Daniel Bergeron
Comedian David Cross is in Madison this week on his “Oh Come On” tour. The seasoned standup has been honing his craft since moving from Georgia to New York City in the early 1980s.
“At this point, you know me or you don’t. Come or don’t. I don’t care,” says Cross in an interview with Isthmus. “But I would rather people come. I always have a good time in Madison.”
Cross has been a prominent player in offbeat, idiosyncratic television comedies that have thrived in the era of Netflix. Arrested Development, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret are just a few of the shows where Cross has shown off his knack for portraying sincere yet hopelessly naive characters.
Over the course of Cross’ long standup career, he has not been afraid to get political or take on hard-hitting issues in a way that some may find offensive. In his 1996 HBO special, Cross lampoons moralizing by the religious right with a character — equipped with a thick Southern drawl — who is tired of “dirty mouth comedians” who take the Lord’s name in vain and “talk about their genitalia.”
“I tell you why these people do it. It’s just another example of this liberal, Jew-run media trying to take over,” says Cross’ character. “They are in cahoots with the lesbian dentist cartel.”
Fast-forward two decades to Cross’ Making America Great Again Netflix special. He addresses the recent reckoning of police officer-involved shootings with the line “blue lives...murder.”
“Not all of them. Not most of them. But a bunch of them. They’re murdering us. Well, not us. We’re white. You know who doesn’t like that bit: cops,” Cross says in the 2016 special. “They don’t appreciate being painted with this broad brush as being violent predators just because of the actions of a minority of their brothers. They don’t like being stereotyped so that when you see blue, you just think violent thug. They don’t appreciate it.”
In 2018, a number of comedians have come under fire for comments delivered on stage, online and even privately. Michelle Wolf received scorn after her remarks at the White House correspondents’ dinner. Samantha Bee, host of the political satire show Full Frontal, apologized to those she offended when she called President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka a “feckless cunt.”
And then there is Roseanne.
In March, Roseanne Barr was promptly sacked by ABC after tweeting a racist comment about former Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Barr has apologized for the tweet, and a spinoff of her once-beloved sitcom Roseanne will continue this fall without her.
Cross has no sympathy for Barr.
“Her show is about her. It’s titular. She is the character. There is very little separation between Roseanne Conner and Roseanne Barr,” says Cross. “She chose to have it called Roseanne. She chose it to reflect her views. So I understand why, in free market capitalism, a large network said, ‘you know what. We crunched the numbers. It took us like seven seconds and this isn’t good for us. So we’re going to ditch it.’”
Cross hasn’t been immune from controversy, either. He received some shade for allegedly making a racist comment about comedian Charlyne Yi more than a decade ago. Yi tweeted in October that Cross said “ching chong ching chong” to her and challenged her to fight him, “karate-style,” in a Southern accent. He has since apologized to Yi, but not before Cross’ wife Amber Tamblyn — who is often described as being a leader in the #MeToo movement — was likened by some to Camille Cosby and Melania Trump.
Cross was also called out for defending Arrested Development co-star Jeffrey Tambor during an interview with The New York Times in which cast members accused Tambor of harassment. Isthmus didn’t discuss these allegations directly with Cross (this reporter regrettably did not know the details before our scheduled interview, and requests for a follow-up interview were not answered).
But Cross did make a distinction between a potentially offensive joke and what Barr did.
“This isn’t a he said/she said thing. She’s tweeting conspiracy theory bullshit,” says Cross. “That to me is markedly different. I don’t think she intends it as a joke at all. I think she’s serious. It’s dangerous, and it could get somebody hurt.”
Cross says perhaps it’s better if comedians stick to the stage.
“Inside a comedy club, you have four tangible walls and everyone is aware of each other’s presence. You can look at me. I can look at you. Even though standup is ostensibly a monologue, it can still be a dialogue. Twitter is just strangers yelling at avatars,” says Cross. “The simple solution is just to get off social media.”
