Comedian Evan Sayet doesn’t mind preaching to the choir with his unabashedly conservative material.
Sayet, who divides his time between sober political punditry and satire, tells Breitbart News the choir needs all the enthusiasm it can muster these days.
“If this is a culture war, I’ve gotta be a part of this fight with the weapons I do have. There’s no Bill Maher for the right,” Sayet says. “I’m not attempting to persuade liberals in the slightest … I’m rallying [conservatives], letting them feel comfortable.”
On Oct. 3, Sayet will bring his decidedly right of center shtick to the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. Discount advanced tickets for the 8 p.m. show are available through EvanSayet.com.
Not sure where Sayet stands on the political issues that matter? His routine quickly sets things straight.
“My opening bit is, ‘I am 100 percent convinced the modern liberal is the stupidest person who has ever lived,'” says Sayet, author of KinderGarden of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks.
His routine explains why some liberals, like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and anchor Katie Couric, manage to rise to the top of their respective professions. They thrive in gigs involving all talk, no action, lecturing others as if they were children rather than getting things done, he argues.
Conservative comedians may seem like a rare breed, minus sterling exceptions like Dennis Miller, but Sayet reports there are far more GOP-friendly comics than one might suspect. The trick, of course, is finding them. Mainstream comics like Bill Maher and David Letterman loathe conservatives, so getting plum gigs on their shows is a challenge, he says.
Sayet says a Showtime executive once told him his conservative humor would hurt the channel’s “brand.” That leaves Sayet and fellow “bitter clingers” like the talented Brad Stine to work church circuits and Republican events to administer the laughs.
Sayet didn’t start his stand-up career embracing the right.
“I was culturally biased to the left, but not intellectually biased,” he says.
He toured the country and later found work writing for Arsenio Hall, Maher and Comedy Central’s long-running game show Win Ben Stein’s Money.
The left’s response to the terror attacks on 9/11 changed his political philosophies, what with liberal professor Ward Churchill’s tirade against his fellow Americans and other progressives trying to defend or explain away the actions of men bent on slaughtering innocents.
“We’re supposed to hate religious fanatics I thought,” he says.
Today, Sayet relishes the chance to share his conservative views as both a sought-after speaker and comedian, but sometimes the two sides of his career collide.
“I have a unique problem because I speak so often at local clubs, regional events … people think they’ve seen me [already]. Why pay a two-drink minimum,” he says. “I need to hammer home that even if you think you’ve seen me you haven’t seen me. My comedy is my comedy.”
That means fusing his thoughtful commentaries with stand-up jokes, and he says that brings with it an extra burden since moving to the right.
“There’s a purpose to what I say now. I’m required to do what a comedian is not required to do, to be right. I’m not just going for the joke,” he says.