restaurant and he... My sister and I, he would look at us and he would say, no tricks. Like, what... What tricks? No tricks. I like what... I'm gonna order the whole menu. Ten shrimp cocktails. No tricks. No tricks. It was a thing, you know. And we'd go to a movie theater. Hunchdown. You don't have to be... You don't have to be so tall. Hunchdown. Why are you gonna be so tall? He was successful, though. He was successful. And smart. Yeah. And you got sent to a boarding school. Quite frankly, I'm more interested in your father. My father was a cool guy. I'm always interested in people who don't do stand-up. Your father had a sense of humor. Yes. Did he watch you do stand-up? He did. Did he enjoy watching you do stand-up? It took him a while, you know. In the beginning, like many female comics, I was dirty. I was very dirty when I started. You know, a lot of girl comics are dirty at the beginning so that you sort of put the audience at ease. Like, no, no, no. You don't have to worry about me. I'm gonna be okay up here. So my father watched me so much in the beginning and he was like, you're just too dirty to do anything. And I remember... Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Isn't that sexist for a father to tell a daughter not to be dirty? I think he was more worried that I would never be able to make it on TV. But isn't it sexist? Because I've been told I have a friend who has a daughter who is interested in comedy and my friend said to his daughter, don't be dirty. And the daughter said... That's sexist? Yeah, men can get up there and talk about bodily functions. Why can't women? And my friend said, I don't talk about bodily functions. Not all men... No, I don't like scatological humor, though. I... Yeah, I mean... It's not my type of thing. It's easy. Yeah. But I think I think... People who listen... By the way, people who listen to this show... Think you're scatological? Me saying I don't like scatological humor are laughing at you or laughing at me. I do like it. I don't think it's clever. I think it's lazy. You mean like... Yeah. Well, I mean, didn't Louis C.K. have this whole bit about how farts are funny? I'm not going to deny it. They are funny. Well, you've had kids, right? Yeah. Babies, when they fart, start laughing. I mean, it's just really funny. They know it's funny. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead. I guess what I'm saying is I give my dad a pass because I know where he was coming from. He was... My father was always worried that how was I going to make a living? You know, when my marriage... How are you going to make a living? Right. You know, I mean, even... I was really... I had a really good career when I met my husband. What were you doing? I mean, my... No, I'm the... This is my second husband. He met me when I was taping an HBO special. And, you know, my career... I was in development... You were a catch. I was on the way up. You were a catch. And my father was really proud that I got this deal, but he was more proud that I was dating a warrior because he just felt like he didn't have to worry. You had a career before stand-up. I had a career before stand-up. What were you doing before you start comedy at 29? I was director of catering for the millennial... Millennium Hotel on 44th Street. And then the Algonquin was the last job. You worked the Algon... Excuse me, sorry. You worked the Algonquin? After I started doing stand-up, I had to pick like a little bit less pressured hotel and the Algonquin was my last job. I did my interview with Doug Stanhope at the Algonquin. But the Algonquin round table. Dorothy... Parker... Benchley and Harpo, they all hung out with the Algonquin. And they have that special table and Bob Saget, every Christmas we have a tradition where we go to the Algonquin and finger each other. There's a lot of great stories about working. I mean, I'd be in the... You know, we had the club. We had the nightclub when I worked there. So I'd be in the elevator with Andrea Markovicci. Who's he? Andrea Markovicci is a big name, Camperace Singer. She's also done Broadway. And, you know, she'd just be like warming up in the elevator. And I couldn't say anything to her because she couldn't talk. You know, Feinstein would be there. Michael Feinstein? Yeah, Michael Feinstein. Michael Feinstein. Is it Feinstein? No, I'm just... Whatever. Just crying. He was a fixture there. Catering, to me, that must be joyous. Well, what was... No? It was a tremendous amount of hours. I mean, I... What did you do in catering? I was director of catering. I ran everything. What does that mean? I mean, I... You did weddings? Weddings, meetings, parties, bar mitzvahs. So I would come in and say, I want to book a room at the Algonquin. My wife's turning 50. I want to do a party for her. And I take it from there. A farewell party. Farewell party. Yes. Yes. And so you would sit down and go over the numbers. Yeah, I'd sell them a party and then I'd run the party and I'd create the party. But, you know, catering was a... I mean, I'd had to be there sometimes. Seven in the morning. You're producing shows. Oh, produce... Yeah, exactly. It was theater. Absolutely. And the greatest thing was to return later and occasionally just be the featured performer. And I'd come in and do 15 minutes. What do you mean you would return? Like, sometimes I'd go back to the millennial... The millennial hotel on 44th Street. I'd do an event there because they had a lot of catering. There's a hotel called the Millennial. It's called the Millennium. Because if it was called the Millennial, it would have started and then it would have said, we quit. When I work... Nobody's... Hang on. Let me do this tired bit that's going to insult my listeners. The Millennial Hotel. Right. Let's describe it. It starts off with great intentions. They run into a little trouble. They call their parents and say, we're not booked in rooms. We have a hotel. Don't we just fill it up automatically? We're the Millennial. See, I'm making fun of millennials. They wear pajama bottoms. So I have a millennial heck of a... What? I know. They eat cereal for dinner. That's too sweet. Cereal for dinner. They do. You see, that's why you're successful. Why? Because I come from a place of hate. I'm attacking the millennials. Oh, they drive me crazy. I mean, I have a 33-year-old daughter. I mean, I have... How do you have a... I have a millennial who's, you know, complete, you know, has been sucking on the, you know, on the tit, if you will. Well, she's sucking on something else right now. I can tell you that right now. I'm sorry. Jesus. But you know, I claim reality television. I think my daughter's... Is that horrible what I just said? She's sucking on something else right now? Yeah. No. Not horrible. Okay. Go ahead, what? You're a 33-year-old daughter. You look 33. Or is that sexist? Thank you. No, I'll take that. I'll absolutely take it. But they grew up watching Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie and all these, you know, everything was about the bling and the bling and the, you know, give me, buy me, bring me, take me. That was their whole thing. I call it the millennial psychosis. I've talked about this on the show forever. Because I have millennials. My kids are great. They really are. Because... But anyway, I don't know why they think life should be easy. They grew up. Everything was horrible. My daughter, I called my daughter a Gorbachev baby. Because I honestly thought it was safe to bring a kid into this world because of Gorbachev. That put you at ease? Yes. The Port Wine State kind of scared me. It's such a great experience. The Port Wine Stain. As though that's going to make it look any better. It's a better one. It's a very nice one. But let's go back to catering. All right. I think Richard Lewis' father was a caterer. Jeffrey Russ grew up in catering and Newark. Your catering, I think that teaches you everything you need to know about show business. I think show business is catering. Very similar. It's identical. It allowed me to be a producer when I needed to be. But I don't like to be a producer in the field of stand-up. It takes away all of my creativity. I don't want it to be about business. Sometimes it has to be. Because you have to say, I'm not going to do this for a thousand months. Yeah. How many years were you a caterer? About 12 years. All total. Because I mean... And you said you used to come back and do stand-up. When you say come back, were you no longer... I was in food service for 12 years. I started as a waitress. I built up to be a director of catering. Okay. So you're the director of catering. Are you then doing stand-up and keeping your job as director of catering? There was an overlap of three years. So would you come back when you say you would come back and go up and do stand-up? What do you mean come back? Come back to the job? Yes. I would have it so wired. I would give Carlos and Jose and Fernando an extra $50 run the party. And then I'd go and run and do sets. And then I'd be there at the end to shake it. Wasn't that a great event? All that... Yeah, everything went so great. I'm so... And then I would take the tip and I would split it up with Carlos and Fernando and all the... You know... Did you do stand-up at the events? No. You never... No. And I got caught eventually. I mean, you know, the general manager of the hotel occasionally popped in to check on a party and I wasn't there. Where was I? And you know... Were you nervous about getting caught? Were you stressed out? You didn't care. I was... I was always nervous about getting caught, but... You were good at what you did. The stuff worked, you know. It's... I mean, I had it really wired by then. You were confident that you... I had good people and they ran it the way I wanted it to run. And how many hours a day were you catering? I mean, every day was different. I mean, if I had a breakfast and you know, like, you know, Morgan Stanley was in for a couple of meetings, I'd have to be there at seven. Did you miss it? Do you miss catering? No. No, it was the most... I mean, I cannot tell you how many hours I would work. I mean, it was just crazy. I didn't see my child. I actually think I saw my kid more once I did stand-up. Interesting. Also, the problem is... You know, I also had a food background because I was a waitress and then I was... And then I went in the kitchen and I cooked and then eventually they kept moving me front of the house because I kind of... I'm a good leader. And if a chef told me that something couldn't be done, I was a bitch. I would put my... I would put an apron over my suit and I would go behind the line and I would make... I would say, see, it could be done. And you know, it was always... There was always conflict between me and the chefs. That's good. It was good. It was good sometimes. Are you telling me... He's saying take a break. Take a break. Yeah. Really? I mean, it's just getting interesting. I wanted to talk about Jeremiah Tower and your father and... Give me five minutes. I want to find out about the Swiss boarding school. Oh, God. All right, go ahead. You lived in Switzerland? Yeah, France, Switzerland and England. And you were in a boarding school? I was in two. Co-ed? Yeah, they were both co-ed. I went to one in England. I got kicked out. You went to a boarding school in England? I got kicked out and then, you know, the next stop was Switzerland. How do you get kicked out of a British boarding school? Those are just... I mean... You don't have anything gets you kicked out. Was it... Did it have a religious affiliation? No, I just... I was the youngest person they ever accepted at the school and I caused a ruckus, as they like to say. What was then the school? It was called Brockwood Park. Brockwood... And were you going to school with royalty? My boyfriend's father was the ambassador to Yugoslavia. He did not get kicked out. I got kicked out. Because he was supposedly a good kid until I went there. Was he American or British? He lived his whole life in the UK, but his parents were Yugoslavian. Sending your kid to a boarding school? I sent my daughter to one. I don't think it's a bad thing. But then you're not raising your kid? You know, I think sometimes our job as parents is to keep kids safe. I mean, yes, you're supposed to do all these other things. You're supposed to educate them and nurture them and love them. But your primary job is to keep them safe. And if you're in a position and my parents were not in a great place, they couldn't keep us safe. And putting us in boarding school kept us safe. My daughter was acting out with drugs and alcohol. I see, I see. And she said, mommy, I think I should change schools. And I said, yeah, but if I put you into another school, what's to stop? You're going to take... You live in Manhattan. You're going to take a cab. You're going to take a subway. The friends are not going to change. So the boarding school worked out for her? It was amazing for her. I mean, I sent her to a wonderful boarding school that was like hippie-ish. She was in Ojai, California, near Santa Barbara. You know, there's four boarding schools there. I saw her a lot because I was in a deal with L.A. So I was always in L.A. I saw her a lot. And she graduated. She wouldn't have graduated if I left to New York. I went to rehab in Ojai. It's called no high. Kill me. Somebody, please just make it a clean shot to the head. Puns, puns, puns. Let's take a break so I can just shower after that no high joke. I'm sorry. Hey, do you need me to fill in for you at the Manhattan Comedy School for Andy Engel? Yeah, I think we should just do puns only this week. How do people take classes at Manhattan Comedy School? They just go to manhattancommonyschool.com? Yes, they go to manhattancommonyschool.com. Or I think you can also get to it through the Gotham Comedy Club. There's a connection. Andy Engel, he's one of my oldest friends. And I mean, look, to be able to take a class with Corey Cahaney, we'll be back with Corey Cahaney and John Fish. Cool. Will you stick around, I hope, and come back? We've only scratched the surface. Yeah, no, we're good. Good, okay. We'll be right back. For as little as $5 a month, you can gain access to all our premium content. We accept all major credit cards. Please go to davidfeldmanshow.com, hit the Go Premium button, and sign up. You can gain access to all our premium content. Welcome back. Hey, we have to book Eddie Brill, Alex. And he lives in walking distance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's five blocks from here. Why we need to have, why haven't we had Eddie Brill on the show? I mean, that's insane. He used to do the show all the time. You know it. Now, Eddie worked, Eddie used to book the comics for Letterman. By the way, let me introduce John Fish. Hello. I was his last new comic. Really? Or I might have been his last comic. Hmm, yeah. And then he got fired because of you. That because of me. Joe Matarice was so nice. He texted me. He goes, that set was so great. They should give Eddie his job back. Well, we have New York stand-up royalty in this room. I didn't realize that both Corey Cahaney and Mike. We're in that club. John Fish, not only have done Letterman, but you've done Stephen Colbert. That speaks volumes, because you would think they, well, anyway, that's quite an accomplishment. Yeah, I'm proud of it. And I'm proud to have the two of you on the show, because I... I thought your set was great, John. Thanks, you too. Let me give you... Yours was like stressful, too, because you had to do like a... It seemed like a political live thing, right? I did it during the Republican convention. Yeah. In Cleveland or back in New York? He was doing live shows in studio during the Republican convention. So I went on, you know, I went on that show. So it was live. He taped it, you know, at whatever, 12.40 at night. People don't realize like the chops that that takes, you know? When it goes well, they're like, oh yeah, it's easy for comics to do, but it's like... It could have been so great. It takes somebody that's been... that's a veteran that's done, you know, dozens of TV sets, you know? It was... It was stressful, but it was still fine. It was live. It was live. Live. Yeah. Was it political? Yeah. But yeah, that's also my savvy. I sent them a political set. And I said, what do you think? And that, you know, that's the sechel, the smarts. I just sent them... I knew the set they would want. And I sent it. And they said, yeah, we'd love you to do it. And that was it. But that's hard because that's not necessarily what you would do if you picked five at that time from your act, you know? Right. But I'm actually working on... I'm actually working on something that I'd really love to do on Colbert again, which is sort of about, you know, the future of healthcare. Like, I think those kind of things are intriguing to them. And you're a political... You're pretty... No, I had two political jokes. I built a set around it. Okay. John Fish is a stand-up comedian. He's appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And The Late Show with David Letterman. He's been featured in Maxim Magazine. You've seen him on Last Comic Standing, season four. He was the host of the wildly popular podcast. What was the wildly popular... I don't know. Is it widely or wildly? I never knew. I'm... I put... I think it's different in each of my bios. And what is the popular podcast? What is it? I did this podcast called In the Tank. Right. It was years ago. And it was... It was, you know, it was comedy talk. Comedy talk. Get it. Fish tank. It was a... Oh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, John, too. There's a tank and a John. Yeah. Oh, true. So I immediately thought John... The other. It was a pun on him. I had friends that were like three years into the podcast. We were like... We were texting. We were like, I just got it. John Fish. I usually try not to be too on the nose, but that one I didn't get on the nose enough. John Fish hosted a podcast called In the Tank. What years were you doing that? I think we were... Maybe 07 or... Oh, my God. Definitely in the 09 to... Maybe 09 to... Yeah, definitely in that area. It was a real start of the podcast scene. And who did you do it with? My buddy Dan Allen was the producer, and my buddy Dan Shacky was like the funny third Mike sidekick. I know Dan Shacky's brother Jackie, the comedian. Shacky Shacky? Oh. Hey, kill me. This is just... Is that somebody? Is that a real person? No. No, he's can't stop. And that's it with me. He started with the puns. I can't start is the problem. I cannot start. So, yes, your other TV appearance is... Other TV appearances include Comedy Central's Premium Blend, been on VH1's Celebrity Apprentice. Yeah. Three men and a chick flick on the WE network, and you were the host. You were on Celebrity Apprentice. Yeah, I gotta update this bio. Yeah, we did a show. You know, one of their... The celebrities' things was that they had to put on a show. And obviously to raise enough money... Whoever raised more money won or whatever. It was kind of a cool experience, but for the actual show we were sort of a real afterthought because in order for them to get a lot of money, the celebrities exhausted their celebrity contacts. And so our show ended up being Jimmy Fallon doing a song with this country singer who was super nice. But what were you doing? We were doing... We were supposed to be three of us on each team. So I think I was on a team with... Oh, so you weren't a celebrity. No, no, no. We were the comedians who were booked part of their teams. Yeah. And I think Rachel Feinstein was on it and Wally Collins and Jessica Carson and... That's a good show. It was a good show. And what celebrities were you working with? Well, with Toya Jackson was the team leader. And I had to ask her for permission to go to the Gap to get a new shirt because I only had one black shirt that didn't have a logo. And when we asked her what we should wear for the appearance, she said, I see you all in black. I was on the regular apprentice. Oh, really? Oh, wow. Yeah. I caused the team to lose. What happened? It was... He really threw me under the bus, Trump. And... You met Trump? No, but I didn't meet him. But he said, you booked a comic who dropped the F-bomb. And they didn't like it. And so I think you have to bear the responsibility of it. And the next... You were the comic who used the F-bomb? Well, let me... I did a golf open and I was doing a golf joke. I have one golf joke. And the joke is you guys play golf and they say yes. And I say, you spent $250,000 a year to stand in the woods and say, fuck. And it's a great... That is a great joke. It's a great joke. It's not a fuck joke. Right. And I actually got a big laugh. But they blamed that joke for losing. The next day, Joy Behar, though, talked about it on the view, defended me and put me on the phone. And I explained what happened and she was really... What year was this? I'm going to say, I don't know... It was before Celebrity... Celebrity Princess came after the regular apprentice. So proud. I think it was the year before you. Okay. And who did you meet, John Fish? Well, there was Meat Loaf. I don't want to know what they served. I want to know, by the way, Corey is a caterer. He had a meltdown on that, I think. He had a meltdown? Yeah. Well... I'm blanking on the country singer, but I think it's John Rich. John Richie, is that... Is any country fans here? He was super sweet and nice and great. And then Lil John was the other guy on our team. You know, those three. Yeah. But so they ended up getting Fallon. So we all ended up doing two or three minutes of comedy. And it was fun. And like Kevin Klein and Phoebe Gates were in the audience. Yeah, we had some... Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was, you know... And they were raising money for charity. Yes. So if it's Trump, as we all know, when you raise money for like children's cancer... They take it. You keep it. Yeah. That's great. Did you read about this? Still... Yeah, I just... Tell me about it. No, I just saw a headline on Twitter that he like is keep... Or kept money. Well, I know he didn't actually make the donation to the veterans when he swore that he would do that, you know, from Mar-a-Lago, right? But this cancer thing's new. The cancer thing is apparently one of the idiot kids decided to have a fundraiser for children's cancer. One of the idiot kids claims to be very involved with St. Jude's, which is a great organization. St. Jude's turns nobody away. So what one of the idiot sons did is he held this golf tournament at one of the Trump golf resorts and said all the proceeds will go to St. Jude. So it was done without St. Jude really knowing about this. They just use St. Jude. The Trumps are like sketchy comedy producers. Yeah. So they got everybody to cough up, you know, 20 grand, and they were using the name St. Jude's. And so, okay, I'll be a part of this. This is going to St. Jude's. And Donald said, you cannot use my golf course to raise money for St. Jude's. We have to get money for this. You have to pay the fee. You know, I'm not giving this to St. Jude's. So the Trump kid had a pay to use the Trump golf course in order to do the fundraiser for St. Jude's. And they got built. