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O P I N I O N ‘A dictatorship would work well’
What does Doug Stanhope make of US politics? Does he even give a hoot who’s president? Niki Boyle asks him
How would you describe your political views? I don’t really like describing myself in those terms, but if I had to, I’m kind of an anarchist, just in a quiet way.
I’ve been following the election at the moment [for the Republican presidential nomination] and the only one that’s speaking the slightest amount of sense is Ron Paul. It’s sad because they barely give him any airtime. I know why the guy stutters – he’s like me in that, if he gets given any attention, it’s for such a short space of time that he doesn’t know how to boil down his whole approach into those soundbites they demand from you. Do you think voting should be compulsory? Hell no, I think too many people vote as it is. Too many idiots voting for the guy with the nicest hair. I think you should have to demonstrate you have some idea of what you’re talking about before you get to vote. It’s no different from when you were in elementary school and were looking for votes for Most Popular Kid in School. Some sort of dictatorship would work well – there’s a lot of baggage attached to the word dictator, but nobody’s saying it has to be a bad guy. It’d be great if we could live under a really cool dictator.
Which would you rather have: the US or the UK political system? I don’t really care about the system – it doesn’t really effect me. The local government stuff, that’s the stuff that really matters, that makes a difference in your day-to-day lives, but no one really cares about that, and they should. It’s 12 THE LIST 1–29 Mar 2012
why I get a $50 ticket if I park my car outside on street-cleaning day, it’s why there’s a new stop sign at the end of my street. I don’t think the wider government makes a difference. I could live in any country in the world, and it wouldn’t make a difference. I could live in China, and the only difference in my life would be, ‘Hey, I can smoke in a café here’. ‘I DON’T KNOW IF THE PEOPLE IN THE UK ARE ANGRY ENOUGH’
Can you see something like the Tea Party taking hold in the UK? I don’t know if people in the UK are angry enough. I don’t know what you got to be angry about. It rains all the time, but you don’t really get angry about that, do you? I don’t really see the difference between the Tea Party and things like the Occupy movement. I watch both of ‘em on TV, and you see maybe 10% of the people saying something intelligent, who know what they’re talking about, 20% are there because they agree with those guys, and the rest are just around cos they thought, ‘Hey, I wanna sleep on a park bench for a couple of weeks. I wanna go for a picnic, but I wanna picnic angry’.
What’s your opinion on Scottish independence? Yeah, I say go for it. Every individual person should be independent of everyone else; if we have to do that country by country, so be it. Whatever it takes, so long as it comes down to individual households governing themselves.
Doug Stanhope plays Edinburgh Playhouse, Tue 27 Mar and King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Fri 30 Mar as part of Glasgow Comedy Festival. See list.co.uk for a longer version of this interview.