Liberal Talk Radio Takes Off

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Behind the scenes with Air America's Lizz Winstead

Ask Lizz Winstead why you never hear liberals tell a joke, and she's quick on the draw: "Because we don't have a liberal-controlled media. That's the big lie. If liberals were running the media, wouldn't there be hilarious liberals all over the place?" Speaking from her new digs at the progressive AM radio network Air America, where she directs entertainment programming and co-hosts the acerbic political and cultural program Unfiltered with Public Enemy's Chuck D and British rabble-rouser Rachel Maddow, Winstead made it clear that she intends to help restore the power balance.

Launched this spring in select markets across the country, Air America is out to prove that left-wingers like Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, and Winstead can be every bit as entertaining and popular as conservative talking heads Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. "Air America has proven that there are hilarious liberals all over the place," Winstead says. "It just took a bunch of liberals to start a network and put them on it."

A co-creator and former head writer of Comedy Central's acclaimed The Daily Show, Winstead, 42, knows a thing or two about funny. Brought up Catholic in Minnesota (which she has referred to as "the Lutheran police state"), Winstead earned her chops as a stand-up comic in 1987 when she accepted a dare to perform at an open-mike night. She went on to perform two one-woman shows, Don't Get Me Started and Stream of Consciousness, and in 1996 Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg created The Daily Show (Winstead quit two years later when then-host Craig Kilborn made an off-color remark about her in an Esquire magazine interview).

Brassy and unapologetic about her politics, Winstead says "outrage, outrage, outrage" is at the heart of her comedy. "It's like the information dictates the outrage," she says. "Sometimes I don't feel funny at all, and I just feel like I really would like to say this. So, hopefully, it will be engaging most of the time and funny most of the time, but just as long as it's compelling every time."

When she's not burning up the airwaves, Winstead lives with her dog, Eddie (a Chihuahua/Italian greyhound/pug mix), in New York City. She recently spoke by phone with Utne senior editor Anjula Razdan from Air America's Park Avenue offices.

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