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh, so some money did end up going to St. Jude's. No. None. None. It costs more money to rent the place than. But that is the that is the misnomer of a lot of these fancy fundraisers in New York City. I mean, where you see them all the time and they're charging $250 a person, but it's at the plaza or it's at, you know, it's at the Waldorf. And when they're done with it, they really are only ending up with like $20 a person in terms. It was just an excuse to throw the big party, to have the big party, to plan the big party. And the donations often are very, very small. And also to get the people on their mailing list to hopefully they'll be recurring. Yes. And then they do the auction is where they really try to make the money, where they try to upsell and make people embarrassed and donate. But this stuff happens all the time. I mean, he's right. A lot of comedians have been caught doing this. There was a comedian on a ship who was selling, I'm not going to say the name, who was selling his CDs. And he said, but if you want to buy one for the troops, you can buy a second one and I'll ship it to the troops. And apparently, like the next day, he just took those CDs. They were going to troops and he sold those. Well, maybe he goes home and mails them to the troops. Maybe. Could be. Maybe. Maybe. People are bad. Some people are bad. Yeah. Trump is just bad. I worked on the Comedy Central roast of Donald Trump and I have it from Good Authority. He said he didn't need the money. He was doing the roast for Comedy Central for charity. Right. Well, he said it on the air. Right. I have it on Good Authority that they never found out where he sent the money that he didn't give it to charity. That is the current Commander-in-Chief. I would love and all the Trump supporters would probably, I'd love to hear them explain that one away. Well, he's a busy man, he has a lot going on. What do you live times worried about? Come on. You count every dollar? You count every dollar? You don't know. You don't know. What are we going to do without him when he has a stroke? That's the only way he's going to have a massive stroke. So. You think? Oh, yeah. I mean, after the initial celebratory phase, I guess we just settle in and get the life back. Right. Are we going to miss him? No. I never, that's my thing is that like, how do these people that support, like, did you like him ever? Like, he's just not a good person. He's never been somebody that I've been like, like I remember when I did Celebrity Apprentice, people were like, did you meet him? Like, no, like I didn't even think to want to. You know, like he's not like a person that I would like to meet. I think in the very beginning, when he would say some of those, you know, inflammatory things, there was a big smile on my face. Oh, yeah. Of like, that is hilarious that this guy can do this, you know, and good for him that he speaks his mind, not thinking that that's what everyone wanted. And, you know, I kind of enjoyed the entertainment. What's scarier that he is who he is, or that so many people like that? I think a lot of people are in a bubble, and they're not affected by anything he does, including the poor people who voted for him. They're in a bubble, and there's really nothing they can gain or lose by a national election. At least that's what they figure. That's, you know, so they just want to see something funny on the TV. I don't know. I got it. I also think that Michael Moore, the thing that he did, the five reasons why Trump is going to win, remember that? He published that. Well, he had the breakdown of all the reasons why they were, and my favorite one was number four, when you get in that booth, and you're all by yourself, there's going to be people who say, I just want to see what's going to happen. And I do think a lot of people fall into that category. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which is why he shouldn't have that red button, Trump, because... He's one of those people. He's one of those people. I just want to see what happens. I just want to see, does it really work? I mean, if I press it, it really, what happens? Do you think he could launch a nuclear attack? He's so... No, I don't think so. I don't think he would. What I'm saying is, do you think he can, as in, do you think he can pick up the phone and say, I want you to nuke this... Rosie is up in the Hamptons. We have the coordinates. I want a mid-sized nuclear weapon, Trump. You know, it's like, that's the stuff that's beyond my realm. Like, I could never imagine that happening for real. So it's like, I couldn't imagine anybody doing it, but like, I guess if someone is, yeah, he would be... Does he have to clear it through Mattis or McMaster? I mean, he just can't order a nuclear airstrike, right? Does he have the safest place to be during a nuclear... I know, I feel like we need a civics expert here. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm just saying, I don't think... You know, what is it? You have to have the generals there. You got to have, I mean, there's, you know, Jeff Sessions, although, you know, he's so afraid of him now. I don't think anybody would obey his order. I just think if I, right? I don't know. We have no idea what really goes on. What happens? Well, it is bad. Things are really bad, and they're going to get worse. I'm just, I'm being glib. The economy is bad. They say it's good, but it's bad, right? Well, I think the thing that is going to be bad is, if something does happen, an impeachment, or he is removed from power, we are going to take a dive in the stock market. And so everyone who has retirement, you know, savings and accounts, and all of these people are going to say, you see, he was much better for the country. I don't think that many people have money in the stock market. I think it's mostly institutions. I don't think that many people... Every dime I have is in Cheesecake Factory. I think that's the way to go. And that's just a sandwich from the Cheesecake Factory, in the freezer. I called my people. I said, I said, the lines are crazy. I want every dime on Cheesecake Factory. I'm just impressed you have people. The Cheesecake Factory is pretty amazing. In LA, they had one... They keep opening everywhere I go. There's a new one. And it's not about the cheesecake. No, cheesecake's terrible. It's about the portions. It's the portions, and they have a burrito there. I haven't eaten there since I moved from LA. I also think with the whole climate change, this is another opportunity for investing. I think that countries that wouldn't ordinarily have air conditioning are going to need it. I think that's the way to go. They have air conditioning are going to need it. So this is the time... Whatever company would sell air conditioners to Canada, this is a good time to invest? I think it's a good time to invest in cruise ships. Oh, because it's the only safe vacation you can take? Have you worked a cruise ship? I have not. I'm figuring that Pruitt and Spillerton, Rex Spillerton, when they think of climate change, they go, we go on cruises. It's fantastic. So I could live on a cruise... Could you live on a cruise ship for the rest of your life? I'd prefer not to. But, you know, you're absolutely right. Now they can do the Northwest Passage. I mean, Northeast Passage, they can actually go from Alaska to Montreal because of global warming. The ice caps have shifted, and they couldn't do that before. All right, so if there's massive flooding, I was reading that 40% of Florida is in danger of just being underwater. Now, I love some people from Florida. But 40% of... We're going to lose 40% of Florida. Wow. But doesn't that mean Manhattan's going to go under too? Well, let's just... Can I at least enjoy 40% of Florida disappearing? Unfortunately, the counties that went for Gore in 2000... I'm curious, could people say we'll build these massive floating... I mean, have you seen some of these cruise ships? You know, I've never been on one, but I was doing that Aruba gig with Ray Allen, and we drove by where like six of them were docked. They're cities. And it was... I could not... I could not believe how... They are entire cities. I mean, I've heard of things like... I remember Tom Cotter was on one when Ted Alexandra was on with Louis Black or something, and they just met one night and they were like, what are you doing here? He's like, well, I'm the cruise comic on this side. Like two comics that know each other well didn't know they were on the same ship. So you can put like 25,000 people on a cruise ship, right? No. No, that's too many. I think right now the max is 6,000. But there's one that's just... That's it. Like an aircraft carrier. That's the 6,000 one. That's a lot of people, though. That's a lot of people. I mean, if one person gets sick and it's, you know, it's a foodborne illness, it's dangerous. Very dangerous. But there's... What about Doctor... You know, what's his name? From the love boat. Capel. Yeah. Right? Capel? I love that guy. Those doctors have... They have like... They work from 10 to 11 in the morning and from three to four. I mean, I've been on ships, so I know. Is there really a doctor on the boat? It has to be. Yeah. They can't take off without the captain. They can't take off without the doctor. Wow. And does he... What does he do? I don't... He... Basically, he mans the morgue. There's always dead people on the ship. Like from the trip or like they're going from one place to another. There's always a death and there's... I'm told it's always within the first 24 hours. Wow. Somebody dies. And they can't stop, so they have a morgue. You know. So don't have the shrimp cocktail. Because that ice is probably... Is that in the pamphlet? We have a 300-seat comedy club and a morgue. Well, you know, they do these cheesy tours where you get to see the galley. And I was like, did they ever show the morgue in these tours? Yes. In these behind-the-scenes tours? What else do they have that is like that under that category? Listen, you hear stories. I mean, they're... Well, they're not... They're registered in Libya. They're never registered in America, which means the crew can commit crimes and then be tried in Libya. Yeah, but you have to adhere to certain laws. When you dock in New York, you know, they come on and they inspect and they want to make sure things are... Listen, I'd rather have them adhere to Libyan laws than the laws in Manhattan. I think they're more likely to be enforced. Judge Judy lives on a cruise. She has an apartment on the world cruise. The world cruise is a condominium that is 12 months a year at sea. And if you own a condominium on it, you join the ship where, you know, you look it up. Okay, they're going to be in Monte Carlo. We'll fly there. We'll stay on for a couple of months. People have... It's another... It's another animal. They're not human. The kind of life that certain people lead. Judge Judy, it's a condominium, so it's like an apartment on a ship. And there's a full-time staff person that takes care of her condominium. You know that movie, The Diner or Diner? We were just talking about it. Me and my dad always go over that scene where, what's his name? Daniel Stern. I forget if he's talking to Paul Reiser or not, but they're just... One of them is like, you ever get the feeling that there's a whole other world out there that we just don't know about? Yes! Something like that. I wasn't that. There's so many times that that happens to me. And that was one of them just now. It's just like, I would never... I could have died without knowing that. About the war? Yeah, I would know about the condominium thing. But that would never come into my sphere. Right. And here, I remember... Okay, I worked for a guy who had an amazing house. I used to go up there. And the first time I went up, it was designed by Stanford White, or is it Sanford White? It was Stanford White. He was the one who was murdered in rack time. It was the only house designed by Sanford White in California. It was a masterpiece. By the way, Alex, did you see Dick Cavett selling his house in the Hamptons? Yes. $56 million. And it was designed by Stanford White. Wow. And it burnt down and he rebuilt it to spec. So I walked into this house and it was breathtaking. It was beyond anything I'd ever seen in my life. And I immediately thought, I could be miserable here. I could be. I could... I'd give me 30 more seconds and I could find something to complain about. So as much as I... Yeah. The complacency that comes from being very wealthy can be paralyzing and it can be infantilizing and it can make you very unhappy. I have seen firsthand wealthy people living, you know, miserable lives. It's true. Needing to pay your rent. This goes back to the millennial thing. Needing to pay your rent, knowing that you need to take care of yourself and others I think really does make you a happier person. Although a condominium on a ship, I can't... I would have a massive panic attack on a cruise ship. I just would feel trapped and there isn't enough volume in the world to help me deal with the fact that I am out at sea and I am on this boat for two weeks and there's no getting off. No, you get off every day. Stop every day. Most of them... I mean, I did a crossing where it was eight days not getting off, but most of them... Any panic attacks? Most people... No, did I have a panic attack a couple of times when I couldn't get internet? I did lose it a few times. I get that. No, I just have never done that because I don't... If I knew, if I was with people that I liked and knew, but you mostly go by yourself or some people that you don't know might be the other comics and I would just... That would be... Is it two weeks? Two weeks of depression. You could do it because you have the kind of act that could... Yeah, I couldn't do the other 23 hours of the day, though. Yeah. I would get too... Sad. Let me ask you a stupid question. So you're on the cruise ship. We're gonna talk about Kathy Griffin because I gotta go. We're gonna talk about Kathy Griffin in a second. I've never been on a cruise. Could people live forever on an aircraft carrier that's been converted into a city? Oh, you mean forever, sort of like... Yeah, we deal with this climate change. And I mean, there's enough food for a certain amount of time, but how would they get the food? Okay, I live in an apartment building. 16 stories, I would say, has a thousand people living in it. In a way, it's a small little city, a little community. We all hate each other to fight and argue about garbage and leaks. If you went from it being vertical to horizontal and it floated, it would be a ship. They can build a ship with a thousand people living on it forever and make a city out of it. Isn't that how we can deal with global warming? That may be how the wealthy will deal with it. Well, no, we have to worry about ourselves. No, it's not going to be for us. I could go on because I've already, you know, I've got the connections. Jeremiah Tower, the chef. Yes. I had him on the show. Okay, he's a great guy. He's a great guy. Before he became a chef, he was designing underwater cities. He had patents, underwater... Suppose we just decide, instead of colonizing Mars, we create these massive biodomes and we live under the sea. We can do that. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe pulling out of the... All right. But all it's going to do is it's going to separate the rich from the poor. Even more. Even better. Well, okay. Let's talk about Kathy Griffin. All right. I think she's an amazing stand-up comic. She is so funny. She really is. I went to see her. My friend Jeff Wills booked her at the Kodak Theater. And we went and watched her. She did 90 minutes of material that was edgy, vicious. What year was this? Like three or four years ago. Gossipy. Bits about Cher. Bits about her mother. She made me laugh really hard. Unique. Nobody does what she does. What do you think? I think she's very successful. And I admire that. But you're biting your lip. I don't want to talk... But my issue with her and the treatment... I do think that she's been hit way harder because she's a woman. And I know that's going to annoy... I agree. Oh, you agree. Of course. I just... I did that. She'd be... I mean, they just... They've crucified her. I think she was right for doing it. I think she was wrong for apologizing. I think the biggest... Oh, the apology killed her. The biggest mistake you make is apologizing. What she did pales in comparison to what Donald Trump does every day. The kid, the youngest kid, they say was upset by it. If that kid is upset by it, he's got other problems. I think it's real. I think that your kid would be upset by it. I don't think so. I do. That kid has Donald Trump for his father. He's seen and heard a lot worse. There's two arguments to be made. I did not think it was funny. I got it. I thought it was stylistic. I thought she wanted to be trending. And I knew that that's what the... To me, that's what the intention smelled of. When they fired Gilbert Godfrey for his joke after the tsunami. That was funny. Okay. He got fired. He lost income. But his joke was hilarious. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm 99% of the time. It's Bruce Smirnoff. Hang on for one second. Bruce? You're on. Bruce? Bruce? Can you hear me? I'm trying to set up a time with him. Gunsy-nive-sy. I can't hear you. You got to talk about Morg. You got to ask him about that. That's an amazing story. I'm trying to get him... Are you there? I love this. All right. We'll try to get Bruce later. Bruce is our Miami correspondent. Oh. I try to check in with him once a week. Is he the funniest person? So funny. When I moved here, he was, I guess, had just moved back from Cali. And yeah, I saw him nightly. It was fantastic. Is there any funnier storyteller of horrific events than Bruce Smirnoff? What should I ask him about? He has an amazing story about somebody dying at the beginning of his show. Yes. He told it on my show. Okay. It's the greatest story. I'll tell you later. Okay. Or look up the Bruce Smirnoff episode from like two weeks ago. Okay. Yes. In the middle. He plays all the condos. Have you done the condos? Yes. Yeah. I worked with him two weeks ago in Florida. I am going this Saturday to do a Jewish Federation show. Good. In Florida? Yeah. Which one? Boca. Oh. Of course. And what are the audiences like? I have no idea. It's my first one. It's like any temple. Don't worry about it. You'll enjoy it. They're rich though. They're very Boca ones. They're very stuck up. They're very old. You're doing it next week? Yeah. That means these are people that they don't come back for the winter. Oh. I mean the summer. Okay. They said they're bad. It just means they're really old. Okay. They're old? Because people that are my age and like up to 70, you know, they come north in the summer. But you know, when you get to be 80, 90, that's too much of an effort to come back and forth. They're old and they're experts on everything. They're experts on comedy. Right? Sure. They can tell you everything you did wrong. Right? Great. There's a meet and greet after. If they don't want jokes about Judaism, they just want you to be smart. Right? Isn't that tends to be? I don't know. I think if it's funny, they don't mind. Yeah. They're smart. That's what's fun. I mean you can still have fun with them. You can still do a dirty joke as long as you don't say the actual body parts. You know, you have to actually say Schmeckl or, you know, or Putz or something like that. You know. Now, let me ask you about being Jewish. Sure. Do you have interests, John, in anything other than reading? Do you have a hobby? Oh. Yeah. I like yoga. I like a little basketball. All right. That doesn't count. No. Yoga is a hobby. I give them that. Yeah. I'll give them that. Because you're next. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions before you go. But no, not enough. John. Newton, Massachusetts. Oh, OK. All right. Juicentral. Juicentral. So raised both parents Jewish? Yes. OK. Did your father have hobbies other than reading? I mean, he jogged. Yeah. But that's kind of like what you do to stay alive in yoga. