In a new interview with Norm MacDonald, “Last Man Standing” star Tim Allen talked about politics and show business. While Allen has been pegged as a conservative, he said that he’s more of an anarchist who is suspicious of all forms of authority and big government.
“I’m a stand up comedian,” Allen said. “We’re anarchists. [Jay] Leno says, ‘You shouldn’t fall in love with hookers.' And that’s show businesses. Show business is all just prostitution. They like you for a while and then they move on to somebody else.” (The relevant excerpt begins at the 6:10 mark below.)
Allen said that when he is interviewed the journalist often mistakes him for Mike Baxter, a character he plays, rather than himself. He then indicated that his philosophy is more simple - as a comedian there was no middle man between the performer and the paying audience. “People come to see you, and they pay money, and you get it. There’s no one in the middle of that situation.”
Allen then recalled that there is in fact a middle man - the tax collector. He remembered the high taxes he paid as a young comic: “I hate taxes. I hated it as a stand up comedian. I worked hard week by week, you get cash in an envelope, usually by guys in suits…but you’d have to pay taxes…The federal government never helped me any, I don’t know what that was about…What did the government ever do for us as comedians? When I was a kid it was 45-50 percent…for rich people it was 80 percent. It was horrible.”