![]() A discourse-expanding line, casually delivered but surely long pondered by the long-pondering Obama, that he could have served up nowhere but on WTF. “And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public.” Cue trembling jowls, clenched buttocks on studio couches, scandalized coverage of the presidential use of the N-word. ![]() “Racism-we are not cured of it,” Obama announced during the interview. In June, WTF blipped into the national news cycle when President Obama motorcaded up to Maron’s garage and cannily availed himself of its freewheeling vibe. Recent guests have included Keith Richards, Ed Asner, Patricia Arquette, and the transgender punk rocker Laura Jane Grace. It’s a radical act, with radical consequences, not the least of which are the regeneration of Maron’s career (a book, a TV show on IFC) and the huge popularity and broadening cultural reach of the podcast itself. More precisely, he asks them questions about themselves, and then he listens to what they say. Maron started doing WTF in 2009, and its format is very simple: Somebody comes over, and he talks with them. Maron, 52, is a stand-up comic of a certain vintage (bitter decades of road work, chaotic apprenticeships, poppings-up on the late-night talk shows, neurosis, divorce, addiction, envy), and he podcasts twice a week-Mondays and Thursdays-out of his garage in Los Angeles. Marc Maron’s podcast, WTF, is wonderful and precious because it is the place-the only place-where the American monologue becomes the American dialogue, where the riff and the harangue and the half-assed pitch are all accommodated and settled down and invited into a state of blessed relationship. edition) on the park bench, his mind at sea, his skinny hand upon your sleeve the shopper behind her cart in the aisle at Whole Foods, loudly volunteering to nobody in particular, or to everybody in unparticular, the information that she was expecting the place to be empty because it is so early the newly met neighbor at the cocktail party, the fellow parent or dog owner, who talks into your face with such innocent and unflagging zeal that you begin to wonder whether he might be slightly insane-all artists of the American monologue, all busy singing the song of themselves, like Walt Whitman and Donald Trump. Anywhere a mouth opens, anywhere the wind blows, you can hear it. It has its pulpits and its sanctified places-the radio booth, the campaign trail, the AA meeting, the comedy club-but it is not confined to them. The American monologue, once you get an ear for it, is everywhere, beguiling and blustering and buttonholing.
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