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he coached all our teams. What do you consider a hobby? Now he does. Now he does. I mean, he was an excellent optometrist in life started doing. Cory Ganey's father did the scratch the scratch and sniff eyeglasses. Oh. The scratch resistant lens. Oh, that's great. So you could scratch on the lens and it would smell of whatever you wanted to smell like. It was like, yeah, eyeballs. Remember the movie Polyester? I bought the eyeglasses that smelled like pizza. So whenever I was in the mood to smell pizza, I would scratch. Her father made a fortune on the scratch and sniff eyeglasses. He wishes. No, he's been Carol Leifers father. You don't want to know that. Hang on for one second. Carol Leifers father was an optometrist. Oh, really? And his first name? Seymour. Oh, that's adorable. Seymour. Yeah. Seymour. Perfect. Go ahead. So your father was. Yeah. So painting, photography and now drawing. So yeah, he's picked up a few. He's retired? He is retired. Well, that doesn't count. Well, he started the painting and the photography while he was still working. Because the doctor said you have to prepare for something to do when. No, it was even before that. It was when we started going and photography has been a while. But that's lenses. True. That doesn't count. How much of you? Probably hands on parents. They didn't have time for a hobby. Yeah. And then when the kids went off to college, he found things to do. Like, he wasn't putting bottles. No. He didn't have a stamp collection. No. He didn't collect guitars. No. They'd be traveled. Like to travel. He did a lot of traveling. Lecturing. And so. He's Jewish. Everybody. Yeah. If you're Jewish, you lecture everybody. Now you make a left. It's not about a go ahead and make a left, but then you're going to want to make a right. What? Is not having a hobby a Jewish thing? Well, I was trying to explain to a woman that sitting on the couch for 12 hours with your kindle. Yeah. That's my hobby. Yeah. That's what I'm interested in. Sure. And I try to explain that perhaps it's a cultural thing. That just reading all day might be your father. Well, you were in a boarding school. No, but I wasn't not for my whole life. My father was a huge reader. Did he have a hobby? No. Like he said, he jogged. Yeah. My father was a big reader and he also he also wrote. Yeah. My dad wrote a book. My dad, yeah, big reader, big reader, too. Yeah. So given a choice, like you're we could go see this Wonder Woman movie, which is supposed to be fantastic. Or what? Fantastic. Or we could stay home and read. Chances are both your fathers would prefer to stay home. No, my dad would love to go to movies. My dad loves movies. Yeah. He loves movies. He loves to sit there with the popcorn. Bad movies? Any kind. Good movies. But he liked the action ones. The old theaters. There's two old theaters and there's one in West Newton and one in Coolidge Corner and Brookline and he'll go to those and to see vintage. No, Angelica of here, you know, like kind of like the good independent stuff. Are you married? I am not. You have a husband? I do. He's a good man. He's a good man. He's not a divorce attorney. No. No. He's a lawyer. Elder law. For people who have been abused by their kids? No. He does, you know, wills, estates. He does elder law. He does special needs. He does the heartbreaking stuff. Well, he's a divorce attorney No, but you could certainly call him and ask him what's the best way to approach it if the guy's unreasonable. Well, I'm unreasonable. Probably. I'm just, I'm vindictive. I spoke to, I can't even. Do you pick your battles, David? I mean, if you go on your divorce, you gotta pick your battles. I mean, what is the most important thing that you keep as much money as you can? That ship is sailed. Okay. Just keep the podcast. I, I want to be funny. And just, And you think it's, it's robbing you of your humor? No, no, I want to be funny with opposing counsel. If I've written a couple of letters. I think it's funny to. Did you see that, the slave letter? No. It was, it was on, it was popping around the internet. So, they found a letter that, that a slave wrote to his master who asked him to come back to work after he had served in the Civil War, which got him his freedom. Bill Maher. But it was very funny. He's like, actually, you know, by all rights, you owe me $11,000 because I worked for you for 25 years and you didn't pay me. And it was just, It's a real letter. Real letter. Very funny. I like it. Now has Snopes checked it out? Is it legitimate? I don't know. I, I can tell you. I'll email you. I can tell you, you're itching to go because you have a kid that you have to get to. 13 year old, but your husband before you go. Oh God, his number. Yes. His number. No, no, I want to know that I, what I want to know about your husband. He's a lawyer. He worked for the Justice Department. Right. He's a great man. Great guy. I met him. Yeah. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. Great man. Saturday afternoon. Flat on his back reading. No sports. All sports. It's, it's, it's a sickness. And, you know, and he puts away a lot of hummus and chips and salsa and chips. And, you know, I mean, you know, he'll go throw the ball around with my son. He'll go to, he goes to little league and screams. He goes, he goes to watch my son play basketball. But, I mean, Saturday and Sunday, it's, it's sports. And he texts Lenny Marcus the whole game, you know, his hobby, besides sports. No. I would say his hobby really is his kid. My husband has had to become a real, you know, hands-on parent since I started doing the ships. But he, you know, I didn't need a kid after my daughter was 20 years old. So the way I figure is you wanted this kid, you got to raise this kid. I was done. I was driving with my sister up in Hamburg, New Jersey, saw all these farms. And I thought, it must be nice to be a Gentile. Rolling hills. I fantasize. Oh yeah. You know, cows, chickens. Just not getting nervous at the end of a meal when the cheques about to go down. They never, they always seem so cool, don't they? Like, I get into what's going to happen. They're going to take the credit card, they're going to split it, what's happening. Not living, not having to live in the crazy. I have this friend, John Ross, comedy writer, comedian, and he has a farm somewhere. And he's Jewish and it says, it's not like, it just can't be, I have this farm. It's, I have this farm. And this chicken. Chicken is the best. Chicken, it's a great chicken. I wish I could do something other than be interested in things. Just, you know, leave, go, you know, have a farm somewhere. But I think that a lot of the country sees what we're talking about as a leadist. That when we say we don't have hobbies, we like to read, we like to be educated, we like to be inquisitive. Sometimes it comes off as though we are better than them. And we have to be careful of that. Better than they. Yeah. Okay. Case in point. Crazy anxiety. A hobby. Tax anxiety. I'm going to die alone. That's what I mean. It's occurred to me that it's finally occurred to me that I'm going to die alone. Everyone is. Muhammad Atah didn't die alone. You have a kid, right? How many kids do you have? Who's Muhammad Atah? He flew the plane into the world. His parents went, at least he didn't die alone. Dying alone. Doesn't that scare you? Oh, every day. You know what happened last night? His whole act is about that. Pretty much. His whole act is about ending up alone. Last night, I was watching TV, eating a pretzel, lying. I better sit up because that's how I'm going to die. Choking on a pretzel. Choking on a pretzel, forgetting to remove the cookies on my laptop. He looked at that before. He was looking at her. I'm afraid that they're going to check my internet searches. And they're going to be like, she went to TripAdvisor 37 times. That's all she does. To what? Save $9? $9? All right, you guys, thank you for having me. I'd love to come back. I'd love to see you soon. You're fantastic. Oh, you are. Thank you. Too kind. Come back. You know what? Let me tie something back on us. You have a 13-year-old kid? Yeah. You know what? I got news for you. Show business you'll have for the rest of your life. A kid, they go off. You don't hear from them. Show business. Stay with me. Let the kid go. Is it a boy or a girl? Are you implying that I should cut ties? 13. He's a man. He is. Let him go. I know. I got to put a casserole in the oven. You're too attached to him. It's my last chance at being a mom. Mothers and sons. My last chance. Mothers and sons, because the sons disappear. I just talked to my mom on the walk from the subway to here. You know, my son just had a bar mitzvah and when he got to mommy and daddy's poem, he said, she's a pretty good cook when she's here. She lets me drink champagne on the first of the year. Big laugh. Big laugh. Big laugh. And then he goes, basketball, football, baseball and hockey. Daddy, you're the light in my storm when it gets rocky. Pretty good. Pretty good. I wrote it. He had things that he wanted to say. He wanted to do the champagne because I let him, he was on a cruise with me. We were on a fancy cruise and he's tall, so they kept giving him champagne. I said, how many of you know? I said, how do you feel? He says, good. Big laugh. And they said, you know, you're spoiled because they were serving vocally because you're never going to get this much champagne at this quality. So enjoy it. Happiest day of your life, the bar mitzvah, right? No. That's not the happiest day of my life. I think it was the happiest day of my life going to your son's bar mitzvah. Big laugh. I don't know. I hate when they say happiest day of your life. There's something, I was very happy when my kids. Yeah. I mean, it was a good day. It was a good day. It was the thing. The day my daughter was born was really a happy day. Letterman was like the greatest day. What's the difference? I don't know. It took so much to get Letterman. And it's a personal thing. It was an epic effort and to be a girl and get Letterman, it was even a harder More important, it's better than having a baby. It was really up there. Did you have an epidural to do Letterman? One of the best days. It really was a good day. It was a good day. We went to the palm afterwards. Really? Jackie the jokeman was there and he bought me a drink and I don't know. It was a great day. And did you talk to Dave? Insofar as, he was very nice. He held my hand for a long time because I was shaking with it and he could see that I needed that and he just kept holding and he said, very funny and then 15 minutes afterwards Billy Barr texted me, he goes, you got very funny, fuck you. That's even better. Yeah, it was really nice. It was so sweet to do that. Yeah, that was great. I mean, for you wasn't it like one of the great days? Well, I had an amazing day because I am so anxious that my parents live in Boston and they were going to, my dad was going to come and I said, I don't know if I can handle the anxiety of you taking a train or driving here that day. I can't worry about that. And he was like, okay, okay, okay. But he's like, he's my call if I'm nervous for a show or something like that. So I call them, you know, before and then afterwards I call them and I'm like, he's like how to go? I'm like, it went great. He's like, I'm outside. He traveled down without telling me to meet me right after. Yeah. I had shows back in Boston. So we, he stayed over that night. We drove back and then I watched it with my car. Oh, he was, he was there right when I got out. He was the warm blanket. I'm getting the chills. Yeah. Not from that story of malaria. Moody. Moody McCarthy was with me and he was crying when he saw my dad. Okay. So tell me the story. I'm crying. I want to hear this. Okay. Stay for one second. I want to hear it. Then you can leave. Tell me the story. I was too nervous coming down as I was trying to focus on the Letterman set that day. So he said, okay, we won't, I won't come. So I did the set. When I finished, I called him. He asked me how it went. I said it was great. He said I'm outside the studio. He had taken the Amtrak down to surprise me for right after. But he didn't want to see me. He didn't want me to see him beforehand to make me nervous. So he was there too much. No. You know, when his head, he was like, I'm going to go, uh, congratulate him. I'm going to go congratulate him. I don't need to see it. I don't need to sit in the audience. I'm here for you. He knew that would make me too nervous. Yeah. What an asshole. You didn't even get to this. But when I did Colbert, I had them come down and they're like, you're not going to be nervous. I'm like, first of all, I dealt with that anxiety. So you what, you see, you went outside and you saw your dad and brought him in and you brought him in. Did you introduce him to anybody? Yeah. Well, Paul was out when we got to go back out to take pictures and stuff, which he did with his very nice camera. It's one of his hobbies. Yes. And you know, we were all out. Yeah. So he met, you know, everybody that he could and it was great. That sounds like one great about mine was I did not want my parents to ruin it. And they just happened to be in from California. And so my sister, because she loves me, bit the bullet and she, she did the cover story. It's not that big a deal. Yeah. And let's go out to dinner and they, she kept them away. Good, good. But I had Ariel there, my daughter and I had my baby sister went because I knew they knew how to, you know, how to show up for me. It's so good to have that. And because my parents would have, you know, they would have said, we don't know what to do. It's too cold. I don't know. Is it okay if we come back? Is there peanuts? I just, I didn't want them to ruin it. Yeah. And I had Ross with me. Ross Bennett was backstage. Yeah. As my, Eddie Strange. Eddie Strange. Formerly known. And we have to have Eddie on the show. Oh my God. He was amazing. Yeah. He's a great guy. He was amazing. And then right before the show, I called Johnny Lampert. Nice. Because I was freaking out. Yeah. He goes, all right, I'm saving this for you. He's a great booker. He's a sweet guy. He's not a tarry. He's a great booker. He's a character. But he, he goes, you just think to yourself, this is a Johnny Lampert gig. And you're, and you're being very underpaid. It's going to make you so mad that you're going to kill. Wow. And it was the best image. You know, he goes, it's a temple and you're getting 750. And you should be getting 15. Wow. That's hilarious. Yeah. I had Lenny with me for Colbert. Lenny Marcus? Yeah. And I have this like, you know, gemstone thing for positivity that I wear as a bracelet. And he's like, you can't wear that. And I'm like, I know, but it's a good luck thing kind of. And he was like, well, put it on your mother's wrist. Yeah. So that was good. That's sweet. Lenny's great. Lenny's great. Lenny's great. That's good to have a comedy, buddy. Yeah. The first time I did Conan, Robert Schimel stood with me. Nice. Yeah. He's a generous guy. He was. He was that. Talk about, we haven't talked about Eddie Brill, Eddie Brill and Schimel were very tight. Right. Yeah. And my first, the first talk show I did was Dennis Miller's Tribune show. Dennis had a syndicated talk show that went up against our senior. And I was really nervous because I wanted, wanted to impress Dennis Miller. This was back when he was the shit. Now he's just, no. And my friend, John Ross stood with me. And I was, he said, you're like a caged tiger. He said, you could lift a car. I remember he said, you could lift a car right now. You have so much adrenaline going through you. Did you have adrenaline? So much. Yeah. Well, let me ask a woman a question. Sure. Is it anger that motivates you to get out there on the letter of insurance? What is pushing you? Is it violent? Because for comics, for some comics, there's a violence to it. I'm talking about walking through that fire. Right. I think my style of stand-up, though, is that I'm sort of this crotchety, you know, curmudgeon. I mean, that's really very much my act. And so, him, my friend making me, you know, have an image of being, you know, annoyed or irritated did help. It was like, you know, the sand that you put under the skin and the, you know, made the rhinoceros. I don't know. Is it good for you in a pressure situation? To be angry. Yes. Yeah. That will motivate me to just work through it. I'll screw it. I'll just do it. Being angry is... Too happy. I'm not so funny. I'm the opposite. I'm never afraid. I went out to do something once and I was very nervous and my friend tickled me. And it helped. He was in the wings and he just sort of tickled me. And I was like... You know, a lot of this is maturity, though. You know, I mean, I could be sitting and eating a meal. I could probably get up and go do one of these shows. I had put so much pressure on that one that it was difficult. To anger. Being angry. Anger is my motivator, for sure. And is that through therapy, you learn to channel anger into your comedy and use it as some kind of caffeine? Well, I mean, I think anger was probably the core of all defense mechanisms for me as a funny person. I was always funny as a kid. Yeah, it coincides with your stage presence. Can you be funny if you're not angry? Can you be funny if you're not angry? Now I can. Yeah, now I can. But you're tapping anger. You're faking anger. Yeah, sometimes. But sometimes, I just change it to lightly annoyed. Lightly irritated. Slightly. You know, this could be better. Growing up, do you remember dinners? Do you remember your family sitting around fighting just because it was funny? Arguing just because it was funny? Maybe not screaming, but yelling because it was funny. And nobody, it was harmless. Teasing. Teasing, but getting into an art. Do you remember uncles or neighbors who would come over and you'd be eating dinner and the uncle or the aunt would take an opinion just to excite everybody and get everybody screaming? I think we all had a glaze of let's not go there. Hmm. It was all like, let's just keep this, like this thing that's kind of good. And, because, yeah, I think things might have exploded too much. We wouldn't have been able to do what you're saying. Well, political discussions, perhaps. Any of them. See, I remember. My family was very funny. All of my aunts did accents. They all did great accents. So, you know, to break tension, do the Queen of England or she did the Russian character. My mother, oddly enough, could do Sid Caesar. So she could do that sort of like. Oh, the double talk. The double talk. Wow. And my mother, my mother could do a great German accent. And so there would be a lot of, you know, you pass the potatoes now. And again, give me your papers. It was a lot of acting stuff. That's funny. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, no, there was a lot of funny. Sometimes people would say in character, especially with, for some reason, the Indian, I'm sorry, anybody who was Indian, but we could do Indian for an hour, you know. Why just did you don't want to do Indian? There are people starving in our house. That's funny. Yeah, there was a lot of laughing for sure. I think, I think, you know, my mother was really great at accents and my father was just very dry humor. You grew up in a silly household. Well, there was, there was a lot of fighting, but the way that it would get diffuse was through humor. So I think I mimicked that at a very young age. Did you grow up in a silly household? Yeah. How many brothers and sisters? I just had one brother and so was me and my brother and my dad. He's younger and we all had the same sense of humor and I always later felt bad for my mom in retrospect that she had to deal with us. All right. Let's plug some gigs. This was fun. We're good? We're good. Let's plug some gigs. Where are you going to be? You go. No, you go. You go. You got to go. I'm going. I'm not. Corey Cahaney? Yes. CoreyCahaney.com is my website if you want to go to it and you can, on iTunes, I have an album for purchase and it's called Corey Cahaney TV Clean. Great. And, and I, you know, feel free to contact me. I'm available for parties and July 23. I'm going to be headlining the Fat Black Pussycat Lounge, the comedy cellar there. Stick, can you stick around for 10 more minutes? Sure. Bye guys. Bye. Thank you. Good to see you. Say hello to Bruce Mironov. I will. I will. Because I didn't have time to talk to you. So, when did you start doing comedy? December of 98. December of 98. Yeah. And growing up, who were some of your influences? Well, like I said, me and my father, my brother and I, we all had the same sense of humor. My aunt, my brother's sister, very funny. Comedian-wise, I really started watching in high school. My dad and I would watch, I remember us watching the HBO specials of like Seinfeld, Roseanne, right around there. Mm-hmm. The, all that like A&E comedy on the road stuff was playing and I would like get home to watch that at whatever time that was like 11 p.m. And who stood out? Dennis Wolfberg. The late Dennis Wolfberg, yes. Yeah. Um, the guy, Scott LaRose? Scott LaRose. Yeah. Yeah. He does a lot of commercials. Yeah. Yeah. I found him hilarious. Adam Ferrara. Mm-hmm. We just had Adam on the show. Yeah. Adam Ferrara was somebody that I just, and then when I started doing comedy, he was like, oh, that's a guy who's a writer and a performer. Right. And I was just always at this material and he would just like command the stage. Who was it? Adam Ferrara. Adam Ferrara. Yeah. And he hosted my new faces up in Montreal. Wow. So it was really cool. Yeah. So you grew up watching the comedy explosion. Yes. See, when I was... De Palo. Oh, Nick De Palo. We were trying to get him back. We were just scheduling conflicts. Have we heard anything? Okay. Well, of course, he's a pain. That's what makes him so funny. It's interesting. When I was growing up, I was influenced by Carlin, Steve Martin, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Pryor, and they were teaching me what was funny. I didn't judge them. There was no judging comedy back then. Tom Drieson would come on The Tonight Show. George Miller, David, you go, okay, that's how you be... I never had a critical eye watching these people. They were teaching me what was funny. Were you critical? Was your father critical when you watched this? Just pure enjoyment at that time. That was high school. And then I remember going to college and there was just a comedian there. And I had no aspirate. I didn't know I could do that. So I didn't have room for aspirations. What did you think you were going to do? I thought I was going to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist or something suburban. You know? And then this comic when I was like, I could do that. Right. But it still didn't get the ball rolling until I graduated. And that's when I started watching more like you were just describing of like, how do I do this? And that was like when Dr. Katz was on. And Andy Kindler became... Andy Kindler. Yes. We have a shared love of Andy Kindler. Everybody loves Andy Kindler. Yeah. And Jonathan Katz went to the... He did a show at the Newton JCC where he did stand up. I think he had Broadus, Bill Broadus over in for him. And he did, you know, a show and then he talked about squiggle vision and stuff and showed some of the episodes and stuff like that. And yeah, that was... Have you met Jonathan? Have I met him? I don't know if I've met him. I think I've been in the same room as him like when he came to the comedy studio in Boston. But I don't think he... Yeah. Yeah. He's... From the same hometown. Yeah. Yeah. Is he a fan of your show? Oh, I suppose Yeah. I don't say that. I feel like you were probably on Dr. Katz. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely, I mean, like all of you guys, like I would know before I ever met and I mean, I remember loving your Conan set. I think I was already in New York and you came to prep it at Luna, maybe. Yeah. Who was the other... I don't know. Just like, just that whole thing that was amazing to me because I was loving stand-up and then I was like, oh, here's this other way to present it. Right. That was so cool and I was learning that those were actually their stand-up bits. He made it, that's hard to do to take stand-up out of the stage and microphone and put it into another format palatable. You mean like a cartoon. Yeah. Yeah. My happiest memory was, I did an episode of Dr. Katz and there's a joke where I say, you know, I'm a great parent. I changed the cat box before my children play in it. Okay. So they set up a sandbox they play in the cat. We recorded 20 minutes of material and then my Dr. Katz is airing and my kids were like five and four, I don't know, you know, and they all gather around with their friends to see Daddy on Dr. Katz because it's a cartoon. Could I just say, literally, when I would watch you, I would be like, I wonder if he lets his kids see this. