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10 Questions with Malachy McCourt
By Laura Brunts

As the Green Party’s celebrity gubernatorial candidate, Malachy McCourt is rather busy these days. The Irish-American author and actor has been speaking across the state with lieutenant governor running mate Alison Duncan, hoping to win at least 50,000 votes on Election Day. This would give the party ballot access for the next four years. McCourt took time to answer City Hall’s 10 Questions.

1. City Hall: You have been doing a great deal of campaigning and traveling. What is life like for you on the campaign trail?

Malachy McCourt: Well I just hit 75. I’m very relaxed, I’m not afraid of anything or anybody, because I don’t know how much time I have left, you know. I might be dead… who knows when. Surely within the next 20 years, maybe within the next 10 minutes, how do I know? But anyway, traveling about is fun. I sleep a lot, I’m a great sleeper. I sleep on the airplane.

[Yawns]

2. Tell me about this show that you are performing with Alison Duncan.

Instead of doing campaign speeches, I have decided, you can float out your ideas and your principles in story form – not jokes, but humor, mythology, a bit of song, a bit of poetry, a quotation here or there, some satire – and have a good time. The woman who is running for lieutenant governor has a magnificent singing voice, as opposed to me. If I were hanged for my singing I would die innocent. So the show then, essentially, is something I had written before, it was called, “You Don’t Have to Be Irish.” I thought, now why not expand it? Now “You Don’t Have to Be Irish to Vote for Me” is the new title.

3. Are more people showing up in some parts of the state as opposed to others?

It seems like it’s fairly equal. I’ve done it four times now. It’s maybe 100-plus people, sometimes 200. I’ll be going up to Ithaca, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. In the beginning it wasn’t as well advertised, but now we’re getting some good leads.

4. Why do you think this method of communication is better than traditional campaigning?

They make speeches, and when you look at them, they all talk about fighting: “I’m going to fight for taxes,” or “I fought for real estate development,” and I say, who did you fight, and show me your wounds. Did you smash somebody in the face? Are you going to hit somebody in the head, are you going to fight? … The other thing they’re going to do, “we’re going to roll up our sleeves.” Why? You never worked a day in your life. I’ve been a laborer, a dock worker, I worked on the Jersey turnpike – they wouldn’t know one end of the shovel from the other. What I’m saying is, there’s a misuse of the language, they don’t understand it. They are totally devoid of humor, and they do not tell the truth. They are all totally, absolutely – and I don’t know how more forcibly I can say this – they are all corrupt, corrupted by corporate money. They’ve all been purchased, they’ve all been bought, and very cheaply. And the taxpayers are paying the price for that.

5. Is this sort of corruption the reason that you switched from voting for Democrats to voting for the Green Party?

I found that I had been doing the lesser of two evils for years. Now I’ve found that there is no such thing as lesser evil, there is just evil. The Democrats are just as evil as the Republicans because they have been complicit collaborators on the Patriot Act, and the war – including John Kerry, and Hillary, and Chucky Schumer. … If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten, and that would be corrupt politicians.

6. Most of the other alternative party candidates are also against the war. How would you differentiate the Green Party from the Libertarian Party or the socialists?

Well the Libertarians are not necessarily against the war. … The Socialist Workers Party, they might have a candidate, I’m not sure. I’m not sure what their positions are, really, so I couldn’t speak with any authority on that.

7. What else is part of what you consider to be your campaign platform, other than opposing the war in Iraq?

I don’t have a platform; I stand on the ground, as I tell people, because I don’t want to be above people. I don’t have issues, I have concerns and interests. The welfare of the citizenry is of paramount importance, not that of corporations. … [Corporations] should not be allowed to sell things that are damaging. For example, it is against the law to sell heroin, cocaine, crack, pot, and so forth, but it’s not against the law to sell the most devastating of all the drugs, which is nicotine. Cigarettes kill 400,000 people a year. So since Bush got in, two and a half million people have died from cigarettes – and that’s terrorism to me – and we haven’t bombed one cigarette factory in all that time.

8. Are you running to win at this point?

Now you wouldn’t remember this because you’re far too young, but in the 60s, William Buckley ran for mayor [of New York City as the Conservative Party candidate]. They said, what’s the first thing you will do if elected, and he said, “I shall demand a recount,” which is what I’d do.

9. But aren’t you hoping to get the 50,000 votes it would take to give the Green Party ballot access in the future?

Oh yeah, yeah. It would be lovely if we could get more than the Republicans, and it could happen, because Faso’s so far behind now. … Let’s be realistic about this whole thing. We will be triumphant. We may not win, but we will be triumphant.

10. Would you ever run for office again?

Probably not. It takes an awful lot of time, and I have to get to writing again.