Jamie Kilstein turned 27 last week; surprisingly, he celebrated it like any American. “It’s so funny. [People] have this idea that I’m always protesting or doing something radical,” the stand-up observes. Yet for the big day, “I saw Star Trek, then I went to the comic-book store and then my girlfriend got me a vegan cake. No spray painting, no dumping fake blood on anybody.”
Still, Kilstein can understand why one might assume otherwise. His comedy is a relentless, often indignant assault on the right’s propensity for religious-based bigotry, fanaticism and constitutional fundamentalism. A few examples from his arsenal: “President Bush says that every time a gay couple marries, a terrorist gets his wings”; and “Fuck the founding fathers. The Constitution was like their one-hit wonder. They’re the Vanilla Ice of the political world.”
A spirit of independence and free thinking has defined Kilstein since he was a kid. The Jersey-born high-school dropout quit his retail job in ’05 and Kerouac-ed it (along with girlfriend Allison Kilkenny) around the country for two years, living out of a used car while pursuing artistic endeavors.
The activist comic readily admits that, at one time, he was politically apathetic. “People have this way of making apathy sound cool, and that’s what I was. [But] the more I traveled and the more people’s stories I heard, I started to figure out that politics does affect people I care about.”
It was the marriage-equality issue that kick-started Kilstein’s interest in politics. “Gay marriage and religion was the first thing that I started talking about because I knew enough to say that [discrimination] is wrong,” he says. “It’s sort of similar to people who became politically active during the civil-rights movement. You didn’t need to know how government works just to know that that was fucked.”
As Kilstein drifted further to the left, he realized comedy was the perfect platform to assert his views. “Comedy is such a good outlet because I can get people interested who wouldn’t be interested,” he says. “I go down South, and Republicans come to me and say, ‘Hey, man, I didn’t agree with you, but you’re funny.’?”
That’s not to say the man holds any illusions about the power he wields at the mike. “I don’t think I’m going to get some bigoted Southerner in the audience who’s like, ‘I was a total conservative, but now I’m going to open up a mom-and-pop abortion shop,’?” Kilstein says. “But maybe it will just take them down a notch so they don’t think all liberals are crazy or elitists. Maybe it will just give them that conversation.”
Of course, to get his points across, Kilstein first has to get booked—and that’s been easier abroad, where he has a larger following, partly because political conversations come much easier and partly because of a greater emphasis on comedy as an art form. “It’s not easy to talk about politics,” he says. “There’s so much work I don’t get [here] because they hear politics and they’re done. Overseas, they see comedy as an endgame, not a stepping stone to becoming an actor, writing a sitcom, etc. Here it’s all about selling drinks. Comedy clubs might as well be called Two-Drink Minimum Featuring Special Guest Stand-up Comedian.”
Which is a shame since Kilstein’s incisive-but-funny viewpoint is desperately needed in a country that largely believes it’s impolite to discuss politics at the dinner table. “The beauty and gift of comedy is that if you have a subject you can’t talk about, that means you have to talk about it,” he says. “Comedy is the icebreaker that gets people talking.”
Kilstein delivers left-of-center comedy all weekend at the Lakeshore.