Madcap Airs All

By Jesse Birnbaum

A 41-year-old Miami Herald writer and author of the soon-to-be-notorious book Dave Barry Slept Here assaults the truth regularly through his weekly column, which appears in more than 150 helpless newspapers.

Q. The subtitle of your book is A Sort of History of the United States, but some people will find it sort of upsetting. You say that the First Amendment guarantees the right of religious groups, "no matter how small or unpopular, to hassle you in airports." You explain that radio works "by means of long invisible pieces of electricity (called 'static') shooting through the air until they strike your speaker and break into individual units of sound ('notes') small enough to fit inside your ear." Why are you trashing history and science?

A. I guess because high school textbooks stink. Also, we are constantly told + that American students are even stupider than we thought. So I'm just dumping on the whole idea that we need to make our kids smarter, by putting out a book that will clearly not do that.

Q. Would it be ungracious to suggest that your humor is a trifle sophomoric?

A. Yes. Anyway, I like sophomoric humor. Sophomoric is often used as a pejorative term, but I myself remember laughing pretty hard as a sophomore.

Q. Your writing shows an extraordinary gift for metaphor.

A. Really? No one's ever accused me of that.

Q. Well, your imagery is rather startling.

A. You're easily amused. I can see that.

Q. I quote: "The United States tried, by depressing the clutch of diplomacy and downshifting the gearshift lever of rhetoric, to remain neutral." Also: In 1929 the nation's economy "was revealed to be merely a paper tiger with feet of clay living in a straw house of cards that had cried 'wolf' once too often."

A. Yeah. Well, I see a lot of manuscripts written by people who are hilariously inept with literary devices, because they try so hard to be ept.

Q. The dust jacket of your new book says that the Pulitzer committee "must have been drunk out of their minds" when they gave you the prize. What ever do you think possessed the Pulitzer jury to give you a prize?

A. Let's be honest. Nothing I've ever written fits the definition "distinguished commentary." But I can explain. The Pulitzer is judged by people who are undergoing two extremely stressful things at the same time. One, they're in New York City; and two, they're reading Pulitzer Prize entries, which are often written for the purpose of winning Pulitzer Prizes. Whole forests could be saved if we didn't actually put these in the newspaper and just sent them straight to the Pulitzer jurists instead. So these people have to read hundreds of heavy, huge entries, every one of them earthshakingly important. And that makes them really hostile toward journalism in general. Then they have to go out into the streets of New York and get into the subway at rush hour both ways. One of my entries was a vicious and unfair attack on New York City, and the other was a vicious and unfair attack on the Pulitzer Prizes. So they gave me the prize for distinguished commentary. People often confuse it with the Nobel Prize. Not that I'm giving it back.

Q. More's the pity. I see that you write many unkind things about well-known personalities -- Nixon, Carter, Reagan, especially Geraldo Rivera. Why do you keep picking on Geraldo?

A. For the same reason, basically, that you step on cockroaches. Geraldo is so self-righteous. If he would just say, "You know what? We're going to have a neat show today, and maybe you'll get to see a woman's breasts." But instead, he says, "We're going to talk about this cult that stabbed the kids and cut the kids' noses off, and you'll get to actually see a picture of it. It will be really neat." Geraldo has that certain je ne sais quoi. For want of a better word, I would call him a jerk.

Q. Tell me about your first writing job.

A. I worked for a little newspaper in West Chester, Pa., called the Daily Local News. And it was just like what you would think the Daily Local News would be. I covered endless hearings. Our favorite verb was air. ZONERS AIR PLAN. HEARING AIRS ZONING. It was classic small-town journalism, and I really loved that job. Then I went to the Associated Press in Philadelphia, and I really, really hated it. Fortunately, I got another job, and I spent the next eight years teaching effective-writing seminars to business people.

I'd lecture a bunch of chemists or engineers about the importance of not saying "It would be appreciated if you would contact the undersigned by telephone at your earliest possible convenience," and instead saying "Please call me as soon as you can," which was revealed wisdom to these people.

Q. How did this lead to your writing a humor column?

A. I had a lot of time on my hands, so I asked the editor at the Daily Local News, "Why don't I write a column for you?" I started the column for $22 a week. It was usually very misleading, inaccurate and often quite offensive and irresponsible. Then the Miami Herald offered me a job.

Q. Why is Miami funny?

A. It's just a bizarre mixture of cultures. There are evidently cultures where it is considered basically good etiquette to keep your left-turn signal on at all times. Then there are people who feel it's important to buy the largest possible car, the kind you can land aircraft on top of with no problem, and they drive them incredibly slowly. At the same time, there are people who cannot imagine going less than 70 m.p.h., including in their driveways. Then the politics here is amazing. I mean, we have rallies here for the right to sacrifice chickens.

Q. What subject draws the most mail?

A. Any time I write about dogs. People just love dogs. A lot of people liked my piece Can New York Save Itself?

Q. That was cited by the Pulitzer committee. Some folks thought it was particularly nasty. I quote: "Times Square . . . is best known as the site where many thousands of people gather each New Year's Eve for a joyous and festive night of public urination . . . It also serves as an important cultural center where patrons may view films such as Sex Aliens, Wet Adulteress, and, of course, Sperm Busters." It seems that you try to be as provocative and as offensive as possible. Doesn't your editor object?

A. My editor, Gene Weingarten, is actually probably less tasteful than I am, if such a thing is possible. He will edit me for humor, but virtually never for taste.

Q. Have you ever been sued for libel?

A. I've certainly been threatened enough times. I once asked the Herald's lawyer, "How come I never get sued?" He said, "What makes you think you never get sued?"

Q. How would you describe your style?

A. My theory about humor, to the extent I have one, is that it's fear that the world is not very sane or reliable or organized and that it's not controlled by responsible people. Anything can happen to you, and you have no say in it, and it could be bad. What a humorist does is sort of poke through that. You get on an airplane, and if you're like me, you have no idea how an airplane could possibly fly and every fiber in your body tells you it can't. Nothing you've ever seen that heavy can fly. You get on there with all these other people convinced of exactly the same thing, but you say, "Well, it must be able to fly. Look at the guy up there with the short haircut, the military bearing. Scientists built this, it must work." And the humorist says, "Nah, it probably really can't fly. You're right to be afraid of the airplane -- it's probably going to crash, and you're going to die." People laugh because it's easier to laugh than to really admit they're afraid. But I don't think I'm the first person to observe the close connection between fear and laughter.

Q. What is it you like least about yourself?

A. Well, sometimes I've been very meanspirited for the sake of a joke, and I've regretted it. I once made fun of an organization called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I told how this group had bought seven lobsters from the tank in a Chinese restaurant, flew them up to Maine and set them free % in the ocean. I figured that now they'll be recaptured by lobstermen, resold to the Chinese restaurant, rereleased by the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the life cycle will continue. I dumped pretty hard on that group. I knew nothing about them. Nobody wrote me saying "You scumbag." But some people said, "We thought your column was kind of funny, but you don't know anything about us, and this is what we're all about." I thought, I could have written that same thing without sliming that organization, which actually represents some things that I think are good. I still think the event was worth making fun of, but I shouldn't have lumped those people in with the whole animal-rights thing as brusquely as I did. I try to avoid it now, but there's a side of me that will do that. Otherwise, I'm a great guy.