WHEN I WAS ON THE ROAD a lot in my salad days–which, ironically, is the time in all of our lives when we almost never eat salads–my favorite audiences were always in the Twin Cities.
Now since I’m not running for office, you can believe me when I say I also really liked every other place I played, because it’s true. Every city I worked across the United States and Canada was a great job. Some of the clubs were nicer than others, some were far nicer, and some stunk. But the audiences were always there to be entertained, and any decent comic had plenty of clay to mold.
But I always liked the Twin Cities a little better. The crowds were smart, the clubs rang like bells, and when HBO asked where I might want to film one of those specials they used to do, I picked the World Theater in St. Paul without a beat. (If memory serves, and in this case it does, the night of that taping I drank so much at the wrap party I missed the opportunity to, er, date someone who had come there to, er, date me, and instead left her at the bar to go out for eggs I didn’t eat with some other comics and kept drinking, just plain forgetting about the whole thing, at which point I dozed off very, very suddenly. Ah, youth. I have never forgotten that girl at the bar, and can still see her sitting there, and to this day I only think of her every three or four minutes. But that’s another story.)
I guess I worked in the Twin Cities 15 or 20 times, and I used to have a bit in my act I only used there.
“How many of you think there will be world peace someday?” I’d ask. Everyone would raise their hands, and I’d say, “Well, there will never be world peace. There will never be world peace, not even close, and I have the proof, and it’s sitting right in front of me. It’s all of you. All of you prove there will never be world peace.”
Off their puzzled expressions, I continued. “Look at yourselves. Some of you live in St. Paul, some live in Minneapolis. You’re all Americans, but it just starts there. You live in the same state, and your cities are, of course, not just next to each other, but cheek-to-jowl. In fact, cheek-to-cheek. In fact, as Groucho Marx once said to a woman he was hugging, ‘Closer? If I were any closer, I’d be behind you.’
“You speak the same language, you have the same customs, and virtually all of you are Scandinavian, so you come from the same places, the same religion, the same habits, the same accents, the same speech patterns, the same families. It’s all Carlson, Hanson, Anderson, Paulson . . . Every few generations someone decides to spell Hanson with an ‘e’ and the whole state will talk about it for years. You even look about the same. You could just go to each others’ Thanksgivings, and no one would notice. In fact, maybe that’s something you should consider, just for fun.
“The point is, by any measure, you’re all exactly the same. And yet . . . If you had the chance, you would kill each other in a second.
“You would obliterate your neighbors. You would kill them and take their children, and sell them, or raise them, or eat them. You would nuke them, gas them, stab them, whatever it took, and you would all sleep just fine that night, deeper and longer than you have in years. Kim Jong Il would have more pangs of conscience than you.
“So why would you ever expect the English and the Irish, or the Arabs and the Jews, or the Indians and the Pakistanis to suddenly drop their guns and sing ‘We Are The World’? No, there will never be world peace.”
And folks would laugh, and I’d move on, and after the show people would come up with big smiles and say, “You’re right about us. We hate each other.” And in my head I was always thinking, yes, but why?
I’VE BEEN REMEMBERING that because of Martha Stewart. Why do people hate her so much? They do, you know. Not everyone, but lots of them. You probably do. Come on, admit it. And long before she ever took that call from her broker, too.
I don’t. I have enormous respect for her, and always have. I have no interest in her shows, or her magazines, or the books, or the whole thing she does, but that’s neither here nor there. Like most men, I don’t need to know how to get stains out of things, because I’m just going to spill something again, and I really don’t care in the first place.
But about Martha Stewart the person, I have always felt: She’s brilliant, she’s capable, she’s industrious, she sees the small and the big picture, she’s ambitious, she’s unafraid; in short, she’s the best of us. She may be the best American, the one we’ve been breeding for two hundred years, the one the founders had in mind, the one who says, “This is the day that the Lord hath made, and I will take it and run with it. And you can’t stop me.”
