Lewis Black tackles current issues with humor at MontBleu on Feb. 6. Photo Copyright 2015 Carolyn E. Wright

By Kathryn Reed

STATELINE – Mental health isn’t a laughing matter until one hears Lewis Black’s rant about the system.

It’s not that he finds mental illness humorous, but he pokes fun at how people in the United States deal with it.

Black, the king of angry humor, brought his show to a full house at MontBleu on Feb. 6.

He tackles serious issues, but in doing so illustrates the absurdity of it all. He does so with colorful language, emphatic gestures and exaggerated eye rolls. His delivery is as much a part of the humor as the words themselves. It’s edgy, provocative and a bit in your face.

If you can’t handle the F word, well, you won’t enjoy the show.

“If you have a kid, you vaccinate the f—ing kid. … It’s called the public good. Whether we like it or not we live with people. We don’t get to do what we want because we live with people,” Black said.

Black doesn’t understand how the Republican Party can call the November election a mandate when voter turnout was 34.6 percent. He pointed out how the last time it was so low was 1942, during WWII – with people dying for our right to vote.

“Both parties did something that terrorists couldn’t do – immobilize us,” Black said. “We don’t have a government anymore, we just have Groundhog Day.”

He said the only thing President Obama has done well is give a speech. House Speaker John Boehner “is a mood ring come to life.” Listening to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is like nails on a blackboard.

“The only way I can deal with the Tea Party is if I believe they are fictional characters,” Black said.

Audience members and others could submit questions that he read from his iPad. That segment then is shown on his website the next day. One was about whether women should be allowed to go topless. This led him on a diatribe for several minutes that didn’t garner much reaction.

Someone asked about what to do about Valentine’s. He called it a BS holiday.

His political humor brought about the most laughs, but the reaction to his show was tepid for much of the night. It’s hard to know if this was because it was a mixed crowd of tourists and locals or that this liberal Jew from New York was out of his element in conservative, small town Nevada.

Black has garnered a huge following from his work on “The Daily Show”, his books, more than 40 plays and five Grammy nominations, of which he has won two.

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Notes:

• For more about the comedian, go online. Here is the stream from the Stateline show.