Comedian Jim Norton talks about those he loves, hates

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Jim Norton’s 2008 book is called “I Hate Your Guts.” In it, he ridicules famous stars from Steve Martin to Hillary Clinton and beyond, for specific things they have done, not for their entire lives.

For instance, he likes Martin’s body of work a lot. But he hated it when Martin retooled the role of Inspector Clouseau in a “Pink Panther” movie, “butchering” a character immortalized by Peter Sellers.

“If somebody went onstage in a white suit and an arrow through their head, he (Martin) would accuse them of thievery, and he’d be right,” Norton says.

“They shouldn’t remake ‘The Jerk’ either. Steve Martin was brilliant in that!”

Clinton is the only person Norton skewered in print that he wishes he’d been gentler with, since he likes her.

“I was very annoyed at her when she was running for the nomination (for president), when she lied about being in a war zone,” he says.

“I was a little venomous,” he says. “I think I was a little too hard on her.”

Since Norton attacks people so well, I tried a little therapy on him.

I asked, if he were to write a sequel called “I Love Your Guts,” who would he exalt? His answers:

■ Ozzy Osbourne: “He’s my favorite person alive. I love the fact he’s brutally honest. A perfect example of a guy who lets it all hang out on television. Plus, I love his music.”

■ Jack Nicholson: “He doesn’t care he has a gut right now. I saw a picture of him on a boat with five models, and his big, fat stomach was sticking out, and he was eating a hero sandwich. What a great guy!

“He doesn’t try to look good in front of these dumb broads. He knows he’s Jack and he’s gonna (have sex) with them all, so he’s just eating a hoagie. It just made me so happy.”

■ Charlie Sheen: “What a great publicist he has. They said he was in the hospital because he got a hernia, laughing. His publicist has got to be the greatest spin doctor on the planet!

“If you’re smoking coke all night with porn stars, you should hurt yourself laughing. What a great life he has. I just hope the guy doesn’t die. If he’s smoking coke, that’s a dangerous place to be.

“I’d try to get a photo of him on the cover. I love Charlie Sheen. I’d do the same thing with that kind of money.”

TALKING DIRTY

Norton is a dirty, perverted, sexual deviant, and he’s coming to our town!

The comedian (performing tonight at Sunset Station) has so upset the sensibilities of some Mississippi residents, that his 2007 best-selling comedy book, “Happy Endings,” was taken out of circulation from the library system in Pascagoula, Miss.

Then, when he was interviewed on live TV by an Atlanta broadcaster, his interviewer tsk-tsk’ed him for casually using the word “whore” in a joke, which he then repeated.

Since Norton is a top-tier, George Carlin-loving comedian, he thinks about those two free-speech episodes and looks for insightful, efficient jokes.

“It was so odd to me that anybody would find a book about perverted sex to be offensive,” he says. “But if you’re a murderer and you write a book of redemption, you’re so brave.”

And the TV news conflict?

“It’s not like I used profanity. They say ‘murder’ and ‘rape’ every show, but if you say ‘whore’ to be funny, you’re a criminal.”

Those incidents were, in reality or theoretically, the results of one or several people complaining about Norton’s humor.

And those few complaints in Mississippi affected change for an entire library system — thereby altering the reading lives of every reader who didn’t stumble on his book in those libraries.

“A couple of people have nothing better to do, so they bitch. And it gets things done! It’s amazing what one complaint will do,” he says.

What’s worse is — as Carlin once noted — people often will blame their own prejudices against language on doing so “for the children.”

“People don’t like to come right out and say, ‘I don’t like you to say that, so you shouldn’t say it,’ because that’s too self-centered,” Norton says.

“So liberals hide behind things like ‘hate speech’ and ‘homophobia’ and ‘Islamophobia.’ And conservatives hide behind ‘family values’ and ‘protect the children.’

“It’s all nonsense. But it’s all for the same reason: They just don’t want you to say something.”

Fortunately, when people pay to see Norton onstage, they’re asking for it. His best audiences are in liberal Boston and San Francisco, where liberals laugh when he attacks political correctness.

It’s worth noting, he says, that he doesn’t attack liberals, per se, just their language policing and similar boundaries.

“As long as you’re not standing up there wishing death upon them, most people can take a joke.”

Amen to that.

Doug Elfman’s column appears Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. E-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.