POLITICS STILL SPORT TO RUSSELL

There’s an innate democracy about scandal. It’s bad for a few, but sport for the many. Throughout the Watergate era, Mark Russell was licking his chops. So much was revealed and discussed daily that Russell was able to perform two completely different shows nightly at Washington’s Shoreham Hotel, where he held forth as comedian-with-portfolio for 20 years, beginning in 1961.

Russell is in town for an appearance at the UCLA Extension series on comedy, called “The Many Faces of Humor,” which has been held weekly on Monday evenings since October (it ends Dec. 15). He shares tonight’s bill with George Carlin. While there’s been a good deal of speculation that the current Iranian arms sale issue rivals Watergate in its threat to topple an administration, Russell doesn’t agree.

“From a practical standpoint,” he said, in his bluff, hail-fellow-well-met voice, “I don’t see any desire for a repeat of Watergate. It leaves the country with no more act. People don’t want to hear you joke about Ronald Reagan until you’ve convinced them that you love him.”

Which doesn’t stop Russell from firing off a few salvos. To wit:

--”This was not another Watergate until (Lt. Col. Oliver) North got the keys to the shredder.

--”(Secretary of State George) Shultz has been kept so much in the dark, he’s still in doubt. He doesn’t think the Shah can hang on.

--”The best thing that Ronald Reagan has going for him is that he sleeps during the cabinet meetings.”

--”The best thing that George Bush has going for him is that he’s never there. He’ll be the first vice president running for President who can truthfully say that he never sat in on anything.”

As far as material is concerned, it’s easy come, easy go for Russell. For all the richness that the Watergate scandal afforded him as a comedian, he remembers only one joke: “George McGovern knew something was wrong when he picked up a grapefruit and heard a dial tone.” Still, he has two songs penned for the current situation, one called “My Teflon Lies Over the Ocean” and “The Dirty Little Secret” (“A private master plan/ They told us they were working late at the office/ But they were in bed with Iran . . . “).

Russell has been in Washington long enough to take a philosophical view of things. “As usual, you see the lines being drawn between media bashers and administration bashers. What distinguishes this from Watergate is that you don’t see Reagan haters. What you do see, as you saw in Watergate, is that the government has the machinery to deal with any crisis.”

Healthy skepticism is always the comedian’s stock in trade; Russell’s concerns presuppose the current situation. “It bothers me that the campaign process has been boiled down to 20-second snippets of commercial airplay,” he said. “Ever since Spiro Agnew, politicians have gotten wise about getting in their one-liners at the beginning of a tape, knowing they’ll look good on the evening news. Gone are the days when Harry Truman campaigned from the back of a train. There’s a very slim distinction now between nightly news and ‘Entertainment Tonight’--it’s all entertainment. The politicians don’t run, they audition.”

Russell is modest about his status as one of America’s few comedy political pundits (“I was never as dedicated as Mort Sahl”).

“I was born and raised in Buffalo, and my father had the good sense to get us out in time. He owned a gas station in Washington, and my brother and I pumped gas. I floundered around. I had a small talent for the piano. I was in the Marines from 1953 to 1956 in Japan, and did some entertaining. My first steady job after that was in a hotel on Capitol Hill. I was like a male Bobbi Jeaninne (the Lily Tomlin cocktail pianist). I was so bad at it, that I used palaver to disguise my lousy playing.”

The palaver led to bigger paychecks, and although Russell is careful to keep himself in a “show-biz, shticky frame of mind” in order to function, he does have larger perspectives.

“This is a country of excesses,” he said. “During Statue of Liberty week I said, ‘If I hear one more person say America feels good about itself, I’ll carry my TV to the garbage. America stopped feeling good about itself in 1980, when it began coveting itself. In 1984, it started a passionate love affair with itself. When we bombed Libya, America decided to be with itself full time. Now America is full of itself. It should go out and meet new friends.”

Russell is Catholic. When asked if the moral preconceptions of organized religion gave him his perspective, he seemed momentarily taken back, and characteristically answered with a joke: “I suppose in a subtle way Catholicism does affect me. I’ve had interviewers draw the conclusion that I’m rebelling against the authority of priests and nuns. That’s facetious, but funny. The thing about Catholicism is that, as you get older, it’s easier not to think. All their concerns are with the body. If you take away the uterus, there’ll be nothing to write about concerning the Catholic church.”

Russell is still afforded a philosophical point of view however, whether by religion or not. His principal fear is of the trivialization of public life and address.

“I can just see the way USA Today would cover the Gettysburg Address,” he said. “You’d see on the page ‘President Lincoln spoke yesterday at the dedication of Gettysburg National Cemetery, where he said that “Although the world would little note nor long remember what we say here, it can never forget what they did here” . . . ‘Madonna has a new album coming out.’

“In retrospect, I think the last six years will be looked back on with fondness, like the Eisenhower Administration, even though it had a lot of crap, like McCarthy. The perception will be that it was a good time for the country, a happy time. As for the present, we have to see that beyond the Big Joke of it all, we’re still mortals, and the current situation is an expression of human foibles. We’re all in this together.

“As for the future, we’ll just have to see. It looks good for the Democrats in ’88. But it’s the Democrats who can’t stand prosperity.”