Comedy Review: Dennis Miller

For the first 20 minutes or so of Dennis Miller's routine at the Pabst Theater Saturday night, one had to wonder if this was the same comedian who just secured a spot on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes."

Politics didn't even figure into the picture as Miller plowed through an NC-17-rated rant that included Jennifer Love Hewitt's breasts, leather-bound porn booklets handed out in the streets of Las Vegas, fat people ("If you're built like a tank, don't wear the top") and masturbation.

He included several Milwaukee-specific bits that freshened everything up, including his stay at the Pfister ("An unfortunately named hotel").

However, it didn't take long for the comedian to turn political.

Although the typical age of the crowd was varied, with mostly people between 25 and 50 years old, their political affiliations were not. One of the biggest cheers of the night was awarded after Miller attacked France for being a country of cowards. An even louder cheer was reserved for when Miller said there was no way he could ever vote for Hillary Clinton to be president. Clearly, this was a crowd that wouldn't list the Dixie Chicks among its favorite bands.

After talking about such a wide variety of topics earlier, his completely political second half was a bit jarring. Several times, he didn't seem to have a punch line, but rather a conclusion, and the crowd clapped rather than laughed.

Easily the funniest and most well-received of all his political speech was his bit on global warming. Miller pointed out that some research is based on temperatures taken 100 years ago.

"Excuse me if I don't trust the temperature figures from 1906," he said. "We're still s—-ing outside in the woods, but we have a handle on Fahrenheit."

Howard Dean, Al Sharpton and Bill and Hillary Clinton were all targets for Miller's barbs, while his comments on President Bush usually took the form of back-handed compliments.

While Democrats were slow-moving chess players, Bush was a checkers player. "If somebody is in front of him, he's gonna jump them," Miller said.

He also expressed disgust at people invoking "what the founding fathers would do" to explain why the United States shouldn't be at war. "Listen," he said, "our founding fathers were blowing people's heads off because they put a tax on their breakfast beverage. And it wasn't even coffee."

Still, all the sacred cows of the right weren't left off the hook. Miller, who grew up Catholic, said, "I went to confession two weeks ago, and I said, 'You first.'"

He also said he couldn't care less about gay marriage. With all of the things going on in the world today, two people with the same genitalia wanting to get married ranked about "10 millionth" on his list of importance.

An encore took the form of a question-and-answer session, because Miller said he didn't have any more jokes.

He explained what a thrill it was to work on Monday Night Football, because he had never actually been to a football game before he shared the booth with John Madden and Al Michaels. At the time, he said, he thought: "I wonder if I should tell Al?"

Originally published in the Sept. 7 Marquette Tribune