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because it's all lies. It's all lies. I know. There was nothing. And I'm sitting there reading the newspaper and they're watching Dr. Katz and my I put the newspaper down and I wonder what Jonathan picked and what this is going to be interesting. And there's this scene of my kids in a cat box playing with each other while the cats are outside of the box waiting to use it after my kids are done playing in this filthy cat box. And one of my kids goes to their friend. That's us. That's us. Playing in the cat box. We're on TV. We're on TV. And I'm thinking, well, that's got to be damaging down the line. It's just a cartoon of you playing in piss and feces soaked, taxoplasmosis. But yeah, it was just a happy memory of. Yeah, I think kids can be exposed to anything except the truth. That's my... No, my kids would come and watch me and I... because I never violate... I got into trouble once for saying that one of my kids was smart, funny, and pretty. And I was called up and said, how dare you say that? How dare you call me smart, funny, and pretty? Well, that was the upsetting thing? And I said, I thought our deal was that I can't say anything about you that... It's true. That's true. That's not funny. That's not funny. Yeah, I'm not allowed to say that's true about my kids. It is. By the way, I love my kids. Yeah, no, I met... I'm saying that's the joke. Oh, got it. That's why I say I love them. You met my daughter. Yes, at the Karlin street naming. Oh, yeah, she worked that. Yes. She's interested in comedy and I said, you know, you can't be a stripper like every other daughter who had emotionally unavailable fathers. Just go be a stripper. I didn't say that. I was trying to think of the other one, but it was definitely, it was someone else, Anne Kinler, that like, like watching their Dr. Katz thing off of one of their setups, I wrote my first joke. Oh, what was your first joke? He had something about, you know, just something like, you know, I quit drinking and then he went somewhere else. And in my head, I thought it was going to, so I said, I quit drinking. I said, I quit. That's a great, that's your first joke? Well, the first, yeah, like the first like thing that I actually wrote down, like I was, you know, starting to look to take a workshop, you know, and yeah, that was. Now, where did you write down on a napkin? I think I had, I think I had a notebook of index cards. A little bigger than your standard. And do you still have them? I'm sure, yeah, that's definitely. What do you keep? What do you hoard from stand-up? Are you a hoarder of memory? Set list, yeah, I have some old, the comedy connection in Boston, which was like the big club that I started at would have these like, you know, flyers always. And I have some of those with like guys like, you know, Gullman, Paul Nardizi, Kevin Knox, Gavin, Don Gavin. So I have like pictures of these guys still and and yeah, I've got, you know, piles and piles and drawers and drawers of notebooks. You don't throw that out. It's interesting because your generation, my generation, is rubbing up against our parents who are hoarders. There are, they don't throw anything out and we don't want it. The only, I think the antique road show was invented by our parents to convince us that hoarding is a virtue. No, a virtue. A virtue. I mean, my dad definitely is. I have it too. My brother totally doesn't. Like, my dad has to go through all this stuff. It's like his weekend chore. My mom wants him to get rid of stuff and he'll have like a new pile for me every time I go and visit and it's like, hard for me to throw it away. My brother doesn't even need to see it. He's just like, yeah, chuck it. Well, you know, I'd like to say I'm like your brother, but one of the things I do is I have a nervous breakdown room or I have a closet. In other words, I just gather up the things and I just throw it all into one area and it doesn't exist. Right. But I cannot be around clutter. I hate clutter. Yeah. I hate things. Ever since I got thrown out of the house, we had things. Years go by. My things were put in storage. I moved to New York. Now I have nothing. And it feels better. I know that the things, I know that as the years go on, I keep thinking, well, what am I missing that's in that storage bin? I have a hockey puck signed by Don Rickles that I want. I have a Mark Twain first edition that was given to me by a comedian. And then everything else, you know, if it got torched, if you just, you just set fire to that storage facility. I kind of want to tell my dad don't even show it to me. And because if I know it's not, you know, it's just a memory. The other thing we started to do is like, so it's like, gotta have pile. Let's take a picture of it and get rid of it. Pile has been a helpful thing. What do you hold onto from, like what are, you know, you're in your apartment. There's a fire. What are you going to grab? There's not much in my apartment. Yeah. I mean, there's like this, cactus mirror wall hanging thing that my parents had in their first apartment in Arizona when I was born, which I kind of have, I've had in all my apartments. What have you saved from your first letterman? I have the cue cards. The thing on the door. The thing on the door. Do they put like your name on the door? I didn't get that. Okay. I took the door. You can, you can keep the little adhesive with my name on it. No, I still have the bag, you know, that they give you your little gifts. Yeah. Yeah. Like the mug in the, I think I gave the hat to my dad and the t-shirt might still be in there. Yeah. The cue card, where they introduce you. The cue cards, yep. Did you get them to sign it? I didn't get them to sign it and I also never had it mounted and framed, but I still have them. Yeah. I think I have, I've got a, like a poster from the first time I headlined Gotham, rolled up in the tube. Uh-huh. Somewhere in one closet. Yeah. I got little, little stuff. I got, I got VHS tapes that I haven't thrown away. How many jokes do you write a week? Oh God. Ideally. I mean, I try to write for two hours a day. Really? Yeah. That's ideal. What do you mean you write for two hours a day? I do free write for 30 minutes. What does that mean? Uh, like an artist's way, like just open up my notebook and if I get right to it, like I want to, in the morning, three pages. And what do you write? That's just free. That's just like a meditation almost, just like get it all out and that helps me like, then write jokes. So I'll do like, if I'm writing, you know, jokes for my act or jokes for like, monologue jokes. If I'm trying to put a packet together, like, I try to do two hours of something. Uh-huh. And then, That's in the artist's way. They say to do that. The 30 minute thing. It's called the morning pages. Yeah. Morning pages? Yeah. But, you know, half the time it's, I did them on the subway here at three, three o'clock. You know, and so if I don't get to a first thing, two pages is what I can usually get on my subway commute. So I do two pages. And is there anything in that? Sometimes I'll star something, but that's not the goal, but I'll star something. The goal is just to write. Just to get it all out of the way. Do you ransom notes count? Sure. Okay. Those are the best. That helps. It helps me, like, later get to... See, I was going to kidnap somebody, but I had writer's blog. I couldn't come up with a ransom. Did somebody do that joke? No, that's great. That's your warm-up exercise. Is that a joke? Alex says it's a joke. You got a joke? I'm bringing back Quit Drinking. This has been very productive. But it does help when I, like, put down the thing that I was, like, first write during that two-hour block, and between the free write and the two-hour block, then when I go and just, like, sit with a setup, it really helps to, like, get something. So, like, that time where you're just, you know, a half hour before you're set, when you're just kind of looking over things. I find that curious because I'm convinced that nobody can actually write stand-up. It has to be materialized through conversation. That's what I'm saying. So it's like, those are, like, conversations with myself, it's sort of, like, my force-ness that nothing rarely comes from. So you're saying re-reading things that you wrote are, like, a conversation with yourself. Or even when I'm just writing. That's what I'm doing. Not the free write, the other things. It's like, oh, here's the things that are in my notebook from, like, or these emails that I emailed myself that something funny happened in a conversation that I noticed. And then I'll kind of write about that. And then sometimes something funny will happen, like it'll be in-joke structure. But it really comes from, like you said, like being on stage or, like, right before, like kind of going over it and then, like, having a conversation with myself. Interesting. Yeah. Writing, we got to wrap it up, but I think what you're saying is you write something, get it on the page. It doesn't have to be funny. It doesn't have to be good. Get it on the page. And then you're actually collaborating with yourself if you come back in a day or two with fresh eyes and you see something that you wrote and you don't recognize and suddenly you can be your own writing partner. Yeah. Or the walk, you know, after you're done at the coffee shop or whatever, it's like, or the shave, you know, or the shower that's like, you're thinking about what you just wrote down. Some of the best jokes I've ever written I don't know what it is about shaving my legs, but having a look at my ankles in the mirror. It's a scary magic. It's just, yeah, it's just something happens. Well, this is great. You'll come back. Yeah, man. This is great. Thanks for having me. John Fish is a stand-up comedian. Watch for him on Colbert, on Comedy Central. Do you have a website? Johnfish.com, J-O-N-F-I-S-E-H, and Johnny Fish is my Twitter. Johnny Fish is your Twitter. Say hello to your brother, White. It's a Jewish truck, White Fish. Thank you. I hope you're enjoying today's show. Please remember to do all your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman show website. Go to DavidFeldmanShow.com, hit the Amazon banner, click on it, and then shop away. We get a small percentage of everything you purchase. I promise you, every penny we get goes towards keeping the show going. And if you're doing your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman show website, hit the contact button. Let me know so I can thank you. Trying us from Delray Beach is the David Feldman show my Ammi correspondent, Bruce Murnaugh. Hello, Bruce. Hello, David. We are in rain here. It has been raining for four days in a row. It rains so much. We need it, so it's not like it's a horrible thing. It's like almost pitch black at four o'clock in the afternoon. And the sun doesn't set until like 8.30 here. It's just so dark in the thunder, the booming thunder, and you just want to crawl and take a nap every time that happens. So we are just under lots of rain, but still in great spirits. You're in great spirits and you're our Miami correspondent. You cover all things Florida. All things Florida, yes. From Delray Beach. From Delray Beach. It couldn't be any far away out of the... This is like all old people and falling down and calling 911. And the guys at the fire stations here, they wear like track outfits because they have no time to rest. And by the time they get in the community where the 911 call, the person's been dead. They're already hard as a rock. So it's the most idiotic and they just go back to the station to put the beans on the fryer. And then the alarm goes off again. Another stiff. And it's, you know, because there's no next place here. This is it. So, you know, that's what goes on. And I live across the street from the firehouse. And these guys are, you know, they're moving it. No one sets fires because no one can even get up to cook anymore. So you know it's not a fire. It's just a dead body. It's stiff. So do they take it out horizontally or do they take it out vertically? It depends on the archway or the space in the door. I mean, that's the whole life down there. But yes, when you compare that to South Beach where you've got 19-year-old people doing coke and dancing, it's the complete opposite. But I know it goes on there because I used to live on South Beach. I was there in 06. So I know. Big action place. Well, I am going to try to get Cousin Ed on the show. And who is Cousin Ed? Cousin Ed is Jeff Ross's cousin because... Oh, yeah. He's the one that lives in Kendall, yes. No, Cousin Ed, he used to be on the burn with us. As we speak... Cousin Ed. I'm going to... Ed Larson. I don't know if I met Cousin Ed. You know, I know Jeff. He's been so great to me in my career. And I know he has a cousin... I'm blanking on his name, but he lives down in Kendall, which is South Miami. Great guy. Yeah, I just want them to see this because I want you to comment on it. Okay. I'm just sending this to Jeffrey Ross because Cousin Ed... Yeah. ...was, hang on, made history. Cousin Ed made history. A Florida mother... Yeah. ...gave birth to a 13.5-pound baby in Jacksonville, Florida. And I want to find out if that breaks Cousin Ed's record. Oh, he was a big baby? Yeah. 30% of Florida is going to be underground. Right. When you fly out of Miami Airport, you know, when you go to South America or the Caribbean or something, you fly over... I don't know what it's called, but it's so interesting. It's like land that is probably about maybe three feet underwater. So, you know, it's immersed, but it doesn't look like coral or anything. It's like land. And that's... Florida, you know, was carved out of swamp. So, yes, with global warming, that can happen. And in, what did you say, 50 years will be... 40% of the land will be gone down here. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It depends. If you're holding real estate on the water, I don't think that's such a good idea, but where I am, this will be, you know, right on the ocean, right where I am. I'm in the middle. So, this will be great for me. I won't be alive, but it would be great for whoever buys this place after me. I'm eight miles from the water. So, with your prediction and your calculations, I will be eight inches from the water. So, how is show business going down there in Florida? This is the summer. So, it's like a vault locked up and then welded. Nothing happens. I've got two weeks. I'm working the Borgata, you know, Richie Minervini, great guy, great comedian. He books the Borgata Hotel. They've got a great comedy room. I'd have to say it's one of the top three comedy clubs left, you know, in the United States. So, I'll be going up there in July and August. I've got a week each month. But other than that, we're doing a benefit next week for a guy on the ship. He runs the comedy clubs on Royal Caribbean cruise lines. Very nice, very talented guy. He didn't start as a comedian. He was just hired to be the, you know, the manager of the comedy club on the ship. It turns out this guy's funnier than like 90% of the comedians that are on the ship. So, he's blossomed into this mini star, great guy, and his home burned down about three months ago and he didn't have fire insurance. So, they're doing a benefit for him. You know, Phil Tag, don't you? No. All these guys are really good comics. He's a ship guys. We're doing a benefit for him this Friday in Allendale Beach, Florida. So, to get him some money to get him settled, because his mom was living in the house. She's okay, but he lost his two dogs. So, you know, it's to help, help, help them. And hopefully they'll buy a fire insurance policy for the next time the house goes down. Tell me some good news coming out of Florida. Oh, there's lots of good news. If you're listening to this show as healthy, that's great news. I like to walk. I do a lot of walking here. I do like an hour and a half a day. I think I cover about six miles. So, that's good news. And how are the hair transplants? Oh, the hair transplant. You know, I wanted to go on last night and see all the new things. I had hair transplants in 1991 and then again in 1992. They're great. You have the best hair transplants. Thank you. But like the crown of my head, you know, is fairly open now. So, I don't care, because like I was telling you before, I don't really chase women anymore. I'm not married. I don't really care about, you know, I mean, I care about vanity. I just don't care about having that section of my head covered with hair. But I think about it from time to time, because this is a narcissistic business, it's a show business and overly so. We shouldn't be thinking so much of ourselves, but we do. But they, you know, they have what's called F-U-E transplants. Now, do you know what that is? Of course I do. It's body hair transplants. It's body hair. And I have a really heavy beard. I have a lot of hair on my chest. But the weird thing about it is just like, I think one doctor that does it, do you know that too? I looked him up. There's a guy in Southern California. Is he African American? No, I think he's Arabic. Umar. No, actually, no, no, no, no, no, no. Doctor Swords associate does it. Okay. All right. So now there's two. Yeah. But this guy is Umar. He's got a big website. And it's funny. It's done. It was invent. I don't know if it was invented, but it's done like crazy in Turkey. Did you know that? No, but I will tell you how hair plugs were invented. Okay. Dr. Orantrake, Norman Orantrake. Remember that guy? No. Dr. Norman Orantrake invented hair plugs. When he was serving in the Korean War, he saw that the South Koreans developed, this is true, developed a surgical procedure in which they transplanted pubic hair over scars. If somebody had been injured in the leg, they would lift the pubic hair and cover the scar with it. He came back to America and said, wait a second, you can cure this horrible affliction, baldness, baldness by transplanting hair. So the first hair transplants were pubic hair. Did you know that? I did not know that. No, but they never took off that way, which is there's permanent donor hair. Obviously there's abundant donor hair if you were to take it from that area. So I don't know why that didn't take off. So are you considering a body hair transplant? No, because I just don't care anymore. If I wanted to wake up tomorrow and start chasing after women, I looked, if I was on television, I would think about it, but I just don't care. I take care of myself, but I don't care about that stuff. When you're 35, you want to hold on to your youth. But just, no, but I want to tell you. Hang on for one second. Hold that thought. Sure. On the website, because I checked it out, the way they developed body hair transplants, the reason they did it was not to put hair on your head. It was for guys who were insecure that they didn't shave. There were guys, right? I'm looking at this, and these guys come to Dermatol? Turkey, yeah. In Turkey and Iraq and those countries, if you don't have a hardcore Saddam Hussein mustache, you're like an idiot. You're moron, you know? And I mean, I think it's the same with the women there too. They want a mustache? Yeah, I have a real good mustache. No, I was kidding about the women. So these are the men that don't have it. So they were going and getting their armpit hair or their chest hair or even their sideburn hair transferred to their lip. And now they got like a hardcore, you know, a Saddam or whatever Turkey-era-Dewan mustache. Yeah, that is how it started. Isn't that amazing? It's amazing. And you and I are thinking, are you crazy? It's what's up on top of your head that counts. I know. It's all that matters. No, but that's, those societies, a mustache is some, I guess we could, and I'm sure the information is available, but that's like a big deal with these people, you know, big mustache. So, oh, and you know, do you know what the ure flap is? You must know what that is too, right? What is that? Okay. The ure flap, and that's spelled why you, why you are I, I think it's, it was Dr. Urie. And this did not succeed. This is what I believe the president has, is the ure flap and it makes sense. The ure flap is, Oh, really? They take the, they take the area above your ear and they cut, they, like if you were wearing glasses, you know, you, you know that area where the glasses go. So that whole donor area is taken out in a strip, okay? Then they sew the area back where the strip was taken. Then they turn it the opposite direction. That's an old, old, so I think you're right. He had these. So they put it two sections. They put it in the front, then they give it a couple of inches and they put it, or a centimeters, whatever, and then they put it in the middle and then you have to keep your hair very long and you have to hairspray it because if it, you know, you'll always have those gaps in between the flips. But it didn't take off. It was like Beverly Hills thing and it was, it was popular and then they went more into the, you know, the hair transplants and then the single hair. So you're saying Trump had the ure flap. I'm not saying it, but it looks that way. I think you're right. You're the first person who has suggested this and it makes so much sense. He would have had it done in the 80s. 80s, mid to late 80s. This thing was only popular for about six years. It was like going to be the next thing. And then for whatever reason, it just wasn't. You know that when they do a scalp reduction, did you ever have that done? No, I know about, you got a scalp reduction? I had like three of them, but they don't take, right? Yeah, they don't take. So these were along the process of, you're telling me your audience are guys driving trucks. Do you think they really want to listen to idiots talk about their hair transplant? They're wearing baseball caps. And we're talking about idiotic with the vanity and we can't have sex even if we try. And this is what you wanted to make your whole show about. But that's you. I'll continue. By the way, you're no longer the Miami beach correspondent. You're our transplanted New Yorker. Not living in Florida. You're just the guy who's had the transplants. This is all I care about. By the way, this might be the most important public service I've ever provided to my listeners. Oh, this is great. Listen, you got to watch the surgery. You know, we have one of our acts at Don Casino Productions. David, what's his name? He's not with us anymore. He was a juggler. He left us, but he had. When you say left us, you're in Florida. Left on Casino Productions or left us? He left on Casino. He's with another agent. Whatever. He's really good at them. David's something right there. He's a juggler. And he's had this hard core. I believe he had the FUE and he does the commercials for him. So when you go on this guy's website, it's like, hey, you know, and he's like real excited and he's real genuine. And you can see what the doctor did to him. But yeah, I got a real heavy beard. And that's pretty much unlimited donor. The weird thing about if you get your body hair, if you get your beard hair, your beard only, you have to keep your hair really short, which is really weird because it won't grow. You know, like when you watch, when you see somebody with a long beard, it takes a long time for it to get to like Santa Claus level. So I think you have to keep