Ah, but they can, Martha, at least for a while. The great individual and collective Beast cannot let you go about your business and be the best version of yourself. They hate you because they hate themselves, because they’re too afraid and weak to create something in their own lives, and it’s easier to eat candy and say, “Who does she think she is? I can’t look in the mirror and hate that, so I’ll look at the TV screen and hate her. If I can drag her down a couple of pegs she’ll be closer to me, and I won’t have to drag myself up. Yes, that will be easier all the way around.”
And I agree with the thought that there’s a dash of woman-hate in the recipe. The beast hates men, too, certainly, but there’s a special layer that goes on for women: Get a load of this flashy, arrogant you-know-what.
I DON’T KNOW WHY, but over the years I’ve found myself rallying to people whenever they get chopped down, even if I didn’t like them beforehand. I don’t like gang tackles, and a public flogging seems to be a good time to start liking someone.
For instance, I never felt much one way or the other about Kathy Lee Gifford. I worked on their show a few times, and she was always gracious and professional, and I hope I was, too, and I respected her, and that was that. But when The Beast said, “Time for her to pay,” I took her side. You don’t like that one of her businesses makes t-shirts in Central America? Too bad. She didn’t even know it, either, until it came out, and then they stopped it, and what’s the giant crime anyway, that she’s rich? You don’t like the way she talks about her husband and kids? Trying turning off the TV and worrying about your own family.
Leona Helmsley was another. Anyone who ever lived in Manhattan knew the name Helmsley-Spear and probably wrote his rent check to them. They were the biggest ever, and Harry Helmsley was the guy, and he loved Leona, and she loved him very much, and they were never apart, and she was as good at business as he was. And they had a great tragedy with a son, and Harry passed on, and Leona took over, and she did it so well “Sixty Minutes” did a profile. Then the company started using her in those “No one wants to make the Queen angry” airplane ads.
And that was that. That’s when The Beast said, “Time to pay.”
There was a trial, and the maids and the ex-friends breathlessly whispered that they heard her yell at someone once, and the press gravely passed it on: “Leona Helmsley’s maids and friends said she yelled at someone once.” And everyone leaned over to each other with drinks at night and said, “I knew it as soon as I saw her face in the magazine, I said, ooh, I’ll bet she yelled at someone once, isn’t that what I said?”
And the Queen went to the crowbar hotel, and there was a great pause while all the inmates in the cultural asylum watched her very, very closely and thought, “Not so big a queen now, are you?” and slowly turned their glazed eyes away to look for someone else to hate.
Now. Did Leona Helmsley cheat on her taxes? I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s why she was hunted. Did Martha Stewart lie or do something wrong? I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s why she was treed, either. It’s certainly not why The Beast went after her so hard and long and joyously.
NO, there will never be peace in the world. Well, someday there will, when we’re all glowing balls of light. (Even then I’ll probably still be thinking about that girl in St. Paul.) But not soon. And every American interested in moving that way would probably be wise to start by looking inside and taking responsibility for the beast and wondering, “Why did we have to hate Martha Stewart so much?”
By the way, if she’s smart, she’ll stop the appeals and pack up those books we all have and never get to, and do the five months. It won’t be fun, but it won’t be Pelican Bay, either, and she’ll be out in time to tell us all how to make Christmas cards out of the (INSERT YOUR OWN PRISON CELL-MATTRESS TICKING JOKE).
Horribly, I think the various media will be giving us an unasked for blow-by-blow: “She’s making license plates . . . Her daughter visited . . . She busted out, and it’s the first escape tunnel with Queen Anne chairs.” Well, she’ll get through it, and we will, too.
And if you want to see some real, top shelf, major league hatred, keep your eyes on the next three months until November 2.
Better yet, let’s all join Martha in the slammer, and come out when it’s over. Imagine that? She’s probably the lucky one.
Larry Miller is a contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles.
