Jamie

Weinstein

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August 11, 2008

Evan Sayet’s Journey From ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’ to Hollywood Conservative

"It is absolutely well known that if you support a Republican you are going to find it harder to find work and the reason is simple," Hollywood comedian Evan Sayet explained to me seated at an outside table at one of the many Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf establishments that dot Los Angeles.

"Dennis Prager says that Republicans think that Democrats are stupid. Democrats think Republicans are evil. I can work with stupid. If you are good at your job and you are stupid that is one thing. But I can't work with evil. And liberals believe that if you are not indiscriminate like they are, you are an evil discriminator."

While Sayet himself says that he has not personally experienced such political discrimination because he has "wholly removed myself from Hollywood" since becoming a conservative, he knows many Republicans in Hollywood who hide their political orientation for fear of being put on what he refers to as the "grey list."

"There is an expression that the only way to say that you are a conservative in this town is to have made it so big it doesn't matter or to have made it so little that you have nothing to lose," Sayet said. "But the guy that is working and needs that next job can't admit that he loves America, can't admit that he supports the President of the United States, and can't let it be known that he thinks liberating the Iraqi people was the right thing to do."

Sayet himself is a recent journeyman to conservatism. Born into middle class surroundings in New York City, politics wasn't a central animating theme of his family. Reflecting back on his background, he pegs his parents as "mindless Democrats."

After graduating from the University of Rochester, Sayet took an office job in the World Trade Center building. Finding the job unfulfilling, he began emceeing at a small comedy club in New York City. It was the 1980s and stand-up comedy was in its golden age. At Catch a Rising Star, soon-to-be comic legends were perfecting their craft. Sayet's nightly gig kept him away from that comic epicenter, but he did befriend David Letterman. In fact, it was Letterman who advised him to move out to Los Angeles and helped him nab a job writing jokes for comedian Tom Dreesen.

Over his long career in show business, Sayet would go on to work as a writer on the Arsenio Hall Show, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and the Comedy Central game show Win Ben Stein's Money. He also wrote a screenplay that was optioned by Penny Marshall and produced a successful documentary on the 1970s era.

But the 9/11 attacks would bring politics center stage for Sayet and make him re-evaluate his political self. Before that tragic day, Sayet describes himself as a "brain-dead liberal."

"I was, in David Mamet's terms, a brain-dead liberal," he said. "Basically I grew up with the belief that Democrats are good and Republicans are bad. Democrats like people, Republicans like money. Democrats like the air, Republicans pollute the air. Democrats like peace, Republicans like war because it's good for business. I mean, there was no depth to what I thought. It was just ingrained."

Things began to change in the aftermath of 9/11. To Sayet, though, it wasn't the attacks themselves that made him shift right. It was his friends' response to the attacks that made him reevaluate everything. 

"When they flew those planes into those buildings there were only two possibilities: Either they are evil or we deserved it. And when I would hear my liberal friends say they are not evil, we deserved it, that made no sense to me," Sayet explained.

Today, Sayet is writing a book, speaking at conservative events and periodically hosting a conservative comedy night at the famed Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. Asked about what he thinks of the political comedians on TV today, Sayet said that Jon Stewart is the "only one of the lefties" that he finds funny. He was also laudatory of Saturday Night Live.

"You know, I don't need 50/50, but when you've got the media sticking their head up Obama's behind and you have only one group of people saying anything about it and it is Saturday Night Live, you've got to tip your hat to them," he said.

As for his old boss Bill Maher?

"Maher is just bitter and angry and spews lies."

With the recent spate of anti-Iraq War movies that were box office flops, I asked Sayet whether a studio would make a movie that celebrated American troops in Iraq if, as we both believed, it would be a huge hit and make a tremendous amount of money. Aren't studios at least as profit-motivated as they are politically motivated?

"Money is not important to them," Sayet contended, dismissing my supposition. "If you think it is about money, you are missing the point altogether. Something really amazing happened with the death of the studio system. You see, the studios used to be run by businessmen and patriots, immigrants who loved this country because they knew what this country gave them as opposed to where they came from.

"With the end of the studio system," he concluded, "the power went from capitalist patriots to spoiled brat movie stars."

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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