THE GOTHAMIST INTERVIEW: JAN. DAY 4 – SAMANTHA BEE

I’ve made no secret of my admiration (read: worship) for The Daily Show, so it only makes sense that I would try to get an interview with one of the members of the show. Since the anchor and correspondents are all very busy, real live serious journalists, it wasn’t easy to turn the tables and get one of them to interview for a change. Happily, for today’s Gothamist Interview, while it took patience and determination, I got my first choice.

I’ve been a huge fan of Samantha Bee ever since she joined The Daily Show about a year ago. She’s sarcastic and outrageous in that subversive way that has become such an integral part to the entire broadcast. She has a perfect poker-face during interviews, always able to say the funniest (and usually most inappropriate) thing that either leaves shocked interviewees speechless or, in rarer cases, finds them nodding in absurd agreement. If you’re unfamiliar with Bee’s work, you can see many of her stories via The Daily Show’s website on her video page.

One of my favorite stories (and one I specifically asked her about in the interview) was about Florida congressional candidate Ed Heeney who ran on an anti-gay platform saying he wasn’t homophobic; he’s “homo-nausic.” Since looking for web links about Heeney (his own web page at edheeney.com seems to have been taken down), I’ve discovered that eight days after he managed to attract just over 30% of the vote in his district, according to a column by Emily J. Minor in the Palm Beach Post, “He barricaded himself inside his apartment with his campaign manager — a man once accused of shooting off the middle finger of a Fort Lauderdale policeman — and had to be SWAT-teamed out.”

Samantha put-up with our abundance of questions about Canada. Considering her (hysterical) contributions to “America: The Book”, which all dealt with the Canadian perspective, I thought it was appropriate to start with that line of questioning. In answer to her question back to me regarding my possible obsession with Canada: No, I’m not really obsessed. But I would love to try a “peameal bacon sandwich,” and the invitation to stay at her parents’ house is quite generous. Sadly (but luckily for her and them), I’m too poor right now to even afford the trip to Toronto.

While she decided not to answer a few of our questions – she didn’t want to get into the whole CNN thing or talk about the show’s seemingly growing influence – she was a great interview, even if she didn’t offer me the chance to hose her down like she did on last night’s show to the soon-to-be-departing soldiers at an inaugural ball. Thanks Sam!

This is our last interview for January, but Lily and I will be back with six of them in February, and after a chat with another very funny lady, we’re hoping to pull-off a bit of a theme week that should be especially interesting to regular readers of this site. Fingers crossed.