Exclusive: Meet DC’s conservative comic Tim Young

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Dec 21, 2017
Comic Tim Young hosts “No Things Considered” (Courtesy)

A Baltimore-born-and-bred comic taking on leftwing policies, and personalities every weekday at 7:30 p.m., in the East, with his online commentary program “No Things Considered,” at his new home at The Washington Examiner, his television and radio appearances and his red-hot social media feeds, spoke to Big League Politics about where is it as right now.

“Originally, I did comedy in 2008 and 2009, in DC, and then moved to Austin, Texas for a number of years,” said Tim Young, the standup comedian, who started his program as a Kickstarter-funded project first in the lobby of a Bourbon Coffee shop and then in the basement of Capitol Hill’s Stanton & Greene restaurant.

The comic said he grew up in the southwest corner of Baltimore, in Lansdowne. “Not a good area.”

His bachelor’s degree is from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County and his law degree is from the University of Baltimore Law School. “I went to all the poor schools, there’s a pattern, Lansdowne, UMBC, the University of Baltimore–it’s like going to Marshall’s or the Nordstrom Rack of schools.”

After law school, Young said he interned for 18 months for Sen. Y. Timothy Hutchinson (R.-Ark.) and Sen. Donald L. Nickles (R.-Okla.).

“Nickles was funny,” he said. “Tim Hutchinson? They brought me in after everybody found out about his cheating on his wife, and that did not go over well, since he was one of the guys doing the Clinton impeachment stuff–really nice guy, though, an incredibly nice guy.”

Young said at its root, the comedy in Washington or Austin or Baltimore is the same. “But, it is interesting to me that nobody in Washington does what I do and there isn’t another politically-focused comedy show other than the Capitol Steps–which is, um, dare I say, kind of schticky with a piano? The same four-chord song with everybody dancing around and still talking about Monica Lewinsky.”

News parody shows come down from New York City once a year, he said. “I just decided: ‘Why not put my roots down here?'”

Young said he came back to Washington and worked for the American Conservative Union as the director of traditional and digital marketing for the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference that featured New York City developer Donald J. Trump, still months away from announcing his White House run.

“Once I left there? I just started hard on the show,” he said.

The show began as “Here’s the Thing,” which is one of the catchphrases from his stage act that would set up a string of jokes about something or someone appearing to be normal until Young conducted his comedic-vivisection. The name of the show had to change after Young said he realized there was already a podcast using the same name, so he switched it up.

With the $6,100 raised on Kickstarter, including two patrons giving $1,000, which brought them: “Co-production credit on the show, plus all of the other stuff. Also, Tim, who happens to be one of the best marketing guys on the right, will give you a 1-hour consultation on any project that you’re working on.”

With the money, Young bought his production laptop and board, microphones and lights and he was on his way.

Conservative operative Will Upton told Big League Politics there was something special about the Stanton and Greene shows.

“I may die young due to exposure to black mold in that basement, but I’ll die knowing that jokes were made and at least one episode of Tim’s show was made that will never air to the public,” Upton said. “Seriously, we lost power and just did it for the fun of it.”

At one point, Young complained to Upton and others that sometimes when he is alone in the S&G basement setting up, he would sense ghost-like movements in the dark corners of the other side of the basement, until Upton and another Catholic friend of Young’s cast out the spirits with sprinkles of Holy Water.

Afterwards, Young said he was never troubled again by fans in the shadow gallery.

“Tim has a vision, a good one, of political comedy that isn’t afraid of being both partisan and introspective,” Upton said.

“It’s refreshing really and maybe something we all need, the ability to laugh at ourselves every now and then,” he said. “Tim is driven to make his style of comedy a reality. In the sometimes humorless world of DC, you have to work hard to get a laugh, and Tim does just that.”

The basement shows were live in front of an audience of 10 or 12 unruly friends, along with the Facebook Live audience, which would gather every Wednesday.

One of the early audience members and guests on the show, Bobby Panzenbeck, he does not see Young as doctrinaire.

“I would say that Tim’s conservatism is more instinctual than ideological, and that’s what makes him refreshing,” said Panzenbeck, a Washington-based communications consultant. “He has an authentic understanding of what truly makes America great, and an innate ability to deliver an everyman’s conservative perspective on liberal shenanigans.”

After S&G, the show moved to The Daily Caller, where it went grew to weekdays and its current live-to-tape routine that allows for a more polished production and graphics.

Young said the move from The Daily Caller was difficult because he has many friends there, who championed his career and the show, but at the time in September, when he moved the show, he felt that Washington Examiner was committed to supporting the show and him, while Daily Caller people were still not sure what to do with him.

“The Washington Examiner pays me in American dollars and sometimes, rubles, it depends,” he said. “More importantly, they are receptive to what I do and I love it there.”

It has been a good fit, so far as Young gets used to them and they get used to him, he said.

“They are fantastic. They brought me in with an eye to the future–they liked what I did at some other place–and they want to reach out to millennials and younger people–and catch an audience that, frankly, don’t normally get,” he said.

“There aren’t personalities like me out there,” he said.

“I don’t take myself seriously,” he said.

“I don’t consider myself a journalist. I’m a comic, who happens to be able to interpret politics in a fun way.”

Watch Tim Young’s Dec. 19 “No Things Considered” here: 

 

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