Podcast of the Week: Bill Burr—The Monday Morning Podcast

Bill Burr welcomes the occasional guest, but he mostly goes it alone. Most comedy podcasts are either interview or conversation based. A few of them are performances of material written ahead of time. Almost all of them bring at least a couple comedians together. But on Monday mornings Burr gives us you'd expect to hear from a football fan who's sure he's right about his football opinions, and a political dabbler, who's not quite as sure he's right about that stuff, but is determined to go on about it anyway without waiting for input from anyone.

Actually, he does dedicate a lot of time to feedback from listeners, often reading entire emails and responding pretty fairly to the concerns and criticism.

He holds very little back. Says whatever he's thinking, and uses whatever words it takes. Don't listen if salty language raises your blood pressure.

In recent podcasts he has defended Laura Schlessinger in her recent controversy, then he's taken the defense right back. His August 17 podcast mentions her, and dismisses her language as nothing more than a direct description of how some people talk.

"All she was really guilty of… [was] being an old white person making a fucken old reference to Def Comedy Jam… on HBO like the last 2 seasons."

He recalls some of his own older material about Def Comedy Jam.

My joke of the Def Jam impression was 'White people. Pussy. Peace!' That was every set that I- that's all it was. 'You ever see a white guy lay in a bed?' you know? 'Mother fucken black people, when we lay in a bed, we lay in the mother fucken bed!' Like, it was ridiculous. All right? And then it was peppered with the fucken n-word, all the way throughout. Fucken ridiculous. So, you can't expect some 60 year old white lady to be able to fucking process that.

A week later, on his August 23 podcast, Burr starts right off tearing himself down. Within the first minute he calls himself a douchebag for having defended Schlessinger.

I didn't know that she was like… Rush Limbaugh with a cunt. I had no idea. I just—you know—I didn't know who the fuck she was. I thought she was some soccer mom with a podcast.

And he promises to be more informed in the future when dealing with race issues.

I've alway appreciated Burr's take on everything. Including race. And gender. And class. And media. And bigotry. Not necessarily because I agree with his character (he's one of those comedians whose character has fuzzy borders) but because he talks as if he's being honest and that's all he needs of himself. His Opie & Anthony set in front of a hostile Philly crowd is like the theme from Rocky for comedy workouts. But less retarded. Watch that set to see Burr fight against thousands of drunk fans, finally convincing enough of them that all his insults are perfectly placed.

There's a a companion site, providing the videos and links that Burr mentions and discusses on the podcast. The site also provides links to recent episodes.

The main criticism I have has nothing to do with the content or delivery. It's that he's switched hosts a few times and the archives are tricky to find. His Libsyn site is outdated. If you want to do some grunt sleuthing, this page has all the links listed in paragraph text form.  In a browser it shows up as text, but in an RSS reader, it does work as a feed. That's also the URI iTunes provides for the podcast.

The iTunes link doesn't work for me, reporting that the podcast "is not currently available in the U.S. Store" (even tho I'm currently subscribed).

And if you search for the podcast in the iTunes store, you'll get some old O&A remote pieces and random bits.

Another way to go is to use the podcast's Facebook page for guidance.