Red, white and no longer feeling blue

IN OBAMA WE TRUST Laughing Liberally serves up comedy to the left.

Photo: Steve Stearns

Wouldn’t it be great if every left-wing Chicagoan in search of a good laugh could hit up a comedy club where the stand-ups were liberals, the beers were ecofriendly and the pretzels were made of hemp? The group Laughing Liberally is making sure that at least the former happens on a consistent basis. Its newest comedy showcase, The Nation Guide to Living Liberally, rounds up Chicago’s funniest progressives this weekend to celebrate the release of The Nation magazine’s new book, The Nation Guide to the Nation, a reference guide to lefty media, bookstores, co-ops and nonprofits (and those aforementioned hemp pretzels).

Laughing Liberally is an offshoot of the nationwide org Living Liberally, a social-networking group that supports progressive policies, civil-rights causes, environmental awareness and universal health care—and it’s hardly limited to laughing. Other siblings include Drinking Liberally (which boasts a robust local chapter), Eating Liberally and Screening Liberally, among others.

The comic version’s local chapter began last year when Chicago comedian and political cartoonist Matthew Filipowicz bumped into Drinking Liberally founder Justin Krebs at Netroots Nation, a giant liberal-blogger convention that took place in Austin, Texas (and attracted the likes of Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi). The debut of Chicago’s Laughing Liberally—“a group of comedians who use comedy to bring issues to the forefront,” Filipowicz says—included a series of shows at the Cornservatory that counted down to the end of the Bush era.

A variety extravaganza, each Laughing Liberally show mixes stand-up with musical numbers and political discussion, plus other entertainments. This weekend, the free event includes appearances by comics Rick Perlstein, James Fritz and Carrie Callahan and comedic musician Lauren Maul, along with commentary from former In These Times publisher Tracy Van Slyke, political animations from Filipowicz and sketch comedy from the Accountants of Homeland Security (of which Filipowicz is also a member). The Nation Guide to the Nation will be for sale.

Laughing Liberally aims to do much more than take cheap shots at our former failure-in-chief. Its manifold agenda, according to Filipowicz, also includes keeping bigwig Dems on track. “We need to keep the fire to the feet of the politicians because they’re not going to do it on their own,” he says. “Take Bill Clinton, for example. When he was elected in ’92, a lot of Democrats just sat back on their heels and took a vacation. The good news is, for the most part, liberals have learned the lesson from that. We know we have to keep engaged.”

Filipowicz stokes that fire by blogging for the Huffington Post, performing with his sketch troupe and creating daily political cartoons for the website headzup.tv. He hopes his efforts will help remove the stigma from liberalism. “In the ’80s and ’90s, the right wing did a really good job of making the word liberal a dirty word. We’re trying to take the word back as something to be proud of. Liberalism has done so much for the country.”

Most important, Filipowicz and his progressive peers want to make Laughing Liberally a home for meaningful political discourse, something he thinks is missing. “Politics should be a part of your life,” he says. “Say what you will about the government, but ultimately we are the government. If you only have it as this abstract thing in the distance that we have no power or influence over, that’s where we end up getting into trouble.”

Laughing Liberally looks to make politics less abstract—and less serious—by delivering a whole lot of chuckles to the progressive masses, and perhaps even a few conservatives. “Republicans need to laugh more,” Filipowicz says. “They are ridiculously unfunny.”

The Nation Guide to Living Liberally happens Saturday 28 at 7pm at the No Exit Café.

• More Comedy articles