it. They show on the video, all these guys have like, almost like Sergeant Carter haircuts from Homer. You know, like maybe in Kyle. Yeah, your, your, your hair. No, that was Binghamton. I forget what was, move it, move it, move it. That was Sergeant Carter. Yeah. So you have to keep your hair shorter. But still, I'd keep my hair short. If I could have full coverage, man, that would be great. But it ain't cheap. And so the kids don't go to college. I have no kids. There's no one to go to college. That's what I said. You're not going to college kids. Daddy needs hair. And you know, with our personalities, we could snore the guy into having us do his commercial. So I once had that with my guy in Beverly Hills. I actually talked myself out of it. He was going to give me free surgery if I would do an infomercial for him. And I actually like talked myself out of it. I was being obnoxious and saying, I don't know if I want to do this because of my image. And I don't know if I want people to know I had. And he goes, then don't have it. And they hung up on me. And that was the end of that. What an idiot I was. You know, we sometimes we get so insecure and then we think we're like geniuses and we really shoot ourselves in the foot. Okay, go back to the, it's called FUE. It's FUE ability. What does it stand for? It doesn't matter. I went to the website. I don't know. But it's something. I went to Dr. Umar, U-M-A-R in Long Beach. He's the guy. And I went to his site. And then I read the studies. It's very esoteric. Very few people are stupid enough and insecure enough to get this procedure. What I've read, they are finding that when you transplant, say pubic hair or chest hair to the top of the head, they have found that it grows like regular hair. Oh, okay. That something happens. It doesn't make sense. They say the DNA gets altered in some way. And it's longer and not as curly. I don't care if it looked like Larry from the Three Stooges as long as I had full coverage. It's not about, I don't care about what direction it's growing as long as it's growing. Okay, so when you're... Let's spray it or glue it or glue it. All right, so let me ask you a question. Let's see how sick you are. Okay. When you're in the shower. Yeah. And you're looking at your pubes. Yeah. Do you shampoo them, condition them and comb them and imagine what they would look like on top of your head? I do it. Again, I don't do that stuff anymore because it doesn't hold an importance in my life. But did you ever look at your pubic hair? 24-7. To imagine what it would look like. No, no. I have enough on... Again, I have a heavy beard. This would go no further than my beard or maybe some area from the chest. I got the donor. I got no problem with that. They can take from the beard, right? Oh yeah, they take from the beard. Are you going to look like Edward J. Almos afterwards? Well, that's the whole thing. That's the thing. The surgery is so minute. They're taking one follicle out at a time. So they show the people, they show the videos. They're showing it during the surgery while they're taking it out. And there's like little dots of blood. Not every removal causes blood. So it's speckled with blood, which heals in a couple of days. But yeah, you'll have no... If you decide you want to dress up and be a Macy's Santa Claus, it's not going to happen. You're going to be all patchy and have no facial hair in most of your area, which I don't really care about. Yeah. But I worry that you would have dots, maybe a few scars, maybe some pigmentation problems. And that's probably something you have to see how that happened. You have to look at someone that's had that after a few years and really see, you know, I mean, if your face looks like a strawberry, is that worth it? You know, if it's all dotted with scars, tiny little scars, but I don't know. Now women will say they don't care about penis size, although they like girth. And they'll also say they don't care for man as bald. But then you get a couple of drinks into them and they do care about hair. They like thick, girthy, long hair. And they like a big penis. Or are they just trying to keep men confused to get even with us for what we do to them? I think it's a little bit of all. It's what is it called natural selection where women have a, you know, they're just drawn to certain things. Your condition, listen, people, men used to wear wigs just in the United States. So I don't know how, I don't know why they did that. I don't know if that was for vanity because that's what women wanted. You ever think about that? I never, because they weren't in any way like real or anything. They just wore them for, I don't know, why did they wear them? I guess that's the subject of Google. I can't answer any questions. You mean politicians in George Washington, why they wore wigs? Yeah, they wore wigs. You wore wigs. So I guess being bald had its downside back then too. But the judges, in order to be a barrister in England, you had to wear a wig. They just discontinued that practice. They did discontinue it. And I don't know why that is either. I don't think that's about baldness. I think that's just a, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's like a hair hat. Maybe it's a hair hat or a prophylactery. Yeah, I mean it's like a, it's to cover their head for judicial reasons. And while you're at it, you know, make it look like maybe it make it Lamb's wool or something. Because don't they have a lot of lamb in the Great Britain? I don't know. I mean, the pope, the pope wears a yarmulke. Maybe it's a real, you know, maybe it's saying that when you're swearing on a Bible, promising to tell the whole truth, maybe it's like a religious thing. You know, while we're on idiotic information. This is the most important conversation. Well, I want to tell you about lamb. Do you know a lamb is a baby? Right? You know that, right? Okay. I think it's a sheep. When you have lamb chops and things like that, you're having it from a baby lamb. But when a lamb grows up, it's called mutton. You've heard that expression before? An adult sheep is mutton. That's the beef. I didn't know that. So in America, how come when you go to the supermarket, you don't see mutton. You see lamb. And how come you don't see mutton? Do you know the answer? I do know the answer. Yeah. I just wanted to know if you knew. I would suspect then people would figure out that when they're eating lamb chops, they're pro-choice. There's no need to go on. You guessed it. So the British... No, kidding. We get nuts with these crazy answers. No. Mutton, as it gets older, stinks when you cook it. And yet the English eat it all the time. But in America, it stinks up your house. And there's a story. I forget where I read this. I think I read it in this book about whatever, gulags, but they were talking about the president was hosting somebody in 1925 in the White House. And to make them feel at home, I guess they were serving the English ambassador or something. They had the chef cook mutton. And, you know, the White House is enclosed. The kitchen is an enclosed area. And they said it stunk up the White House for like weeks. Now, they couldn't get the smell out of the White House. So that's why I know that. How many may have just driven their trucks into ditches because of this idiotic conversation that we're having? Right into the Texaco station listening to this. You know, maybe if you change the feed, that's what they say. Sometimes when you change what you feed the mutton, it doesn't smell that bad. I don't know. But if you want mutton in the United States, you have to, like, make a special phone call. You have to order it. And it comes all, I think, comes all wrapped up in everything because they don't even want to, I don't believe the butcher wants to even keep it in the showcase or anything. It's just one of these weird things because we eat veal, which is a baby cow, and then we eat regular cow when they get to be mature. But mutton is the sheep is the weird thing like that. And we've got to that because we're talking about wool about the barristers in England wearing the wigs. So we went all over the place. Yeah. If I could dye wool and transplant it to the top of your head, would it be acceptable to you? Yeah, but that's not possible. How about this? How about if people could transplant? How about if I could accept somebody's transplant like somebody else's hair? Okay, I don't buy into that. See, this is really important to me. I have been told. This is what I'm told. In order to get hair transplants, the donor has to come from you. You have to be your own donor. Or your identical twin. And I said to the dermatologist, I said, so when I need my liver transplant, because I've become an alcoholic, because I'm bald, so I'm drinking myself to death, and now I need a liver transplant. The only person who can donate a liver to me is me or my identical twin. You're lying to me. Well, a hair transplant is considered a skin graft. So it has to be treated in that department. So burn victims. Wait a second. I think people can give each other skin. What about skin? If you find the right match, you can get skin from somebody. Listen, if that were true, I would be in contact with Florida State Penitentiary and I'd find some guy with thick, thick hair and I'd make a deal. I'd get him more money on his canteen card to give me about four inches for the crown. I'm down with that. I can't argue with you. Why are we supposed to accept this? Why do we accept this? Because you want to mess around in surgery and then get an infection and die because you had to have two inches of your head with hair on it because you feel insecure talking to somebody at a bar. Come on. But if it was possible, I'd be the first one at Bank of America withdrawing some money. Not only that, I'd get a blonde guy. I'd have dark brown hair. I'd go to a blonde guy and I'd have like a section of my hair blonde. I'd get a red-headed guy. I wouldn't really care. As long as I got coverage, that's all that matters. But, you know, it just doesn't work that way. Can you imagine if you could do that? Some guy, some hen-pecked husband who doesn't care about anything anymore. And you see these guys. You see guys with full movie star, mop of hair, and they're doing them no good. The wife is for shdunkin' a kid, it's a loser. The last thing you're thinking about is the only one is like a piece of cake. They're miserable people. But God gave them this hair that if they washed it with bar soap, it would still look phenomenal, you know? And these guys, they go to the grave with the beautiful hair and I sit there at three in the morning taking Ambien and watching FUE transplant. I'm a client. I'm like, hey, this is the greatest thing in the world. And that's my life. You got bald gradually. It wasn't like you woke up, right? When did you forget your first hair transplants? When did you need them? I got them in 91, 92. So by then you were already a player? Big player. And you've always been a great dresser. Thank you. And you're tall so nobody's going to see the back of your head unless you're in prison trying to get those donors. Trying to get the donors. Hey, I don't really care that you killed six people. That's water under the bridge. Here's what I need. I need three inches. You can take it from the sides. Who really cares? Give me three inches. Give me a blonde. And I want to talk to Rusty over there with the red hair. And with Rusty I want eight inches from the back of him. And you call me tricholor. You're like tricholor pasta. I don't care. As long as I have a full head of hair. Is there anybody you've met in Hollywood who has the worst toupee? You don't have to mention the name. Oh, of course. When we know him, you can't mention it. I'll tell you this. What do we know? He wears a toupee. And he wears a baseball cap on the toupee. Like if you're bald. And you want to go out with the baseball cap. Then just wear the baseball cap. Because you're getting the coverage. But this guy has to put the wig on. Nice guy. But he puts the wig. Like hair people like you and me. Larry David is also a hair guy. He knows the nonsense. He knows the BSers and all that stuff. But so we can always tell somebody wearing a wig. But when you're wearing the baseball cap on the wig. Like to protect your hair from the sun. Which it just doesn't. That is the most infuriating thing. So yes. That was one of the worst wigs. How unforgivable is it to have a toupee? This is what I'll tell you. This is what I learned. When I was getting my transplants. There was a period where I had to wear a wig. Because I was doing TV. And I was bloody. And anyway. So for about a little period I was wearing a toupee. Here's one of the things that I found. On TV the toupee was great. I loved it. Sure. But then you go out in public. It doesn't fly. And what it's doing is this. You throw yourselves on the mercy of strangers. It's a compact with society. Which is I'm telling a lie. You know I'm telling a lie. It's not a white lie. It's a brownish gray lie. And because you're civil and kind. You're not going to call me on this lie. What you do is you lie. And you force people to be complicit in your lie. That's why people get so angry at somebody with a bad toupee. Are there ever people who wear a toupee. And it doesn't make you angry. The answer is yes. If you can have a toupee. But if it's a good toupee. We can still know it's a toupee. But it's a good toupee. So you don't get angry. It's the bad toupees that piss people off. Right. Yes. And yes. Because you're making me feel. You're making me feel stupid. You think I'm stupid that I don't know it's a toupee. Or you're making me complicit in this lie. And it's dishonest. That's why people get so angry at bad toupees. I worked with an act again nameless. And his hair was really good. I said to myself this has got to be a toupee. But it's so great. It can't it's not. But I'm going of course it is. I'm going but it's so good. I don't see a line across. You know I don't see any of the demarcations. Nothing. And then we were walking outside in the daylight. And he had one errant. He had a red thread in it. Like when they were putting this thing together. Whether we were ever using like paintbrush hair or whatever. One of them fell into number seven red dye. And it's not like it's not like any color a human being can grow. Literally you know tomato red. And it was just no one cut it off at the factory. I said it's a wig. And that's it. I felt a lot better back then. Oh you weren't sure until you saw the errant hair. I'm telling you I wasn't. I just said this is one of the best. And then there's the red thread. And I went that's it. Couldn't fool me. Couldn't fool Sherlock. He figured it out. It took a few days. And then I felt good. It was like taking you know like plucking ear hair or something. You just have that good feeling when you've plucked it. And that was it. But one thing David. You know we're hair conscious because we've lost our hair. But the average person who hasn't lost their hair. And women they don't they're not plagued with these issues. When a woman is out in public you think that as soon as you walk into a room. They're looking at your hair and thinking oh he doesn't have hair. He's wearing a bad wig. Everybody has their own life. You know going on in their own inner conversation. And it's not this guy's wearing a wig. It's like I wonder if my husband's going to be coming after me with a Louisville slugger. When I come home later these they got other things on their mind. Then whether you're wearing a wig or not. I worked with Joan Rivers. Yes. She walks into the room. And it's like a statue. A living breathing statue. She had had so much plastic surgery. I understood why they called it plastic surgery. She looked literally plastic. She looked like somebody had dipped her entire body in paraffin. And there was some melting going on. But I could not take my eyes off her. I was riveted and I kept thinking of Michael Jackson. I thought okay I understand this. I feel invisible. Nobody ever pays attention to me. If I spent $15,000 on plastic surgery and was turned into a freak. People would stare at me all the time. And I realized that Joan knew that she had a lot of plastic surgery. That it was evident that she had a plastic surgeon who was on call 24 hours a day. Yeah. That she didn't look normal. I always say that Beverly Hills, when you walk around Beverly Hills or a day drive. Right. You know how Mongolians have a certain look. The phrenology, the face. Exactly. Yes. If you look at the women and the guys in Beverly Hills you would think you would come to another country and this is how they look. It depends what surgeon. Each surgeon has a signature. So yes. It's same thing here in Florida in Aventura. When you see the women they all look like their sisters. But they're not sisters. They just all go to the same doctor. So if you go to doctor A he gives you the Asian look in the eye. You go to the next guy gives you the Ukrainian look. So they all have the, but they all look like sisters. Because there's just so much you can do when you're tightening and working with the skin like that. And I think Joan and I think Michael Jackson till his nose fell off. Yeah. I think they looked in the mirror and they said okay. Like it's like me and my hair transplants. I say, I'm going out in public. Most people know these are hair transplants. But I'm okay with it because I think this is. Of course. It's better than the option, the other option. Right. And it helps me understand Caitlyn Jenner. Like Caitlyn Jenner. That's a rough one. Caitlyn Jenner. Yeah. Like Joan Rivers. Yeah. Like me and my hair plugs. Knows that everybody knows what's going on. But I feel better looking this way. I worked with Joan Rivers in 1986 on Hershey. I collect war memorabilia. I don't know if you know that about me. I know about this stuff. And I did her show. And I went to sit on the panel. And while they went to commercial, I was looking at her face. And I looked at her skin. And her skin looked like a World War I German Picklehub helmet. Picklehub helmet. They were not steel helmets. That was they developed those later in the war. This is the leather, tanned leather. It's dipped in like whatever chemicals you have to dip it in leather hard. And it had the linage in it and the creases. And I said, if I had a horse hair brush, I could buff her face and make it shine even more. All she was missing was the Picklehub sticking out of the top of her head. But she looked good on television. The option, the alternative was to look like an old yenta and to be, you know, disgusting looking. So she chose option B from a distance. She looked like a movie star. She looked great. She had the Bob... She had everything done properly. But up close is when, you know, what do they call that? The details are in the... God is in the details. Yeah. When you look at something up close, you know, you see the flaws. I was working with Billy Reback in 1984. And that's a guy who could... There's a lot of hair. His body hair could cover... I was gonna make a bad taste joke. He's as hairy as Robin Williams. Robin Williams was that hairy, too. But Robin had brown, light brown hair. Billy has dark, dark brown hair. But yeah, those are... Those are freaks, those kind of guys. They have hair on their back. They have it on... We talked about this. Ed Asner. Second knuckle. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at my knuckle. I have hair on my second knuckle, but I drag my knuckles when I walk. Because I'm a caveman. So we're working on a project in 1984. And he got hired to write jokes for Bruce Jenner at some kind of speech. And he came back and he was like... He, you know, he's a very aggressive and Billy has a lot of piss and vinegar in him, and he was like... He just was like, I got it. I saw the weirdest thing today. And he goes, what? He goes, I worked... I was writing jokes for Bruce Jenner. He wears makeup. And he paints... He has like nail polish on his fingers. I go, come on. Knock it off. Let's get to work. He goes, no. He had makeup on like rouge and lipstick, but lightly. And he had his nails done. I went, great. God bless. You know, and that was it. But I remember him telling me that. And I put it, you know, how you put it in the file cabinet in the back of your head. And then, you know, 32 years later or whatever, it's like, holy mackerel. You know, he was right. But Chris Jenner never knew. Who's that? That's the wife? The wife. I guess the wife had to know. Of course she had to know. I don't know. I don't watch TV. Those reality shows. So I don't know the ins and outs of that stuff. I don't know if you're being facetious, but this woman had to know it because... She doesn't say anything. He doesn't say anything. I get kids with him, right? Doesn't she have biological children with him? And OJ. Just kids, right? And OJ. The word is kids with OJ too? Well, some people think that. Oh, that kind of thing. All right. You know, Jerry Lewis has a daughter. Did you know this? No. He has a lady? Yeah. And what is her name? Barbara? I don't know. That was his wife's name. This girl's name. Anyway... Oh, from the new... Yeah. The new... From the new wife. No, no, no, no. This is, again... And it depends what source you go on on Google. But I don't want to get sued by the Jerry Lewis people. Okay. So let's leave it be then. But look it up. See, she looks just like him. I mean, she has... She makes the funny face. And it's... She looks more like him than the boys do. Anyway. Can you imagine having Jerry Lewis for a father? I don't see the... You know, I used to not wasn't crazy about his films. But when I saw that documentary on him on Cinemax, remember they did about eight years ago, I didn't realize this guy is like a massive genius. He has, I guess, can be a pain in the ass and stuff, but... Yeah. Oh my... He invented video... The video assist. He invented, you know, video playback. He's like in the middle of doing, like drooling, you know, water out of his nose. And then he just goes, stop, I need you to put a 25 lens and a 16. And I need you to go 18.3 inches away. It's phenomenal. He demands a genius. Yeah, he was. And he was an 18-year-old superstar. And there's a lot, a lot to say about that, you know, and... Yeah. Even his mental illness is genius. But yes, if I wasn't in show business, I guess it would be okay. If I wanted to be in show business, it could be difficult. This is what I want you to do. Yeah. Joan Rivers had a daytime talk show in the late 60s. I think it was called That Show. Okay. Go to YouTube. I'll link to it on my website. Jerry Lewis is on the show with a shrink who has the worst comb-over in the history of comb-overs. Sure. The subject of the show was, is it okay to hit your child? And Jerry launches into a story about hitting his kid. It is the most disturbing thing I've seen. In what way? He did hit his kid? Oh, yeah. He says, you have to hit your kid. It's