Image via ‘Savage Lovecast‘
Dan Savage is a hero to the crew at DigBoston. Though best known for his full-frontal sex advice column, “Savage Love,” which runs in newspapers across the country including this one, he’s also an iconic alt-weekly editorial director in Seattle at the Stranger, which has influenced no small amount of the Dig’s raunch and rigor over the years. Opportunities to interview Savage should always be embraced; as millions of his readers and fans will attest, the man is among America’s most insightful and hilarious sociopolitical philosophers. So with “Savage Love Live” coming to the Wilbur this Saturday, we peppered him with Qs about everything from the new ABC comedy with which he is involved, “The Real O’Neals,” to “that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.”
You’re a lot of things in addition to a columnist. How do you juggle everything? And do you consider yourself something first and foremost—a sex writer, a talking head, a newspaper man, a teacher? What does your business card say?
God … my business card says, “Professional Asshole.” I’m kind of a sex advice columnist first, but I guess I don’t think of myself as any one thing, or think of myself that often. I’m just a working class Irish kid who’s like, “Oh here’s a gig, I better do it.” Whatever I’m offered, if I can squeeze it in, I’m going to fucking do it. No one is more surprised than me that you can parlay the filthiest sex advice column in America to the occasional oped in the New York Times, to doing the occasional appearance on television.
The ground really shifted under my feet since I’ve been writing “Savage Love.” When I started writing it, the way I wrote about sex would disqualify me from any other gigs and ever being taken seriously. On any topic. I was not only telling the truth myself about sex in public, but allowing readers to talk about sex in public. But then the internet came along, and collectively, with the data, everyone began to tell the truth. I’m constantly amazed by what this gig turned into and what this gig made possible for me.
It’s amazing how you’ve managed to be an alternative personality who really breaks through into the mainstream—even in the face of much conservative outrage. What’s the secret to saying what you want and know is right and still finding a wide audience?
I couldn’t tell you what the secret is. If I knew what the secret was, I would bottle it and sell it and get out of the writing biz myself and retire. I’m just constantly flabbergasted. There have been great people I’ve crawled into bed with over the years. Tim Keck, the genius who co-created the Onion and founded the Stranger published “Savage Love” at a time when the Village Voice looked at me and said, “That’s too dirty for New York. Too much anal sex for New York.” Likewise, I met someone in television and we really hit it off, which is where “The Real O’Neals” comes from.
You answer a lot of questions. Is there a difference between the Dan Savage who asks the questions, and in the Dan Savage who answers them? Or do you pretty much wear the same hat, behave the same in both positions?
From the moment “Savage Love” turned from this one-off joke … it was originally intended as a sex advice column by a gay guy, and I was going to treat straight people and straight sex how heterosexual advice columnists had always treated gay people and gay sex. But it turned into this advice column because straight people loved it, they had never been on the receiving end before. From the moment it turned into a real column, I began to describe it as a conversation I was having with my readers about sex, then described it as a conversation I was having with my friends at a bar about sex after a few drinks. That conversation became as much of an education for me as it was for anyone else. I’ve always listened to my readers and what they have to say, because I find things out, like where the clitoris actually is.
I feel like I’ve seen you in more than a few documentaries and TV interviews and all things of that sort. Do you turn anyone down? What’s your policy?
I come from a long line of Irish-Catholic assholes sitting at the end of the bar who won’t shut up—even if they know nothing. Some people may feel I have something to contribute to their documentary, or I might be a good villain, and I’m happy to help them with their shit if I have the time. A lot of the people whose documentaries I appeared in, a lot of people were making their first documentaries, and in the alt-weekly world you’re often helping people get started as writers or journalists or reporters. I have sort of the same feeling when I’m approached by a new documentary filmmaker—I’m going to help them, even if I’m the villain in the piece.
Sometimes when I see on a theater marquee that someone who isn’t a comic or musician is coming to town, I wonder, ‘What the hell are they going to do to entertain a crowd for hours?’ How do you entertain a crowd for hours?
The first few times people invited me to places to speak because of the column, it took me to realize that what people wanted was the column, now the podcast. They didn’t want me to pontificate for an hour and then take a couple of questions. In the same way that the column is this conversation that I’m having with my readers, people want to have a conversation unfold in front of them in real time. So quickly I disregarded the prepared remarks that nobody wanted to hear, and just went straight to the questions and the Q&A format. The audience is in charge of where we go that night.
I’ve heard that it’s important for you to have your column published in the Boston market. What is it about Boston that you find so special?
