True enough; Garofalo is no joke machine, like Black and Maher can be. Her more conversational humor, which she has been honing since getting her start in stand-up in the early 1990s, takes its cue from her audience. In many ways, it's up to them where her show goes, where the evening's humor lies.
"I do try and interact as much as I can, or gauge their faces on what they're thinking," she says. "I very frequently will say, 'Do you guys really want to talk about [politics]?' Some nights, they're really into it, and some nights, I can see they're, like, 'I don't want to talk about it.' "
And some nights, it's Garofalo who doesn't want to talk about it. Some nights, it's just too depressing, Garofalo says, and even a comedy veteran like herself can't find anything funny in the political climate. Too much obstruction for obstruction's sake, she says, too much hate and vitriol, too little genuine political discourse.