an act of love. I had a son, Gary, who had misbehaved. I said to him, go up to your room, and I'm going to hit you. And then I made him wait an hour because I know that waiting to be beaten sometimes is far worse than the actual beating. This is what he said in about 1969 on The Joan Rivers Show. Then I stood over the bed. I took off my belt, and I explained what I was going to do to him. And by the way, that's Jerry's theory of comedy. Tell the people what you're going to do, do it, and then tell them what you just did. That's his theory of comedy. I'm being serious. They said, Jerry, what's your theory of comedy? I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to do it, and then I'm going to tell you what I just did. So he's holding a belt about to whip his kid. And he says, I'm about to whip you. I'm going to whip you because you disobeyed me. And then he whips him. And then after, he says, then I tell him what I did and why I did it. He says, this is the great part. He says, after I whip him, I say, you should feel bad. You should feel the physical pain and the emotional pain because this is what you made me do. I don't feel the physical pain that you're feeling, but right now I'm feeling the emotional pain of having to do this to you. And for that reason, it's unforgivable that I had to hit you. And so you should feel emotional pain for yourself and for me because you inflicted emotional pain because I had to hit you. And he's being serious. Yeah. And I thought, wow. Wow. My kid stops talking to me if I roll a red light. But it's different now. You know, back then, I, you know, I don't have children. I don't, I think the longest relationship I had with a woman was like six weeks. And I could be exaggerating that by five. So I just not want to ask these questions, you know, but, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I was not hit. I was slapped a couple of times. And I, I, you know, I didn't hold anything against my parents. I certainly deserved whatever I was slapped for. Well, there was, the generation that we came from, they were ambivalent about the hitting and the whipping and the screaming and the yelling and the doing the bad. So you could do the good. Right. But now we know that you can't hit a kid. I, I, I mean, I would never even think. Yeah. I mean, I'm at a loss for words, because I don't have an opinion on this because I, I don't, I haven't been there. You know, if you're with children and I just don't have no opinion, can't help you in that department. But if you're looking to link something up, link Telethon. I did already. So we talked about it. Yes. And by the way, everybody went there and thank you for it. You remember Ralph, don't you? Did you know Ralph Carter now? Remember when Rick Corso was doing that show, Vega Rama? Weren't you hanging around us then coming and watching that show or not? No, everybody was in there. No. So Ralph was a character. Ralph is that guy in the documentary that was Jerry's assistant. He was like Jerry's driver. And, you know, he has a very funny look to him. He's a bald guy. Ralph Cardinale from Worcester. And Ralph used to tell me, you know, I work for Jerry Lewis. And I go, yeah, sure. And then I see this documentary and he was like his right-hand guy. He really was. Max Alexander, may he rest in peace, was good. Yes. Well, Max Alexander was very, very, very tight with him. Yeah. I mean, incredibly tight. How about all those ice cream sandwiches? I just rule the thumb, you know, I guess from what my mother drummed into my head that if you eat more than two ice cream sandwiches, you're going to die of cancer in 12 minutes. He eats like 32 ice cream sandwiches in like two hours. Jerry Lewis does. He destroys every rule of thumb in that. And he washes it down with red wine. Do you remember that? It's unbelievable. Who drinks red wine with an ice cream sandwich? You know, you can have chocolate. I once had chocolate with red wine and it was surprisingly incredible. It was like a really cool thing. But an ice cream sandwich, the alcohol with the sour with the, you know, the, what is it? You know, what happened? Fermentation hits the ice cream. I can only imagine what was going on in his stomach, but that's what he eats during that documentary. Wow. And you see him go from, you know, very serious and then he walks in on the rehearsals of, I think it was Anna Maria, Albergatti, and the sisters, the Maguire sisters. And he just like in, in, in a half of a millisecond, he goes from like, you know, like a serious guy. And he just goes, and you're laughing. He's, he can turn it on like a spigot. It's incredible how gifted that is to be able to do that. Wow. Who is the funniest person you've met in your life? Jackie Mason. That's the meanest person you've met in your life, the funniest. Mark Goldstein. You remember Goldstein? No. Improv. He, on stage, he wasn't that funny, but off stage, he could do impressions. He, he had a brilliant mind for, he was just the greatest. He, and he was so angry. He was so funny. But Jackie Mason off stage is also very funny, like, like drop dead fun, because there's no difference really. Because he's never, he never goes beyond any dimension. He's the same person on stage as he is off stage. And it's, it's just watching. I do agree or you don't agree. I agree. I have trouble with Jackie because he's not a nice guy. Horrible. He's a horrible guy. But I spent many, many years with him. And I was the brunt of a lot of his, not, not towards the end. He kind of stopped with the, you know, putting me down and things like that. But yeah, he's a very mean, mean person, but, you know, can't have everything. I had a couple of experiences with him. I respect him. I think as a, as a clown, he's both a comic and a clown. He is the, he's the whole thing. If most comics are like, let's say a six cylinder engine, I'm a four cylinder engine. But if most comics are a six cylinder engine and you, you can put people like Jackie Mason, he's a 12 cylinder engine. You know, when you break it down, he likes George Carlin. That's one of his inspirations, surprisingly. Jackie Mason? Yeah. And I think if you boil it down, George Carlin produced something in the order of, let's say 40 plus hours of stand up. Would you, would you agree to that? Yeah. That's impossible. But I'm giving, I'm giving a minimum of 40 hours of stand up. Well, Jackie Mason is on that order. I mean, how many guys, I mean, even my idol, I won't mention his name now because I don't want to have to put him down because he's my idol, but put him in with those. But even my idol petered out after probably about eight, eight, maybe about four great hours and he's produced maybe 25 hours, but they're not as good. But Jackie Mason is good today, even though physically he's an older man and I don't think he can, you know, have the energy, but he's still producing. And so was Carlin until the day they, until the day he passed away. But that's, that's heavy horses. When's the last time you saw Jackie? I had a pro, again, I got great story. I have stories that'll bend you down, but I can't tell them now because you hang out with them at Wolfie's. Yeah. Everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. And there was a period where I could not go to a delicatessen without running into Jackie. Well, he lives in them. That's why, you know, because his life, he has maybe the most perfect. I still idolize Woody Allen. I wanted his kind of a life. But then when I met Jackie, I wanted his life more. He literally lives in the heart of Manhattan and he just wakes up, rolls out of bed and he's in the heart of Manhattan. So he doesn't have to take a, even a taxi. He doesn't even have to take a rickshaw to get where he needs to be. He just falls into the busiest place on earth or let's just say the busiest place in the United States. And then he just goes from one restaurant to another. And because he's so famous and he lives off of the adulation of people, he, he uses the energy that people give him to whatever fits the moment he's in. Like, I guess if he's feeling particularly low, he'll let somebody hang out with him for about 20 minutes and suck that adulation until he gets tired of him. And then he just literally will walk away from the person without a goodbye or anything. It's almost as if that person is a plant, not a human being, but just a plant, like a cactus and they cut it in half to drink the water out of it and then they discarded it. And then he'll walk to another situation and wherever he goes, you know, he's instantly recognized and, and, and it's a, it's a great life. I mean, when you're, if you're into superficiality, which is my middle name, you know, it's great. And then if you get tired, let's say you just want to go to the bathroom and veg, you just walk five more blocks back to your apartment. You're in the privacy of your world and your bathroom and your, you know, whatever you want to do with yourself. And then you just get back in the elevator and the door opens up and you're back in that, in that amazing, you know, everything's always at a 10 as from zero to 10, always in a 10. Pretty amazing. Wildlife. It's a wildlife. I started, I'm just thinking out loud here. Maybe I'm sharing too much about myself. But when I first became a comic, I wanted that life. I didn't think I was ever going to have kids that I didn't. I never thought a woman would love me. I thought, you know what? I'll just become funny, famous. And there'll be a superficial woman who will put up with me for a few weeks and then I'll be so famous. I can find another one and I'll be successful. And then what happened was I never became famous, but I met this amazing woman and we had kids and I had what I never thought I was going to have, which is, you know, a house with kids and dogs and friends and family. But on the back of my mind, I kept thinking, you know, there's this Jackie Mason orgy out there that I'm missing. I'm missing out on that orgy that had I had I not given it all up for this, I could have Jackie Mason's life and then I'd catch myself and what do you think, you know, obviously this is better than Jackie Mason. Now I'm back to square one. If that's what you want to tell yourself that I'm okay. But you had me there. You had me hanging on every word because that's exactly what I wanted until I realized I couldn't get it. But whatever I've got now is still great. But yes, that's always what I wanted the most super fit. All I wanted was to just be able to walk around and have people go, that's that funny guy. You know, this is the tremendous insecurity that comedians have. This is not a normal occupation. This is the result of severe mental illness. Do you know where stand up I think originated from in my own? I think I've read this. I think did we talk about this? Maybe. Doesn't matter. It was a book written by, you know, Dennis Prager. You know who he is, right? Yes, of course. And this guy Talushkin. I think they wrote a book about it. Rabbi Talushkin, I have that book. Yeah. So they, I think it's where I read it. But when Jewish people lived in the pale of settlement, which was areas of Russia, Poland, Romania, so whatever those places like Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, they lived apart from the non-Jewish people. So, you know, whatever night of the week it was, they didn't go into town, you know, to mingle with the other, with the regular people. They stayed in their own little small villages. So they're standing or sitting around and one guy goes, Irving, you got that violin, get up and play. It's Irving plays a song. And then they go, Carol, sing that song that with Irving playing the violin. And then they go, Moish, you know, do the impression. You do the, of the Cossack that comes in and rapes your wife all the time. And he gets up and he does an impression. Boy, I know the joke. I have to, but you? Right. So that's how it started. Then I read a book about, and I wish I had the guy's name because it's such a great book about the gulag. And how... Solzhenitsyn. No, Solzhenitsyn, yeah, he did the gulag archipelago. But this was a book written to Menken. It was written about 15 years ago. And I listened to the author on radio and I got the book. It's about, the story is about 500 Americans. Did you know that 500 Americans emigrated to the Soviet Union in the 1930s? Did you know that? No. Nobody knows this because we were in the middle of a depression and the Soviet Union, people, a lot of people in America thought that was the next wave. You know, Mussolini in the 20s was, I think, voted man of the year. So a lot of socialism was creeping its way into America. So this was a bunch of people. A lot of them were Jewish. Other people were like from Wisconsin. They were factory workers. They were all, basically were communists. And they were... Wisconsin has it. And they moved to Russia. And so we've never had emigration. I think now they say that people are emigrating more than ever. But this was the biggest emigration period in the history of the United States. And they went there. And everything was like really cool. I think this was 31, 32, and they had baseball. And the whole idea was how they had these baseball leagues and they would play baseball in the Soviet Union and people would come and watch. And then after two years, it was really just Stalin's way of toying with these people. And then he confiscated their passports. And most of them all wound up in a gulag. And then they couldn't come back to America. And these people, I think about 10 of them got back in the 1950s after Stalin died and they shut down the gulags to tell their story. But the reason I bring this up is they were talking about life in the gulag and people, it was horrible. They say the gulags were worse than the concentration camps in Germany during World War II in late, yeah, in World War II. So they were talking about how you would just get bread and when they give you your meal, the real hardcore people in the gulag would beat you up just to take your bread. So you would just die. You would just be beaten to a pulp. They would beat you with their bread. Yeah, yeah. That's how bad it was. It was just so bad. So anyway, the only reason I get is they were talking about this one guy. He had all his teeth knocked out of his mouth, but he didn't die. He was skinny. He was like six feet one and he was real skinny and he should have been beaten to death. But what he could do was he could do impressions. He was one of the Americans. So they would say, I think his name was like, let's say Levinsky. They'd go, Levinsky, do guard Igor when he's pissed off and he would get up and he would, and he made all these thugs in the gulag. His fellow prisoners laugh. So then what they did was they protected him and they beat up other people to get their bread to give to this guy Levinsky. And it's just one of those weird, weird stories. These are just things I pick up and read. So it was basically a dinner show. He did a show. You betcha. That's what I used to say about El Pollo. You remember El Pollo local? I loved it. I loved El Pollo. It was my favorite place on Sunset and La Brea. And my joke was you eat your chicken. They arrest people out in front. They did a show. I can't do that joke anymore. That was one of my best shows. That was a great joke. Well, this was fantastic. Thank you. He didn't tell any stories today. Well, you know, you've got me. I didn't understand the concept of your show and you've explained it to me. It's like an all-night chat. So there is no reason to hammer anything. And we still made each other laugh and we talked about crazy stuff that people don't normally talk about. So yeah, I'm in the groove anytime you need me. How do people reach you, by the way? You can get me on Facebook and my email address is brucevodkaatyahoo.com. That's b-r-u-c-e-v-o-d-k-a at yahoo.com. Vodka because Smirnoff vodka. There you go. That's right. One day we're going to spend an hour you telling the story of being the greeter at Rich Jenny's Wake. Oh, you know, I'm still so tight with the family. I have to think about that one because I don't ever want them to hear it because it's getting a laughter at the expense of a funeral, you know, it's just me. But yeah, we'll figure something out. That was the weirdest. What did that have to cast to characters at that funeral? It was 10 years ago. Yeah, well, I talk to them every day. I was just with his brother as my dear friend and he's in a plane right now going back to Brooklyn. He comes down here and does some business. But yes, they will never get over it unfortunately. It's just a terrible tragedy and he was one of the... You know, Jackie Mason was a big fan of Rich. You know, he said that guy is as good of a writer as I am. Oh, no question. He was right. Yeah. And he was somebody who just kept turning it out and turning it out. He had, what did he have about six between Showtime and HBO, about six specials, five, six specials, and one better than the other. Yeah. And he had an arsenal. He reminded me of Robin. Well, I don't want to say anything. Let's just leave it at that. Okay. Talk to you next week, sir. Thank you, David. Be a favor and give us a good review on iTunes. You'd be amazed how much that helps. Giving us a good review on iTunes moves us up. That's the way their algorithm works. So when you give us a good review on iTunes, you're really helping out. Yes, I just cleared my throat. That's a technical term, clearing your throat. But don't worry about that. Showbiz. You just stay with the Constitution. I'll handle the radio stuff. It's Friday morning, so once again, it's time for Tuesdays with Corey. Corey Bretchneider is a constitutional law professor at Brown University. He's author of When the State Speaks. He holds a doctorate in political science from Princeton, a law degree from Stanford, a master's in philosophy from Cambridge. But if you ask Corey Bretchneider what he is most proud of, it is that I, David Feldman, once told him about the time I had lunch at Jerry's in the Valley with comedy writers Jay Cogan and Lou Schneider. And if you behave today, Professor, I will regale you with more stories about my lunch at Jerry's in the Valley with comedy writing legends Jay Cogan and Lou Schneider. What a day order. I've already told you that three times, they ordered the Max Alexander. Jay Cogan had it with the coleslaw in the sandwich. Lou has the coleslaw on the side. Okay. All right. Listeners know that once a week, Professor Bretchneider wastes time coming on my show to filter the day's events through the prism of our United States Constitution. This segment is becoming increasingly popular, partly because Professor Bretchneider is what I call a public intellectual. He's just as comfortable writing amicus briefs on the travel ban for the Supreme Court. He's just as comfortable doing that as he is wedging body narcissistic puns in between my serious observations about the fragile state of our rule of law. Welcome, Professor Corey Bretchneider. Thank you, David. Pleasure to be here. At least it has been so far. I want to see how it goes this week. Okay. I hope you're going to keep it clean today. Yeah, absolutely. Well, after the whole water park digression, really trying. My daughter, by the way, says she doesn't care that we're going no matter what. So thanks for that. It's going to be really pleasant. You know, I miss the kids when they were small, but I don't miss having to do that kind of stuff. Well, it's all great, actually. I mean, are you going to have to, like, get into a bathing suit and go down a slide? I love it. I love water parks. It's ruined it for me a little bit. But according to Comey's testimony and the salacious material that he had to tell Donald Trump about, Donald Trump may be interested in water slides given the uric acid in water because people urinate in pools and apparently Donald Trump, according to the word is that the Russians had something involving Donald Trump prostitutes and urine. Let's get to that in a second, but the big story is my divorce. I know the travel ban, but let's eat our vegetables. I want to get to Comey's testimony. You have stayed on top of a travel ban. You are partly responsible for the circuit courts rejecting Trump's executive order, travel ban, too. Where are we with the travel ban? Why is it important to stay on top of the travel ban? There is travel ban fatigue in this country. We want something fresh and new all the time. Right. Well, I mean, to me, it's a signature initiative. If you remember when he campaigned, I think one of the ways he drummed up populist support of the worst kind was by promising a total shutdown of Muslims being able to come into this country and then he tried to deliver with this thing. And what I think is important about it and the reason why I keep talking about it endlessly and don't tire of it, is because it's not just about this one executive order, it's about his bigotry. And now we're at the point where the entire panel of the Fourth Circuit has basically agreed that this policy, and I think it's a deeper indictment of his motives generally, are all about animus, anti-Muslim hatred. And so that's not a small part of this presidency. It's what makes it unique and scary and really different from anything that's come before is the amount of outright bigotry in the modern world that this president has shown. Muslims, Mexicans go through the list. Well, we've had bigots as president. Yeah, that's true. I mean, but they were products of their time, I think, in many instances. So it's not surprising that you had bigots in the 19th century. But what's odd about him is that the world has moved beyond that, I think, and he has not. And to elect somebody with those views at this point in history, I think is really a travesty. It's a suggestion maybe that we're backsliding, but it's not normal. I don't think in the modern world. Through the prism of the Constitution, is it against the law for the American people to elect a bigot? Or do you have to wait until he does something that is proven to be prejudiced and bigoted? You know, as a private person, he can believe whatever he wants. He has the First Amendment right to his beliefs, and as a private citizen, he can say what he wants. But what he can't do, and that's just one element of this case, is make laws based on bigotry. That's part of our Constitution. He also took an oath to uphold the Constitution. That's the meaning of the office. And so I think to the extent that the bigotry gets in the way of his ability to uphold the office, that we have to really think about whether this is somebody who's qualified to serve. You know, you don't have to commit a crime to be removed, but I think it's not just one thing. This is, among others, that a president who repeatedly acts on bigoted motives, this is one example, but there are others. I think that's part of the charge, or the argument for why he should be removed. I'm not trying to be