Recap Lewis Black at Riverside Theater

As far as Lewis Black is concerned, it’s never to late for a George W. Bush joke. “He may be proof that you don’t elect a dry drunk,” the best-selling author and Daily Show contributor quipped early during his show Saturday at Riverside Theater to a smattering of laughs. “If I could expect a laugh for that joke anywhere, it’d be here,” Black added, referring to Wisconsin, where over the years he’s learned to “become very comfortable with my alcoholism.”

But if Black was “heartily disappointed” that this particular Bush joke bombed, it didn’t prevent him from launching further attacks on the powers that be (or were) during his 75-minute set. And it wasn’t just Republicans that got a dressing down from the famously ginned-up, left-leaning comic—Black made it clear that he has equal contempt for Democrats. To Black, “the two-party system is a bowl of shit looking in the mirror at itself,” which was confirmed during the eight years that Bush was the in White House, when “Republicans were standing around farting, and Democrats were saying, ‘Ooh, let me smell it.’”

Black is a man in obvious need of a hug. His bleakly cynical worldview—there are no heroes, just easy targets for the spittle darts shooting out of his ranting mouth—would be tough to take in large doses if it weren’t so cartoonish. As Black has grown more popular, his self-described “bitter fuck” persona has overwhelmed the man who created it. You could describe Lewis Black as Larry The Cable Guy for liberals, and be exaggerating only slightly. “I’ve listened to the shit that comes out of my mouth, and personally, I’m fucking appalled,” Black said at one point, though you’d have to be a fool to believe that coming from a man this self-consciously “angry.”

It was telling that Black ended up talking as much about his popular persona as he did about politics Saturday night. (He also talked a lot about another P—pot, which he brilliantly called “a gateway drug to the kitchen.”) A highlight of the show was a lengthy anecdote about having to follow country star Vince Gill and his wife Amy Grant during a show in St. Louis. The point of the story was Black’s amazement that he’s now big enough for someone like Gill to open for him. “It doesn’t get anymore mainstream than Vince fucking Gill,” he said. Similarly, Black can’t believe that he’s now hosting USO shows. “How in my lifetime did we go from Bob Hope to me?” he wondered.

Black’s popularity built on an outsider image that seems more and more fabricated the more accepted he becomes. That his show was so funny Saturday shows that he’s found away to work around this contradiction. As long as he keeps his merciless eye trained on moronic politicians—and away from Hope-style golf jokes—he should be free to indulge in plenty more bitter fuckery to come.