The affinity that I have with my fellow Catholics of course. Catholics are weird and crazy and fun about sex. It’s this weird combo of repression, but also this sort of concurrent and contradictory sense that sex is important but it’s not something you talk about.
We’re now in the election season following that in which you and your readers defined “Santorum.” Looking back, did you have any clue how much of a home run that would be? And did the whole ordeal alter your notion of the possibilities for impacting the political discourse?
I didn’t have any idea. The person who did have an idea was the reader who suggested in a letter to me that we redefine “Santorum.” The controversy and the effort grew out of this interview he gave in which he compared same-sex couples to dog fuckers and child rapists. And the reader said he should never be able to live it down, that we should create something that hangs around his neck for the rest of his life. And it worked! He entered the race in 2012, and he had to answer questions about his Google results. And then he’s asked about that 2003 interview. I had no idea. I get all the credit for Santorum, but it was a reader who suggested the contest, it was a reader who came up with the new definition, and it was the readers who picked that new definition from a field of 10 to choose from. Sometimes the best stuff I’ve done has just been getting out of the way of my readers and letting them have fun with the column.
What’s your reaction to a headline like this one from the Wall Street Journal: “ABC Producers Downplay Criticism of New Comedy ‘The Real O’Neals’”?
I knew there would be controversy. Right before the 2012 election the Family Research Council put out a video attacking Barack Obama and it was all about me, claiming me and Barack Obama are best buddies. I never met the President. I voted for him twice, I wrote him a couple of checks when he was running. He’s been a really really good President, but they talk about me like his anti-bullying czar and frequent White House guest, so I knew they would freak out when an institution as mainstream as ABC worked with me on a sitcom—which is not about my life, and not based on my life. I am one of eight executive producers, I wrote no scripts, I directed no episodes, I am not one of the writers or creators of the show—but it fits into their constant need to fuel the Christian industrial martyr complex in which they’re being culturally persecuted. What’s going to be funny about the show once it’s on the air is that they’re going to be claiming it makes Christians look bad in the reaction that one of the parents has to the kid coming out, but of course that’s the reaction that they encourage the parent to have. If that reaction makes parents look bad, then maybe Catholic parents should stop being hostile to their kids for coming out.
So, how about that Republican field? Evolved or devolved from last time around? Any predictions for the future of the party?
They have devolved. There was that autopsy after the last election—they said they had to do more outreach with communities of color, move on immigration reform, be less hostile to queer people, and they’ve just done the opposite. It’s been race hatred, homo hatred—it’s flabbergasting. You literally have Marco Rubio standing up there on stage, and he’s the one who everyone thinks is reasonable compared to the insanity of Donald Trump or the insanity of Ben Carson. You have Rubio up there on stage saying he opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest. If anything, the Republican Party in the age of Obama has been driven bonkers and gotten worse and worse and worse.
Concurrently, the Republican Party has been incredibly successful in that they’re tapping into something very ugly in the American electorate. Look at all the state legislatures across the country, look at the governor’s mansions across the country. They’ve made gains under Obama by engaging in the politics of demagoguery, racism, and sexism. You have to look at not just what’s wrong with the Rs, but with us. You have to look at that fact of who’s not voting, and if we’re not voting in [midterm elections], then why aren’t we as motivated to vote as the knuckle-dragging, gun-humping Jesus-fellating weirdos are? What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with the Dems that they can’t turn out their voters? It’s very depressing. I’m looking forward to 2020 as an election year, because maybe we can undo some of the damage done redistricting in 2010.
When you get out around the country, outside of your bubble like when you do these live “Savage Love” shows, is that to really see what’s going on elsewhere?
I wish it was as high-minded as that. I’m going to Boston because somebody wants to pay me to go to Boston. I wish it was a fact-finding mission for the UN, because then I would go to Heaven. But I do enjoy traveling, and I do enjoy going to college campuses and meeting people. I pay attention, and it’s a good way to pay attention to a bunch of people at once. Writing is lonely. Feedback comes delayed, or it may not come at all. Praise comes delayed, or it may not come at all. And criticism comes constantly thanks to Twitter. So to be in front of an audience and have all this feedback is kind of intoxicating. It’s sort of a reward for all the loneliness that is writing.
Check out “Savage Love Live with Dan Savage” at The Wilbur on Saturday, January 23. More info at thewilbur.com.
A Queens, NY native who came to New England in 2004 to earn his MA in journalism at Boston University, Chris Faraone is the editor and co-publisher of DigBoston and a co-founder of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. He has published several books including 99 Nights with the 99 Percent, and has written liner notes for hip-hop gods including Cypress Hill, Pete Rock, Nas, and various members of the Wu-Tang Clan.
