BALTIMORE, Md.—It was a brisk two miles from Baltimore’s Penn Station to Zissimo's, the neighborhood bar hosting a two-hour comedy special in honor of Hillary Clinton. Google informed me that a taxi would cover the distance in seven minutes, putting me at the bar at 7:35 p.m. or so, with plenty of time to stand awkwardly before curtain, whereas walking would take 45 minutes, putting me at the bar a few minutes after the performance started at 8 p.m. I struck out into the wild on foot, having convinced myself a brisk walk would do a world of good—put color into the old cheeks, and revive body and spirit with the healthful fall air of downtown Baltimore.
It was impossible to predict what the mood would be like at the comedy show. Would attendees be alarmed in response to tightening national polls? Or would they be self-assured, as residents in one of seven states deemed solid for Clinton-Kaine by Real Clear Politics, by a margin of thirty-something points? Not that everyone in Maryland is a partisan Democrat. I walked past an obtrusive graffiti tag, for example, that said "OBAMA IS A PIECE OF SH*T." Must be the hidden Trump vote.
Zissimo's stood out from the row of cutesy restaurants and shops on West 36th Street because of the small group of smokers huddled outside of it. There were two doors into the bar. One led upstairs to the second floor, the other led to the ground-floor bar. "You'll want that one, honey," said a middle-aged woman in the smoker's huddle, gesturing to the latter door. I followed her advice.
It was soon apparent she had been mistaken. This doesn’t seem right, I thought during a brief scan of the narrow room. There was no stage or live sound system, but more importantly the clientele didn't seem like the type. The bar was full of ordinary, mostly middle-aged white people wearing hoodies and ball caps, several with mustaches of a distinctly non-ironic variety. Natty Boh was the suds of choice at $2.50 per bottle. A row of slot machines whirred gaily in the back. The spirit of economic and cultural anxiety hovered over the room like a fog. I followed my intuition upstairs and located the "I'm With Her Comedy Show," sidling up to the bar just as it began. Once again Google had been vindicated.
The emcee was a woman with curly red hair that was unruly on top and shaved down the sides. She had dressed for the occasion in a checkered pantsuit, a nice touch. "I see we’ve got some nasty women in the audience tonight," she said to the crowd of 30 or 40 people, which indeed skewed female, with more ethnic diversity and blue hair than the drinkers downstairs. It was the first of several "nasty woman" references. I ordered the first of several beers.
The emcee's opening riff set the tone. She had been "raised pretty religious" in a Christian household, she told us, but fell away from the faith and now couldn't understand why so many people wanted to use the Bible—"the best-selling fan fiction in history"—to take away her rights as a "queer" and "really big feminist" who also "hates kids." Politically, she went on, she identified as an "intolerant liberal." Points for honesty, I guess.
The emcee was followed by a roster of amateur female comedians whose short performances were notable for their uniformity. There was the perfunctory acknowledgment that the speaker was a feminist, followed by a remark about how cool it was that America was getting a "lady president," a pleasant abstraction that was rarely attached to particulars. The few times Hillary Clinton was mentioned by name were not exactly public relations coups. One of the comedians began her set by admitting she was a Bernie supporter. Another said Hillary is "a little corrupt, and I'm kind of into that. She won't make America great again, but she will make America OK for once."
Along with Our Lady of Mysterious Candidacy there was the Republican Father Figure, who sprang from the set-list fully formed—full of mottled anger and wearing a MAGA hat—to serve as a foil, the symbol of a cultural out-group that represented everything the upstairs crowd was not. Dad was old, square, and watched Fox News. "I kind of get their distrust of the mainstream media," said one speaker. "If you read ten articles in the Washington Post you can't read more until the next month. If you read ten articles on Fox News or the Daily Caller, you get automatic enrollment in the KKK."
Finally there was abortion, the ultimate touchstone and one of the only political topics broached all night. Like decades of standup comedians before them, these performers aired their sexual journeys in minute and explicit detail. Two were divorced. Most were having lots of sex (or so they claimed). One said she was a phone-sex operator—and you think you dislike your job. Another had never had sex, a fact presented as a defeat on the order of Waterloo.
"Are you all for eighty-sixing the sh*thead growing inside of you? Then the abortion pill is right for you."
"I'm very sex positive. I'm also very into abortion rights. The two go together. If you're into sex, you need to keep all your options open."
"I think I relate so much to Harry Potter because my mother had two abortions before me. He was the Boy Who Lived, and I was the Girl Who Lived. I have a scar on my forehead in the shape of a coat hanger."
"I’m not a bitch, I just don’t want people talking to me all the time. And I'm not a murderer, I just don't want another person growing inside of me. So yes, I have had an abortion."
The "jokes" got a response from the friendly audience: a few uncomfortable guffaws, but also supportive applause when the comedian admitted to having undergone the ordeal of abortion.
I wondered if these performers knew precisely what they were doing in attempting to provoke. It has long been understood that comedy shocks by stripping away the niceties we use to discuss sensitive topics, and then presenting those topics unvarnished on the stage. Speaking frankly about eighty-sixing unborn persons—"sh*theads" or not—has this provocative effect, but only by ceding an important moral argument to abortion abolitionists.
After the show, I topped off the night with a beer downstairs. The place had cleared out except for a few stragglers at the bar and the slots. I chatted up the bartender and asked her whom she was voting for. "I wish we had an option to throw 'em both out," she said, Hillary because of "her lies, and all the mess she created," and Trump because of, well, everything.
The answer might have been a hedged bet on her part—I hadn't tipped yet. But it might also have been evidence of a very different mentality from the one upstairs. It was a mentality certainly less enthusiastic about the prospect of a lady president. I filed my encounter away under the heading, "Closing Anecdotes."