Comedian Kathleen Madigan, Las Vegas Sun, April 11, 2003

Columnist Lisa Ferguson: TV news is a muse for award-winning Madigan Lisa Ferguson Friday, April 11, 2003 | 8:32 a.m. Lisa Ferguson's Laugh Lines column appears Fridays. Her Sun Lite Column appears Mondays. Reach her at lmsferguson@yahoo.com. In the newspaper business, it's not often you interview someone who can fully appreciate what it's like to sit on this side of the desk, asking the "tough questions" and praying for answers fit for print. Then along comes Kathleen Madigan. Before embarking on her award-winning stand-up comedy career in 1990, Madigan spent two years writing features stories for "suburban journal"-editions of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. As a freelance reporter, she often covered lightweight stories. She recalls interviewing the owner of the largest stamp collection in North St. Louis. "I thought, 'Oh, this is really stupid,' " she says, "and I got over there and I was like, 'OK, this is the weirdest thing I've ever seen.' " So she wasn't penning Pulitzer Prize winners. Still, her brief journalism career afforded an insider's view of the media that's evident in Madigan's topical comedy, which she performs through Sunday at The Improv at Harrah's. Madigan spoke to the Sun in March from her Los Angeles home. A little more than a week into the war with Iraq, she opened fire on television news coverage leading up to and during the conflict. It's ironic, she says, that the United States has spent billions of dollars hunting for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein when, earlier this year, CBS anchor Dan Rather "was sitting 2 feet from him" during an interview. "I'm like, 'Dan has (Saddam's) cell-phone number.' Why couldn't (Rather) try to take him out? ... He had a pen. He could have pulled some crazy 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' thing. Take a bullet for the team, Dan. Do you think Arnold Schwarzenegger would have just sat there and asked questions? No. You could have been a superhero; now you're just back to being weird-ass Dan Rather. ' " Also, it seems to Madigan that TV news reporters are playing by a different set of journalism rules. "I guess during war, no one cares anymore," especially when it comes to accuracy, she says. Cable news channels, she alleges, have run with stories before getting the facts straight. "Fox News and MSNBC (reporters) go, 'Look, I don't know if any of this (news) is true, but I'm gonna go ahead and tell ya,' " she says. " 'I haven't confirmed any of this, but I heard it from a guy that was standing next to a tank, under a camel.' " Then there's the footage of anti-war protesters, to which the 36-year-old Madigan just can't relate. "I cannot think of one thing that, on my day off, I would get my ass off the couch (for). And then I've gotta go find cardboard and a marker," she joked. "In my act, I go, 'I thought about it and the only thing I can come up with is if they said they were turning off everybody's cable. I'd be like, 'All right, I've gotta go down there. This is serious.' " If you aren't yet laughing at Madigan's take on current events, maybe you should. "There's something funny in almost anything," she says. "You know what they say: Tragedy plus time equals comedy. It's the time that's the thing." But how does one find any humor in, say, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster? "That was horrible," Madigan says of the Feb. 1 explosion that killed all seven astronauts aboard. "But then, the next day, (the anchors) come on CNN and go, 'Uh, please don't pick up the debris.' And I'm like, 'Uh, it's (spread over) Texas. If you don't think Scooter and Cooter already aren't out there with a bucket and a hose -- wrong!' " Nor is religion a sacred cow. Madigan, a Catholic, quips about Pope John Paul II and his questionable health. "If you saw him at a cocktail party, you'd call an ambulance. You wouldn't know why you did it; you'd just instinctively know it's the right thing to do ... When you can't lift your head up, the tour's over. We have to go home now." Despite her controversial subject matter, Madigan contends she isn't out to offend audiences -- neither those at the comedy clubs and corporate gigs where she performs nationwide nor viewers of her many late-night TV talk show appearances (she's guested on "The Tonight Show" a dozen times), Comedy Central and HBO stand-up specials. "A lot of comics ... they'll go full guns and not care if the audience freaks out, but I don't like confrontation," she says. "I try to stay as topical as I can, and it's good for me when everybody is focused on the same (news event). It's really hard to be topical when there's topical stuff going on but nobody really cares." Voted Best Female Stand-Up Comic at the 1996 American Comedy Awards, Madigan estimates she's on the road working at least half of the year. On April 19 she's headed back to St. Louis (her hometown) to film a live performance for an upcoming DVD. In the fall she'll record a live CD -- her third -- in Denver. Look for Madigan to again sit a spell on the late-night TV couches later this year. She most enjoys visiting "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," as it's "just flat-out fun to do," she says. "Conan's (staff), they're like, 'Look, we're on at four in the morning. Nobody cares; do what you want; have a good time; just don't get us sued.' " Not likely: After all, Madigan knows firsthand the press would have a field day if that were to happen. Out for laughs How's this for a lineup: Comedian Allyn Ball, a 6-foot-5-inch 230-pounder who describes his style as "punk rock grows up," shares the stage April 22 through April 27 at the Plaza's Comedy Zone with "The Educated Redneck" Dan Ellison. Should make for an, um, interesting evening. archive