The Chris Moeller Archives

The 9/11 comedian

Howard Stern’s book of interview transcripts is out-- and I’m devouring it. The self-annointed "king of all media" truly is the greatest interviewer we have, in my estimation, and this one culls from his best and presents only the highlights from those best. So just imagine how provocative and engaging it is to sit down with these 550 pages.

One of the most interesting interviews he’s ever conducted on either terrestrial or satellite radio is one that speaks to the act of interviewing itself. Steve Rannazzisi is a stand-up comic and the star for several years of FX’s The League. As that series was winding down in 2015, it was revealed in the New York Times that Rannazzisi had not been-- as he had claimed for many years-- inside one of the Twin Towers when the first plane hit on 9/11. The fact that he had lied about it was confusing to many, including me. The presumption that people have is that the then-very-unknown comic created the story as a way to boost his career. Before Pete Davidson (of SNL Fame, whose father died in the disaster) became the unofficial 9/11 comedian, Rannazzisi was kind of the guy. And though the two quickly came to forgiveness and understanding, Davidson joined many others initially in 2015 in condemning Rannazzisi for his offense.

Since I’m not easily offended by such crimes against humanity, I find myself pondering mostly the why. I gave an interview last year-- to my friend, Jamie Marchiori. It was in respect to this blog. It was a maiden voyage for him in podcasting, an uncertainty for both of us about what was beginning, but I still felt a terrific pressure to be entertaining as a guest. During the recorded chat, I attempted a few dumb and pointless jokes, which he mostly and mercifully sliced out. It was promotion for me, I felt. I wanted to justify being interviewed to begin with, just as Rannazzisi would have wanted to do when he first told the lie publicly to Marc Maron on the WTF podcast in 2009, shortly after scoring his big break on The League. (However, he had been telling comedy colleagues the story going back to 2001.) I wanted to build a persona in my brief little chat. I very consciously attempted it. My pal didn’t yet have any episodes for me to listen to as an outline so I imagined he was Gilbert Gottfried on the Amazing Colossal Podcast, and I was someone he would want to invite back.

We all constantly do this, I believe. Most of us likely come right up even to the edge of what Rannazzisi did. Self-deception is everything in this life. The truly big difference between him and most of the rest of us is that his lie could be easily fed into the grinder of manufactured public outrage. It allowed sharpened observers to promote their own patriotism by harshly judging his offense and cudgeling the rest of us once more with that well-worn sword.

God knows his unique crime was not using the tragedy of 9/11 to his own personal benefit. An entire government department-- Homeland Security-- was invented for the purpose of letting private business steal from the national treasury. Hundreds of politicians built themselves up by sewing the fear of foreigners into the fabric of the nation. We went to war with a handful of uninvolved countries over the day’s events. Police departments and officers’ unions, in New York and beyond, continue to tap into your memory of the tragedy in an attempt to disguise their crimes in other areas. Airlines fought tooth and nail for years against regulations to install security doors on cockpits, but quickly asked for federal dollars to do it in the wake of the thousands of lives being lost in 2001. I consider each of those acts to be much more shameless than Rannazzisi’s.

Many of his loudest detractors were probably doing so exactly to promote themselves and/or their pet causes, not unlike he had done. It’s a cottage industry. And not to point at Davidson, but even he likely got a tiny bump by piling on in that particular moment that his colleague was outed. Comedians are ball-busters. They make their living as society’s truth-tellers, and Pete’s arc becomes even more authentic when another one flames out by comparison, and he pushed a couple snarky tweets out before coming around to forgiveness.

I’m sure we can all appreciate how a small lie is capable of growing. Tangled webs and all that. And I don’t doubt that, as a New Yorker, Rannazzisi felt deeply connected to the story from its inception-- a very scary story. I was quite scared at the time of 9/11 myself, and I remember being pushed towards it even more so by people around these faraway parts seemingly even more scared than I was. And we were more than a thousand miles away from the smoke. From the gun, the news media throughout the land was telling us how important this event was-- but also, don’t forget, how important we were to be living through it. Our confusion and narcissism led us to believe we were targets in Iowa at the time as well, even though the hindsight of history has made that idea seem quite foolish. Really? They’re coming for our fertilizer? (That’s where Homeland Security came in.) Natural narcissism was mixed with great fear, a little of it justified, much of it, honestly, irrational.

Recorded interviews by celebrities invite so much lying. The entire idea of the interview, typically, is to build the interviewee’s brand. There’s no way that every celebrity in Hollywood was a nerd in high school, yet their individual claims lead us to believe that almost every one of them was. They want people to like them. Steve Rannazzisi wanted people to like him. Then he went on the Howard Stern show to apologize because, he said, Howard and his show “personified New York.” (Aside again: great show, great book.) Steve is a gifted comedian and actor, and based on that, wouldn’t necessarily need to have lied to aid his way along, but he must also know that his business-- entertainment-- is an insatiable one, and not a reasonable one. It makes unfair expectations upon its practitioners, and 100% truthfulness would certainly be one of those.

posted by CM @ 6:02 PM