Harris: Comedian Will Durst is joining us now live from Oakland where he is interrupting a production meeting for his PBS show, Livelyhood. It ran here in Washington at the end of December and he is working on another one for a couple of months from now, but I wanted to get Will on here because earlier this week he was in Green Bay, Wisconsin…Cheesehead City. Hi, Will!
Durst: Hey, how you doing, Mr. Harris? Who are you rooting for on Sunday?
Harris: The Packers. You’re originally from Wisconsin, so you kind of have cheese in your blood, right?
Durst: Yeah. I actually think it’s green by now.
Harris: What was Green Bay like when you were there? What’s the mood of the people? Are they just out of their heads with excitement?
Durst: They’re very excited. I am a little frightened. They already think they’ve won it.
Harris: Really?
Durst: Yeah. There might be a little complacency. I don’t know if it has filtered down to the team, but in Green Bay, it’s a done deal. You go up there, “All right! Two in row!” Well, you actually do have to win. They don’t play it on paper. Oh man, it was like 14 or 15 degrees and they were so excited that we were there. The weather was so beautiful. My crew and I are just looking around at them to see if they’re trying to be ironic or anything. It had been 5 below the week before. “Oh, you guys are so lucky you came when it was so nice out here. Oh, geez, look at, isn’t that beautiful?” And we’re freezing our butts off and they’re so happy.
Harris: Now, do people in their everyday life walk around with those stupid cheeseheads on their head?
Durst: No, but we ran into the weirdest thing. We were right on the street and outside the county’s Social Services building. It was 3:15 on a Friday afternoon, and suddenly people come pouring out of the building, and they have a pep rally! Right on the street! Right outside! “Honk if you like your Packers!” Everybody is wearing green and gold. The sheriff’s car was parked in the middle of the road and using the loudspeakers. They were playing music and chanting, “Go Pack! Go Pack!” The sheriff’s car! It is pretty much Fargo in green and gold.
Harris: All right, let’s change subjects here, because I know you’re having a field day with whatever this Clinton scandal is called now. We were calling it “Intern-Gate” and then a listener called today and said we should call it “Forni-Gate.”
Durst: “Forni-gate,” yeah. The Mount Vesuvius of bimbo eruptions is what you’re saying?
Harris: [laughs] There you go. President Clinton and his 21, now 24-year-old intern, Monica Lewinsky. Your thoughts?
Durst: I tell you, I would not want to live in your town where you got to worry about your best friend wearing a wire at all times. Who is this Tripp woman?
Harris: I don’t know, but the moral we’ve learned from this is don’t tell her a secret!
Durst: Boy, I do not want to piss her off. She is to revenge to what Richard Simmons is to short pants. She knows who killed Vince Foster. She has knowledge of two women who have been accused of presidential lechery. You know we should ask her the point spread on the Super Bowl. She is like a Visa commercial, she is everywhere you want to be. And of course in the corner, in the shadows in the corner, we have the dark specter of Al Gore receiving charisma implants.
Harris: [laughs] That’s right. Somebody called yesterday and said he is one orgasm away from being president.
Durst: [laughs] We would go from President Woody to President Wood.
Harris: Now, do you think that it could actually get that far? I mean, what’s your gut…when you first heard this story did you say, “Well, of course!” or did you say, “Well, hold on a second?”
Durst: Both.
Harris: Really?
Durst: Both, yeah. This is an apocryphal thing. I mean, even if he didn’t do it. It’s like when Quayle went down to Latin America and supposedly said I wish I studied Latin in high school. But he never said that, but it didn’t matter because everybody believed it. It’s the same thing here.
Harris: Yeah.
Durst: They had a poll that said 4 out of 10 women would be intimate with the President if they had the chance. Well, it looks like he’s determined to get to each and everyone of them, one at a time!
Harris: [laughs] After Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky and Larry Lawrence’s widow Shelia Lawrence, who has been dragged into this whole thing, one more mistress and Clinton gets a set of steak knives, doesn’t he?
Durst: [laughs] You watch the morning news shows and they make Jerry Springer look like Frontline!
Harris: That’s what I love about this whole thing. All these people, the Dan Rathers of the world, who stand up and they look down on Jerry Springer. This has now been every newscast for three days straight.
Durst: You gotta feel sorry for the Pope, man.
Harris: The Pope? Why?
Durst: Cause they ditched him in Cuba like rats on fire leaving a sinking oil tanker with grenades strapped to their chests! Every one of them — Rather, Brokaw, Jennings — they are all down there and they just zoom private jets back here.
Harris: And Castro’s got to be upset, too. He got bumped right off. I tell you, here in town, the one person who was happy about this was Chris Webber of the Wizards. No one remembers his drug bust. It was Tuesday!
Durst: Oh and Kaczynski. Nobody cares. Now, did the president really make a distinction between oral sex and adultery?
Harris: Well, that’s the question when he says there was nothing improper. You know, here’s a guy who may not know what improper means, and he says I didn’t have a sexual relationship. Dave said he had to go to the dictionary and look up “relationship” again. I mean, we don’t know exactly what he means by that do we?
Durst: No. It is supposedly on the wire tap tapes that he says that he doesn’t believe oral sex is adultery. And I think he can get every married man in America to go with him on that. “Honey, the President said!”
Harris: I don’t know about you, but a week ago you could have bet me that we would never have a Presidential scandal involving “deep throat” again. I thought we left that behind us.
Durst: [laughs] I thought so.
Harris: Will, thanks for coming on today, I appreciate it. Always great to have you on the show.
Durst: Hey, you and Dave take it easy, and Go Pack!
Harris: When will that Livelyhood be airing, sometime in the spring?
Durst: Yeah, it will be like in the last weekend in May.
Harris: Cool, we’ll have you back on before then.
Durst: Thanks, buddy!
Copyright 1998, Paul Harris
Transcript by Sean Healey