glib here. I don't have to try. It just comes naturally. The Republican Party is essentially a party of bigots. And a lot of their legislation, especially on the state level, the gerrymandering that goes on, we've seen this in North Carolina, they pass laws to prevent African-Americans from voting. You have a Supreme Court justice who ruled, I think it was like three years ago, the Civil Rights Acts, which placed certain states from the old Confederacy under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department when it comes to voting. They ruled that that no longer should apply because there's no more bigotry when it comes to voting in this country. You know, unless you ask African-Americans, that seems true, unless you see the lines for black people voting. You know, I've heard that argument before, that he's not really different than most of the Republican Party, and there are people who say that. Certainly there are Republicans who I don't think are outright bigots and who have opposed his policies. I'd like to see them speak out more. But I also think that while you're right about, for instance, Shelby County, I don't agree with that decision. It's very different then. You know, they have a theory, a rationale for who is covered and who is not under the formula of the Voting Rights Act has to be revisited and updated. I don't agree with those arguments, but they're not as extreme out of the park, not just unconstitutional, but also bigoted as the travel ban. I mean, what's, you know, these things that you're talking about might not be as progressive on race as you and I want to be, but that's different than being a bigot of the pre-Civil rights era kind. And that's what I think the travel ban is. You know, at least in the campaign, we could talk about the continuity between that proposal and the ones that have happened now. What he did was shocking, should have been shocking to America. It was outright saying that he wants to discriminate against Muslims. And that's very different, I think, than the not as good as they should be policies about race that the Supreme Court used in the Shelby County case. You're right about voter suppression and targeting African-Americans and voter suppression. That's inexcusable as well. But I still, I guess, would make the argument that this is at a different level. I mean, what he's done is he's changed the national discourse by making it OK to be, you know, bigoted racist in an explicit way. And I think we're seeing more of that. That's different than the more subtle kinds of, what, bad policy about race than we see in these other instances. We're going to get to Comey's testimony in a second. But we've been talking about the First Amendment a lot on this show. And you're actually the only person I want to talk to about the First Amendment. You're the author of When the State Speaks, available for download on Amazon or for purchase. I find these First Amendment conversations, for me, tiresome because it's the same dance. But with you, obviously, it's different. With the travel ban, one of the things I learned from you is is it Lakumai? That was the big... That was your case where you answered the questions and played the role of a star student. Thank you. Let's just go over that one more time how great I was. Now, listeners to this show know that you called it before the travel ban was rejected by the circuit courts. They would bring up this case in Florida, where they take into account what the politicians, what the government officials say in the lead-up to the passage of a law. To me, this was breathtaking. I had no idea a government official could be held accountable for what they say about a law before they pass it. We are now discovering that a president has to watch what he says. He's been pretty quiet while Comey testifies, but he ran into some trouble on Twitter, going after the mayor of London. What happened on Twitter? Trump tweeted at the... I believe the mayor of London is Muslim. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And so, what did Trump tweet and did he undercut his argument for the travel ban by doing so? He had an earlier during the campaign and some time ago, the mayor of London spoke out against Donald Trump and criticized his Muslim ban and his bigotry in very direct and appropriately harsh terms. And Trump was, as you can expect, not happy about it. So there was some speculation. I did an interview a few days ago on the BBC and they were asking me about this, whether the tweets were a kind of retaliation to this earlier feud. And what he tweeted was criticism of the mayor for... Basically, his point was that he wasn't taking the security threat seriously, but he took a number of statements by the mayor out of context and made it look like where he was telling people not to panic when they saw an increased security presence on the street, for instance. He was using that to try to say that he's not worried about terrorism more generally. Do you want to get that call? Maybe it's the BBC asking why you're wasting your time with David Felden. Oh, I've got to go, David. That's the point. You need a outlet. Hang on for one second. Not that I'm being competitive with you, because I... I've got a list of the most important tweets. You're not at the bottom. I may not have been published in The New York Times. I never wrote an amicus brief, but this show occasionally cracks the top 20 on iTunes. Wow, that's pretty good. In the category... In the category of washed-up comedy writers with hair plugs. But still, you know, that's a... I rejected that call, by the way. Thank you. Had it been the BBC... You usually give me a couple of hours. Had it been The New York Times or The Washington Post... We wouldn't be talking right now. Whatever. But I know Lou Schneider and Jake Hogan. Yeah, I know. And what they ordered. And what they ordered. We're already digressing. You keep saying you want to focus. I was the one who taught you that if it bends, it's funny. But if it breaks... Probably many things. What does that mean exactly if it bends it's funny? Alan Alda in Crimes and Misdemeanors played this arrogant TV producer who Woody Allen wanted to strangle and he kept saying over and over again if it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it's not funny. Okay. That's... Comedy writers have these rules. These mosaic rules that come down from Sid Caesar and Jack Benny. Time minus comedy is tragedy. I don't know. I'm taking notes. Write this all down. You might learn something. Here's my one gift, Professor. What I do is I've just thrown dirt in your eye. And then you have to see if I come back. Uh-huh. Where were we? You tried this last time. Where were we, Professor? You did this with Ralph Nader, by the way. A little Sid Caesar lesson. You know what? Here's the problem with Ralph Nader. He's been on Saturday live a couple of times. He's hosted it a couple of times. You know that there's a Dean Martin roast of Ralph Nader? Did you know that? No, I'd like to see that. Ralph has had a more successful comedy career than I have. We were talking about the mayor of London. Can we get serious here? I don't want to... Yeah, please, Professor. So they have this... All of this stuff sounds like it's from a... I don't know, from a novel. But the fact is that Trump had this crazy fight with the mayor of London over being rebuked basically for the travel ban and the mayor called him out on his bigotry. And one suggestion that was made by these people on the BBC and elsewhere is that this is retaliation. So he kind of went on this tirade taking his quotes out of context and criticizing him. But he also, I think it was telling that what he might really be upset about is the travel ban issue because he used the same period of time to do a number of tweets about the travel ban itself. And they just absolutely undermined this case. So going back to this long theme that we're on, he said that he preferred the earlier, less politically correct version to this one. And one of the thoughts is what he really seems to be doing is admitting that it really was about outright bigotry in the first ban. And to the extent that they're continuous, it looks like that might still be the motivation. So this term politically correct, they had one of his advisors also earlier on the same show and the advisor was saying that we have to stop being politically correct and using this phrase. And at least in the context that they're using it I think what it means is we should be allowed to be more open in our bigotry. And I think these statements that Trump made about the earlier as opposed to the later ban he also had a statement, there was a separate tweet about basically he doesn't care what his lawyers say and what he was doing in these series of tweets is really undermining their argument that this has nothing to do with the earlier campaign statements that this is just a strictly about security. Nobody thinks that it's not politically correct to care about security or to have even a ban on countries. I think the politically correct point is really about the fact that he thinks that it's Islam as a religion that's to blame for terrorism and that the religion as a whole has to be targeted and that's not acceptable in our jurisprudence and the courts I think will see but I think they're going to use these statements as more evidence that this wasn't about the campaign it wasn't political statements it's an ongoing intent to discriminate against Muslims. I have a friend who's going through a lengthy divorce one of the things he's learned is that somebody like Trump who's gone through several divorces somebody who goes through a lot of civil litigation has learned might makes right. Do you think that Trump is utterly convinced that there's no difference between civil law and constitutional law? He's taking his cues from Roy Cohn who was a great divorce attorney if you were a man. Do you think he actually doesn't know the difference between civil law and constitutional law and thinks he can just outspend? You know I think that's a great point and I think you've hit on something deep about this president which is that courts, negotiation all these things are just pure battles of power and the idea that he's limited in what he can do or how he could be motivated because there are certain things that are just off base because of our constitution. I think you're absolutely right I've been you know writing about this and watching him and listening to his statements about this since the summer and he shows no comprehension of the idea that the document protects minorities or certain people and their ability to speak out against him and against government officials he just doesn't internalize these things because it's all about his power versus somebody else's and so to him you know the courts are just any other political actor and that's frightening to me because respecting the independence of the judiciary is the basis of the entire system and this isn't just some reality star anymore this is the commander in chief of the armed forces and the whole system rests on the idea that you comply with courts you respect them you respect the independence of the constitution you respect the limits on your office and when you have somebody who thinks he's in the equivalent of civil litigation with this bulldog lawyer also I guess McCarthy's right-hand man that's both accurate and it really speaks to how much trouble we are in with this president yeah Roy Cohn look him up yeah no I read his this is for the kids out there when I was a kid I read two biographies they both influenced me one was the Sid Caesar biography which we talked about or autobiography where have I been and talked about that at length and the other is I read Roy Cohn's autobiography you know I recommend that too if you want to see what a really sociopathic mind about politics is like and somebody who exactly as you said thinks everything is about power I read Roy Cohn's autoerotic asphyxiation biography now those jokes I brought that up because suddenly see when I say it professor see what it sounds like this is why you just stick to the law and make jokes like that it undercuts your reputation you made that joke I didn't make that joke I was doing that to show you I wanted you to hear it coming from somebody else this really is not like the BBC sometimes it seems like the BBC because they ask a question like what you asked and make a good point like is it really all about power but then they don't go in that weird direction you know you just make this extreme I don't even want to repeat the word do you? yeah well I think you're being disingenuous about the BBC I think when the microphone is off I have a feeling that's all they talk about you know about eating but we don't need to talk about the boardings the prep schools whatever they call them in London Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy right hand man he fried the Rosenbergs he got the Rosenbergs fried well and he just you know clearly was just somebody who cared about power he was the force behind McCarthy not because he had some ideological opposition to communism but because he and he might have been around some true believers but because he saw it as a way to increase his and his senator's power tell us all these stories in the book I mean I you know I read it when I was probably 11 but I just sticks with me because it's all about how to just show how with subtle moves you can really push somebody around I can't believe I remember this but he tells a story in there about having dinner we could look at this to see if I get it right but I think he tells a story about having dinner with Winston Churchill and kind of wanting to persuade him on some point and the way that he did it is he started eating off the prime minister's plate and that was just not something that he did on a formal dinner with the prime minister in England but he kind of used that as a way of sort of you know I'm not going to be intimidated by this situation that's you know that's interesting I didn't know that he had an autobiography I read the Nicholas von Hoffman book about him and I know that James Wood played Roy Cohn for an HBO movie and then actually has turned into Roy Cohn unfortunately he was the one who groomed Trump he was a mafia lawyer I don't think I can be sued from the grave for saying that David K. Johnston talks about that in the book that you cannot pour cement in Manhattan without the Gambino family and Roy Cohn was the buffer between Trump and the Gambino family that's all in David K. Johnston's book power Trump believes he has a sister who I think was a federal judge is he right or at least partly right to think that constitutional law is sometimes like civil law that sometimes might does make right I mean if you look at Bush v Gore and that decision wasn't that basically about power you know I was going to say now and try to resist it that is one decision that really it's hard to understand it in terms of pure principle and my concern there is that it was one of the most partisan moments in the courts history I mean I have a story about that and I guess goes to why I think it that I guess I can tell now when I was a grad student now deceased Justice Scalia came to Princeton and sat down with a small group of us and I asked him a question about how he could vote the way that he did he signed on to an opinion in the case that said that part of the reason why they were ruling the way they did is there was a problem with the way that Florida was counting votes that they weren't basically counting ballots equally and the opinion says that that is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution 14th Amendment that's fine except Scalia tends to hate the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause especially as a restriction on various voting procedures it cuts against his idea that we should defer to the states and let them basically decide for themselves how to do things and he doesn't think it's consistent with the original meaning of the clause that it was really about certainly a requirement of a national Equal Protection Standard for voting so I kept pushing him on this and he was being very funny he said well you know all these law people all you liberal law professor types you all I was a graduate student actually at the time you all have never seen a time when somebody has cited the Equal Protection Clause and not applauded it and now finally I'm doing it you're criticizing me for it so give me a break I'm doing what you want and I said well you know that's kind of nice story very funny but that's not consistent with what you seem to believe and there was another part of the opinion that he more plausibly did believe genuinely which is the idea that the Florida courts were usurping the role of the legislature it was a separate kind of argument that he also made but I was like why do you make this Equal Protection Argument and he said well we needed to get a coalition together and so I went along with it and it was a just sort of rare moment of like yeah it's not all principle we of course act based on politics and trying to get consensus and I just signed on to something that I don't agree with I got asked to you know kind of major journalist called me the next day because I told somebody who told this journalist and they wanted to put it in the paper in a major paper at the time I don't know I didn't do it because I thought that it probably wasn't the best thing to try to offend a Supreme Court justice right before going to law school you know I don't know he's obviously passed away now and I think it's important for the record to say that this happened and there were witnesses. Two points on that one is I want to thank you for remaining mum on that because as they say evil happens when great people speak up so that's what I was maybe I should have said something at the time it was a complication I don't know I have gone back and forth but you know at this point in time I think it's important to see that I don't know that it goes as far as to say that it's a purely partisan you know what could have been national news now I'm saying on your podcast I don't know it's it shows you that certainly it was a moment of frankness that sometimes it is about politics I guess my suspicion is too why was he trying so hard to really cobble this majority together and I think that unfortunately that the outcome that a republican that he was sympathetic to that trying to make that happen was part of it. Didn't they also say that this decision has is sui what is it sui this does not apply exactly as you said they said this is not a precedent and it won't apply going forward and you know that's weird because it's the definition of the law that when you make a case decision that it applies the principle of stare decisis says let the decision stand you try to decide cases based on previous cases that's the whole system of law and yet they said there this is a one time thing and what is stare what is stare decisis mean? It means literally let the decision stand but it's the stands more generally for the proposition that when a case is being decided you don't decide it on an ad hoc basis you don't say what do I feel like today you say what happened in the past how can we make this ruling consistent with what's happened before and the other thing about Bush versus Gore is that they seem to reject that fundamental principle of basically every other supreme court case ever and just to say this is a one time thing now why are they doing it? It's in addition to the story I told and other suggestion that it's an odd political decision. You met Scalia I never met Scalia but I've had dinner twice with Paul Cervino who looks exactly like Antonin Scalia you want to know what he ordered? No? You know? Okay I do okay I do want to know your sarcasm I might even That's okay I had dinner That's sarcastic. No no no Robert Smiglin I once had dinner with Paul Cervino who looks exactly like Antonin Scalia but your sarcasm I just thought you know I had a chance to make national news now you're turning it into somebody ordered for dinner. No it's okay I thought that you'd be more impressed but I guess it's the two worlds aren't going to always do you ever see Goodfellas? Many times absolutely Maybe if you behave. He's a great actor I should say. Well I'm just going to say it was at an Italian restaurant he ordered raw garlic whipped out a razor blade and sliced the garlic Wow perfectly clear like from Goodfellas He's terrific in that he plays the crime boss right he's the boss head of the family Paulie I think and I sat there a gape as Paul Cervino with his own razor blade cut these razor thin slices of garlic and then handed it back to the waiter so he could prepare his pasta puttanesca just like it was from the Goodfellas That movie has probably the greatest scene of any mafia movie of all time which is the part where Joe Pesci is telling a story and everybody's laughing and then the hill character says to him wow that's really funny remember that it just turns it up funny how exactly like I'm a clown I just came up with a new bit it's sort of like what you just did where we were having this serious discussion about Scalia and then you turned it into I have a new bit that I'm going to use on you as we proceed okay I'm going to make a really bad joke and then say you can have that in your next amicus brief you can use that, that's yours oh you know what I love that because I have to tell you this now my grandfather who I was very close with he passed away a long time ago but you know we were really good friends like throughout my childhood you're very lucky he didn't go to graduate from college he went to temple for a couple of years and he had your bit basically but a long time ago and he was not a professional comedy writer he would say every time he would ask me I was writing a kind of text book at the time it was the first thing I ever wrote and he'd say what is it about and I'd tell him it's about philosophy of punishment and there's the retributivist and the utilitarian view his eyes would sort of glaze over and then later in the day he'd see me and say you want to hear a story he tells this joke I can't remember what the joke was but some kind of silly this guy walks into a bar with a duck on his head and the duck says will you please get this guy off my butt some kind of classic joke like that that I had heard a million times and then I would kind of roll my eyes and he'd say put that in your book that's what people want to read alright so we could go on and on about your destination with my extensive collection of Fat Jack Leonard's hats I have the world's largest collection of Fat Jack Leonard's hats and Professor Brett Schneider keeps asking to come over and see it I explained to him it's an a vault Fat Jack Leonard used to come on stage with these hats do you ever see Fat Jack Leonard? no it's just