Di Paolo bringing comedy to Cohoes Music Hall
COHOES, N.Y. » In this age of comedy - politics rules. This makes Nick Di Paolo unusual. Where most comics trend towards being liberal, Di Paolo is a staunch Conservative. He supports Donald Trump and, to put it mildly, despises Hillary Clinton and everything she stands for.
“Whatever she’s for, I’m against,” he says.
The comic, who is at the Cohoes Music Hall on Saturday night, rejects the idea that he is strictly a political comic. He prefers to be thought of as “funny and socially relevant.““I believe it is critical that any comic be funny first. The audience doesn’t come to a show to be preached at. They come to laugh.” After a slight pause, he adds, “I can also be a little bit reckless.”
Indeed, at Comics Come Home, a major charity event in Boston that gathers together comics with local roots, Di Paolo drew stinging criticism for his political rebuke to Wanda Sykes who preceded him. He explains: “She went on a rant against Trump, and started preaching her own agenda. She wasn’t funny. There were no set-ups or punch lines and for sure no laughs. This was in Boston, which is a really liberal town and they started to boo her. She left the stage giving the crowd the finger.”
He says, “As I took to the stage, I just threw out my apolitical routine and decided to rebut everything she said and present an opposite point of view. It was a bad choice made worse by me getting too cocky.”
He says he retaliated by expressing his displeasure with the flaws of liberal thinking as personi- fied by the Obama administration. It included a few shots at Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic icons as well. But once it got local he lost the crowd. “When I started attacking Bernie Sanders they started booing me. The difference between me and Wanda is - I loved it. 7,500 people booing me was like throwing me red meat. And, of course, I went even further. It caused a lot of controversy.”
Will his 8 p. m. show in Cohoes be controversial? He chuckles as he answered, “People who come to my show know what to expect. I can never figure out people who get offended or walk out of a show. Why would someone buy a ticket to something they know nothing about?”
Then to make his point, he says, “My show is titled, ‘ Nick is Right,’ that should offer a hint,” he laughs.
He’s right. (no pun intended.) Di Paolo has appeared on almost every major late-night talk show, he’s a presence on Comedy Central and has a daily show on Sirius Radio 103, which airs Monday to Friday from 8-10. One short listen to his show and you understand the comic’s sense of humor, which he describes as “defending straight white males.” He said his favorite description of his act is “Sean Hannity with Tourette’s.”
Di Paolo insists he is not strictly political. “I do have a point of view,” he says.
He thinks his humor is defined by his friend and fellow- comic Colin Quinn, who once said about his material, “You might not be known as a political comic, but if you tell a joke about McDonald’s people will know how you voted.”
Di Paolo has appeared at the Cohoes Music Hall before and remembers it well.
“I got a partial standing ovation,” he laughs. “They are my kind of people. I’ve been around long enough to know when and where my stuff works. I expect to kill at Cohoes.”