Reno

The Latino lesbian comedian detonates a series of explosive observations about patriotism, the Bush administration and John Walker Lindh.

By Janelle Brown

Jul 18, 2002 | The comedian Reno -- just Reno, like just Madonna -- is the kind of person who complains about an attack of laryngitis that's been bothering her and then blithely lights up a cigar. She is the kind of citizen who can be devastated by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers just a few blocks from her home, and then take the stage a month later to unleash biting comedy about the event. In her politics and her private life she juxtaposes fear, sadness or fragility with unstinting criticism and humor.

And it works. At least as far as her stage show, "Rebel Without a Pause," is concerned. With its debut in October, Reno became one of the first comedians to attempt to tease humor out of the events surrounding Sept. 11. She says she conceived the show -- which is part memoir, part profane satire that dismantles just about every aspect of the political system -- as a way to exorcise her emotions. Tidbits from the unrelenting commentary include her description of the emergency food drops in Afghanistan -- "If the bombs don't get them, the sugar will" -- and an unforgiving take on George W. Bush's public speaking style -- "Like a drunk trying to look sober."

The show, produced by friend and occasional costar Lily Tomlin, "dares to suggest the unsuggestable," according to the New York Times. Other reviews have been equally positive, helping to create enough buzz and ticket sales for Reno to move to a larger theater on 42nd Street.

The 46-year-old Latina lesbian with radical political leanings wasn't always a comedic politico. She's done solo comedy shows in San Francisco and New York, as well as on cable TV, for almost two decades, and has built a cult following for her abrasively edgy sense of humor (Rolling Stone called her "the funny Madonna" in 1989). Her last film, "Reno Finds Her Mom," which aired on HBO in 1998, was a satirical documentary about the search for her birth mother, who gave her up for adoption in 1956; a previous show, "Reno: In Rage and Rehab," addressed her former crystal-meth habit.

Reno is the queen of wild tangents. Her brain zips around from subject to subject -- perhaps because of her diagnosed ADD -- and her train of thought offers an exhilarating ride even if you can't always stay onboard. Her favorite subjects these days are the hypocritical troika of Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and what she believes to be the short-sighted nature of post-Sept. 11 hyper-patriotism.

During a brief break just before July 4, Reno strained her raspy voice to fire off opinions about flag-waving, the Pledge of Allegiance and the Department of Homeland Security. And what, exactly, did John Walker Lindh's dad tell her?

I heard that John Walker Lindh's father came backstage after a recent show in San Francisco, before his son was sentenced to 20 years. What did he say to you?

It was a brilliant moment, probably one of the highest moments I could think of. During the show I was talking about the brutality and overkill of the bullying conditions that so many people have signed on to, regular citizenry in the U.S. -- Ari Fleischer condemning people who have the slightest question about anything the administration does, or Dick Cheney calling the Democratic leadership in December and asking them point-blank not to investigate the physical evidence of Sept. 11 ...

And I was talking about the time when Bush Sr. came out of the woodwork screaming about John Walker, calling him "American Taliban" and saying he had a unique punishment for this kid. He said, "You know what we should do? Not let him wash his face or hands and make him walk across America and see how much love he gets!" He sounded just like an 8-year-old at a bus stop! I was talking about this, and then 45 minutes later, there's a knock on my door and a man is hugging me with tears in his eyes ... I was blown away.

I asked how they were treating his son. He said he can't go outside at all, but the marshal and the agents in the FBI assigned to his case are apparently treating him like a human being and ... they are accepting of John's innocence. That is what it seems like -- he was a hapless soul searching for himself as a callow youth and he got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he's a good kid who would never advocate hurting anyone. His father says they believe that.

It's a real chiller, the way they treated that kid. Think of all the 22-year-old kids in the country, dreaming of the time they can travel across the world ... it's going to have a negative effect.

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