Fresh off the release of his latest standup special, comedian Bill Burr brings his outrage to Silicon Valley. The hour-long Paper Tiger, released on Netflix in September, takes aim at political correctness. “Everything has become absolutes,” Burr says, railing against what he perceives to be wrongheaded stances on both the left and the right. He questions the wisdom of the #MeToo slogan, “believe women” (“What about the psychos?!”), and blasts conservatives for blasting Colin Kaepernick. It’s a difficult needle to thread, especially for someone as white and loud as Burr. Then again, the Boston comedian has never shied away from controversy.

Bill Burr
Fri, 7:30pm, $115+
Mountain Winery, Saratoga

Like his contemporaries, Marc Maron and Louis C.K., stand-up comic Bill Burr cracks up audiences with brutally honest observations about the loathsome, heaving mass of selfishness and vapidity otherwise known as “humanity.” But unlike Maron, who finds punchlines (and dejection) in the realization that he is no different than everyone else, and C.K., who works to tease out the transcendent beauty in all the cruelty and barbarism that surrounds him, Burr grabs laughs through sheer callousness and resignation. The titles of his two most recent Netflix specials say it all: You People Are All The Same and I’m Sorry You Feel That Way.

Need more proof? Within minutes of taking the stage in for the 2014 filming of I’m Sorry, Burr wastes no time in offering up a grim solution to global warming and pollution. “They just don’t want to come out and say it,” he says—referring to hand-wringing politicians and scientists. “Nobody has the balls to come out and say it—and say, ‘Look, 85 percent of you have to go!”

But that’s not the real Burr. Speaking over the phone, the 47-year-old comedian from Canton, Mass., insists that the person his fans see on stage isn’t him. “When I’m doing someone yelling, it’s not me yelling,” he says. “I’m usually doing a character.”

Fair enough. Still, the characters Burr inhabits on stage are quite often angry—or befuddled, exasperated, scared and genuinely bothered by something.

If all of his most hyped-up gesticulations and raised voices are deployed when he is in character, then the actual Burr must look and sound a bit more like the smug, punishingly pragmatic man who drops out of an imitation of Donald Sterling, mid-racist rant, to directly address those who were so outraged by the behavior of the Los Angeles Clippers owner: “What did you think they thought?” Burr says, smirking in bemusement. “You never talked to a grandparent and asked the wrong question and all of a sudden went down this crazy road?”

Which isn’t to say Burr would ever stand behind Sterling’s statements. He is clearly a progressive dude. But Burr’s is not a progressivism born from a liberal arts education at Harvard. His is a “you do you and I’m gonna do me” streetwise progressivism, born of a sharp eye, a sharper mind and a perpetual skepticism for authority.

When asked what he enjoys most about stand-up comedy, he says it is the freedom from such influences that keeps him coming back. And in the process of explaining his love of performing he ends up weaving as eloquent a takedown of income inequality as any presidential speech writer or studied Marxist professor could ever hope to produce.

“I’m using my talent for me—the money is going to go to me,” he says. “All business is set up so the big guy owns it, and it all goes to the big guy, and he tells you what you earned. And that’s just a recipe for getting screwed.”

Bill Burr performs at the San Jose Center for Performing Arts on Jun. 22 at 7pm. More info.

If you’re a comedian, anger management is a career hazard. Some of the best comics have stayed in the blistering red – guys like Louis CK, George Carlin, and Bill Hicks made names for themselves as masters of the rant. Bill Burr is no different. In June, we hope and pray that the comedian will be fuming mad during his three appearances at the San Jose Improv beginning June 15th.

“Do you know how many times a week people say to me ‘why are you yelling?’ And I never feel like I am. I’m passionate about my opinions and I want you to hear all of them before you get to talk again – that’s not anger,” he explains on his last special, the aptly titled “Let It Go.”

He’s not happy about it, of course: “I don’t want to die as this guy, the ‘angry guy,’ that’s the worst dude to die as. Because people gotta try and think of happy shit to say about you at your funeral. ‘He, uh, he always paid his bills on time, you gotta give him that. Goddamn! You gave this guy a bill and he paid it! This guy was a bill paying son of a bitch. He, uh, ironed his shirts….ah, I got nothin’.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fortunately he’s ignored his own advice. Last week on his weekly Monday Morning show, a podcast that quickly devolves from calm to calamitous, Burr released one hell of a rant.

“Can nerds go back to being beaten?,” he asks. Taking aim specifically at ‘alternative comics’ and a certain beloved television show (“Fuck The Office”), he claims “dorks” and “hipsters” have “taken the horror out of attempting to be a comedian – no heckling, no drunks, no obnoxious behavior, no aggressiveness – every fucking reason that it takes balls to be a comedian, you’ve removed from that situation and created this fucking comedy womb.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

So maybe that’s why he’s upset – he’s had to be.

Catch Burr at one of his five shows at the San Jose Improv starting June 15. Tickets are on sale here.