like a Catskills thing you don't know who Fat Jack Leonard is? I'm sorry you like Don Rickles? yes alright let's get back to the travel ban and the mayor of London there is a travel ban in Great Britain there's talk that the government is going to ban Trump from visiting they have an actual travel ban for things people say or crimes they may or may not have committed a travel ban in and of itself is not unconstitutional the last show we did we talked about the travel ban that prevented Charlie Chaplin from returning to this country so could the solicitor general I believe it's the solicitor general who will defend the travel ban? they're going to say that that's their best argument we limited in this case called Mendel a Marxist professor from coming into the country and speaking at Stanford because of his beliefs it gives the president our constitution gives the president lots of discretion in who gets in and who doesn't if that's true then maybe Trump can even ban Muslims from the country that would be the extreme version of it that's an important argument that they'll make it's one of the things the supreme court will think about but my view is that there is a difference leaving the justness or not of that case aside there is certainly a difference between saying look we're not going to let somebody in the country because of their views advocating terrorism or in Trump's case advocating bigotry that's very different than saying we're going to ban somebody because of who they are and that's what the Muslim ban does it's a kind of core form of prejudice that bans religious people the children of religious people from coming into the country and that's religious discrimination but it's also akin to ethnic discrimination it's status-based discrimination is a technical way of putting it that's very different than trying to discern who's dangerous or who's not based on ideology or who's reprehensible or not we're talking about the establishment clause the first amendment where there's no official religion right but the point of our brief the point of what we say and this is largely what the fourth circuit did agree to is that what's going on regardless of the clause that you use is you can't denigrate a religion and so denigration is what the problem is and that's just like denigration based on race or ethnicity what if he had said we want to ban Arabs that also looks like ethnic discrimination but that's not the first amendment though no, it would be a different these are good deep questions we think there's a common principle that applies to three clauses the free exercise establishment and equal protection clauses the idea across all three clauses there's really one fundamental principle common to all of them and that's that you can't be a bigot you can't discriminate based on status now there are different kinds of status there's ethnicity there's as in your case that you just raised there's racial discrimination based on race and there's discrimination based on heritage or religion and that's the third kind it's the same idea in all three cases what are the three constitutional pillars you're citing? it's the establishment clause that's the first amendment number two is what? the clause that was technically at issue in the Lukumi case the ban on prohibiting the free exercise of religion also in the first amendment so that's two and the third is the ban on government not guaranteeing equal protection of the law that's part of the 14th amendment and does equal protection of the law apply to people who are not United States citizens they're gonna say no but in my view if the president is acting he cannot act based on an animus based motive or prejudice so imagine if the president tried to at the border ban non-citizens from coming in based solely on the color of their skin I think that's clearly unconstitutional now he's gonna have his lawyer say well I can do whatever I want you know when it comes to immigration and I think that's just wrong and there are cases that said that there's a case about Chinese exclusion that said well the president and congress can exclude people because they're Chinese I think that is an anachronistic and ancient idea that in our modern world has no place let me ask you about Korematsu the internment of the Japanese suppose Chojo who was the leader of Japan said you know what they have this amazing constitution they let anybody in let's create a fifth column let's just start sending Japanese citizens into America as immigrants and we are at war with the Japanese they decide to kind of invade America by sending Japanese soldiers over the soldiers posing as citizens would Roosevelt been right for establishing a travel ban and a meteor is heading towards us that could destroy the entire southern hemisphere this is just hypothetical I'm gonna leave the meteor aside sort of when you're teaching what you gotta do you gotta take the good part really encourage that really now I'm gonna digress but I just watched an episode of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt this should be your homework and Kimmy goes to Columbia and she learns she becomes a philosophy major and she starts learning about the trolley problem which I won't go into but it's a very classic problem in philosophy and she starts asking and everybody in the class is asking what trolley it is it's meant to be this moral dilemma that has nothing to do with the kind of trolley but they ask every irrelevant question about the trolley the meteor is a little bit but you had an earlier good point which was what do you do if it turns out that there really is a true factual security threat from some in your example members of the Japanese government that are trying to infiltrate the United States by a travel ban or would that justify what Roosevelt did in signing an executive order that eventually led to the internment of Japanese Americans and the answer to that is I think no in fact imagine in that actual case that there were some Japanese people who came into the country from Japan and posed a security threat would that justify what Roosevelt did which is rounding up Roosevelt signed an order allowing to happen and rounding up lots and lots of completely innocent people who had nothing to do with the government of Japan solely based on their ethnicity and the answer to me is wow that is I think one of the worst decisions in American history you can't blame people in a kind of collective punishment for their ethnicity because some people who have some ancient connection to them in the same country are engaging in some kind of bad activity that's a form of collective punishment it's a form of ethnic discrimination that has zero place in our constitutional culture you're right to push back and to say look here are the facts or these could be the facts and I think the answer that the modern court would give is we do not allow some actors who happen to share an ethnic profile with others we don't allow a blanket reason to go after an entire ethnicity and what they did in that case Supreme Court actually sided with Roosevelt they upheld the order they did not strike it down in Korematsu and that was a true constitutional tragedy we know that Putin supposedly we know this has tried to manipulate our elections I wouldn't put it past him sending refuse nicks into this country Russians posing as I don't really believe this by the way but I'm just it's a hypothetical we know that we're not at war with Russia but there's some kind of tension and they're trying to undermine our system so says the intelligence community if you can believe them but what if Putin starts sending Russian people into the country seeking asylum and we suspect that he's just sending what they call fifth columns well you know there's nothing and this is important I should have clarified this too when you were giving your Japanese example there's nothing that prevents the government from vetting people I mean that's what the Obama administration was doing was they had a series of procedures that looked at who somebody was who their background was and whether there was a chance that they posed a danger to the country and certainly the United States did and continues to exclude people based on an investigation of how dangerous they might be and based on a kind of close vetting that vetting includes going through their Facebook accounts what they say they don't have full constitutional rights but what we're saying and what I think the Supreme Court should say is that there's nothing that prohibits the government from exercising vast powers of inquiry and figuring out who comes into the country or not and it's actually the obligation of the executive branch to keep the country safe but there's no evidence in this case and we could look at the other examples that you're giving that there's any increase in the security to the United States that comes from this ethnic discrimination as opposed to what was going on in the Obama administration so you know what's the point of it what's the rationale it looks like it's just bigotry and this is what a number of the one of the judges on the West Coast said in one of the early cases is what is the point of this policy what is it going to do that would be better than the previous policy and the government had a very hard time giving an answer to that So you're saying that if this travel ban had been issued by Obama it might hold up I don't think he would have done it there would be no reason to have a ban that's the point the policies they had in place were more effective than the current one based on individual vetting yeah vetting of the individual rather than somehow giving a I don't know a basing it on ethnicity or your religion which seems like the worst way to do it Well Trump claims that the idea of the travel ban came from the Obama administration Yeah that's completely false the Obama administration had designated some of these countries for my understanding is for privileges when it came to immigration and at one point they decided they were going to do away with those privileges for I think it was for dual citizens from those countries and the Obama administration said you know what this doesn't make sense to have these privileges anymore but the idea that there was some sort of semi travel ban from these countries is false On the last show not with you I was talking about it's not what you say it's who says it for example Bill Maher has gotten into hot water for using the N word and I maintain it's really not about the use of the N word it's about Bill Maher it's because he said it because people don't trust him anymore due to his comments about Islam if something happened in this country that necessitated Obama issuing a travel ban which is not you know he deported more undocumented workers than every other president of the past 30 years combined I mean ICE really found its power in the Obama administration we remained silent on it because of what Obama sounded like so isn't it often as we've learned from Lakuma it's not what you do it's really what you said before you do it well it's partly that but it's not just word it's about the kind of motivation and I you know I disagree with some of the policies of the previous administration but what I think is different about this administration is I don't think that Obama was engaging in intentional discrimination based on religion or race or ethnicity I think to the contrary he taught I mean it's kind of an amazing contrast when he was at University of Chicago Law School he taught Constitutional Law and he had a deep commitment to the idea that no matter what a president does they can't discriminate based on race religion or ethnicity and I think he vetted their policies to make sure precisely that they weren't doing that now as we were saying in the beginning of the conversation not only has President Trump not internalized these norms he seems completely unaware of them so that to me is just a striking contrast in the Constitutional Law Professor really devoted his life to the idea of equal protection and somebody who couldn't even tell you what that was or what provision that came from. We're almost out of time and I want to be respectful of your time and I want to have some quick questions about Comey but I just want to push back on something with Obama because I do find this interesting when it comes to what people do versus what they say and who can't. I love Obama I agree with you he's a Constitutional Law Professor Harvard Law Review we trust him with the Constitution Trump on the other hand is this Wharton you know went to Wharton Business School for two years hasn't picked up a book I think that an argument could be made that Obama is guilty of just as many Constitutional Prisons as Trump extrajudicial killings the rounding up of primarily undocumented Mexicans record numbers of undocumented Mexicans being rounded up by ICE not being given equal protection being sent to private prisons not being given lawyers being forced to go through administrative law as opposed to government law but it's Obama so it's okay I guess I want to agree with you here rather than try to fight back you're making again a deep point which is we tended to excuse constitutionally problematic policies when it was somebody who I'll admit that I was a fan of Obama and so I wasn't speaking out on a daily basis against him I just admired him and in retrospect that was a mistake I think that we have to going forward regardless of party take constitutional limits seriously say the kind of things that you were saying but I don't want to create a false equivalence I think he did things that were constitutionally problematic but not intentionally in the way that Trump did he didn't have intentional discrimination at the basis of a lot of his policies and as an order of magnitude saying you're going to torture the families of suspected terrorists with its many constitutional violations in that one sentence Obama never came anywhere close to that I think he had a good faith desire to comply with the constitution even if all of his policies did not I want to move on because we're running out of time and this is by the way this is the best episode I've done with you thank you this is fantastic do I thank you or say congratulations Sorvino ordered red wine that's how good it was I'm going to give you a little I'm throwing you a bone so one of the things I've kind of learned today realized is I understand now what Trump is thinking about power if you get into that tiny head of his I think he understands what I happen to believe which is what you say or what you do it's how you say it it's who is saying it and it's who is doing it I think that's what Roy Cohn taught him I think that isn't fair and we have to prevent that from continuing to happen but that's what Trump believes right I think so from what I've seen and listening to him for these past year at least and before he does not seem to be motivated by ideals he doesn't seem to have anything like an ideology or values aside from his own interest and you know there are academics trying to figure out what Trump stands for what Trumpism is and to give it the best possible spin that's an impossible task because this is somebody who is really from the Roy Cohn School of Politics it's all about power and angling it's the guy who when he met Winston Churchill ate off his plate it's not somebody who's having a deep conversation about what the values of a Democratic Republic should be seems to me Roy Cohn learned this wasn't his father a judge it's been a long time since I read it Roy Cohn's father yeah Roy Cohn's father was a judge so he knew something that maybe some of us didn't know going into law school very quickly very quickly and try to keep it clean I think he went to Columbia that's the other thing I remember yeah let's keep it clean if you can try Comey FBI Chief James Comey testified yesterday before the Senate Intelligence Committee you know they had the countdown clock on every network how big is this everything has to be big everybody everything this is as big as Watergate this is as big as Contragate this is as big as David Feldman's first Tonight Show appearance how big is this I mean is it on par with my appearance on match game that's the question again got a little lost there we're told that there's so much hype in this country and there's the countdown clock you know five hours until James Comey testifies this is big don't bother going to work today it's a snow day because Comey's testifying this is the Army McCarthy hearings this is Watergate this is Contragate this is David Feldman you're saying what's the big deal I'm asking you is it as big as you I think it is oh my god James Comey it looks like from what he's going to say he's testifying today that the President of the United States cared more about loyalty to him than loyalty it's exactly what we're talking about than loyalty to the Constitution and the idea that he you know when the Flynn investigation seemed to imply that it was important to back off because of being one a member of the team and Flynn is a good guy he's got a lot of votes that was used rather than doing the job of the one of the most important law enforcement officials in the country which is to apply the law impartially that's frightening and that is impeachable without question I've heard enough through these various instances of threatening to disobey judicial orders of firing an FBI director in order to impede an investigation that even if there is not legal culpability in the criminal law our obligation in thinking about whether there's a high crime or misdemeanor is not a legal one it's a political one and it really comes down to whether we have a president that is or is not able to enforce the basic requirements of the Constitution and what we've been saying really builds up to this point not only is he not able to he's unaware of and indifferent to its requirements and that's why he could basically fire this person demand loyalty to him over loyalty to the Constitution it is devastating and it is I think worse than what happened during Nixon because Nixon was a lawyer and had many many psychological and personal faults and you know we could go through the list of what was wrong with Nixon but this level of hostility to the not just the Constitution but the rule of law is unprecedented and yes it is time for the Republicans to step up and to begin impeachment proceedings just try to filter all this through the Republican brain and I'm just trying to understand how they can defend this asking the head of the FBI not to investigate that would be obstruction of justice right I mean that's just I mean my point is you know it might be that's a real question is whether or not he violated the criminal law which bans competing criminal investigation but my point is that the question of impeachment is not that we are asked when we talk about high crimes and misdemeanors the reason why the founders delegated the task to the Congress the House of Representatives to impeach and the Senate to try is because it's not a legal standard and it's not just partisan politics it's not let's do this to anyone we can but it is a question for the American people and their representatives in Congress to ask whether or not this president is hostile to the basic principles of the rule of law and so even if it's not criminal it is I think enough for impeachment the president had been thinking of blocking Comey from testifying there was no way a president can prevent a private citizen which Comey is from testifying right I mean I'd have to hear the argument but I don't see how you know there is this idea of executive privilege and Nixon tried to use it to keep the water gate the tapes from the Oval Office and that concerned water gate from a subpoena and the court in U.S. versus Nixon basically to me said the president is not above the law now there are some presidential immunities and some privileges so for instance you can't just subpoena the president's counsel and ask him or her to testify about what the president said in a confidential conversation there's work product that's privileged and a lot of the business of the Oval Office is I think potentially privileged but what is not possible to do is to use executive privilege to as you said prevent the now private citizen from testifying I mean there is a case called Fitzgerald whether you can sue the president for money damages for official acts and what they say there is that you can't but that's not what this is about this is about a president trying to stop a former employee from testifying and I don't see any precedent or argument for why he could do that and you know what I think if he could have he would have done it I think he would must have told them there's no way well this was the best you were amazing and you were so good here's your treat I was wondering I thought you were going to give us the wine no I'm going to give you something even more that big lunch that I had at Jerry's in the valley with Lou Schneider and Jay Cogan the comedy writers here you go you deserve this for dessert Lou Schneider had cheesecake with blueberries on top he finished half of it patted his stomach and said you know what it's the middle of the day I should stop Jay Cogan ordered the sugar free banana nut muffin and finished it although he said it's greasy and what they do to make up for the lack of sugar is they put a lot of fat in this and so it's empty and not satisfying but I'm going to finish it and go take a nap okay well I've got this on tape there so that's what and I do like cheesecake Professor Cory Brett Schneider is a constitutional law professor at Brown and Fordham he's the author of When the State Speaks you've read him in the New York Times Politico he is a God bless you sir this is the highlight of my week it really is my pleasure I always have a great time thank you thank you thanks for listening please friend me on Facebook follow me on Twitter hey do me a favor give us a good review on iTunes remember to do all your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman show website we get a small percentage of everything you purchase the way you do it is you go to the David Feldman show website David Feldman show .com you'll see an Amazon banner click on it go all the way through to the Amazon site shop away and we get a small percentage of everything you purchase during that shopping session and then after you do that hit the contact button back over at the David Feldman show and let me know that you did that so I can thank you hey hit the contact button over at the David Feldman show and just say hello tell me what we can do to improve this program for as little as $5 a month you can gain access to all our premium content go to David Feldman show .com hit the go premium button we accept all major credit cards I guess that's it from the showbiz studios in downtown Manhattan Medicare for all