Alumnus brings funny business back to campus

He didn’t make it past the first cut for a campus improv group, but you would not expect it after having seen professional comedian Steve Hofstetter, GS ’02, perform.

The Columbia alum tackled racism, death by text messaging, and even a heckler at a Broadway Comedy Club performance on Sept. 1. The show took place only two weeks before his return to campus on Tuesday, to perform stand-up at Roone Arledge Auditorium in conjunction with Columbia’s Sigma Phi Epsilon—the fraternity chapter he helped to found.

But Hofstetter’s sharp wit is far from frat-boy fare of the “Animal House” variety. At his Broadway Comedy Club show, he told a joke about American Girl dolls, noting that the children’s toy company highlights “the worst things we’ve ever done,” with its toy “slave doll” and “plantation owner doll,” who are supposed to be best friends. Hofstetter wondered why the company ignores American heroes like Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman.

At this point, the only African-American audience member cheered, “Harriet Tubman, baby.” Hofstetter replied, “Yes. Yay, black man yelling ‘Harriet Tubman.’ Not a fan of Clara Barton, are you?”

“I’m the only black man in the room, baby, I gotta yell for that,” the audience member said, to which Hofstetter responded, “You’re the only black man in the room, and you’re doing shit for stereotypes right now, sir.”

And somehow, this exchange made the unapologetic comedian a new friend—the audience member and his wife took a picture with Hofstetter after the show.

The Sig Ep Executive Board issued a statement via email, expressing its excitement to bring Hofstetter back to campus. “As part of our decennial celebration we asked Steve to come to Columbia to do a show for us,” with the hope that it would reconnect the chapter and the University with a prominent alumnus.

Hofstetter got involved in entertainment writing in a roundabout way. “At the career fair there were two tables that weren’t for engineering or I-banking,” he said in an interview. “They were Teach for America and Time Inc. So I did an internship for Sports Illustrated for Kids because that was the only option that I had.”

After graduation, writing and comedy gigs beat unemployment, and now Hofstetter has two books, appearances on shows ranging from CBS’s “Late Late Show” to ESPN’s “Quite Frankly,” and multiple national tours to his name.

The fraternity board cited Hofstetter’s Sig Ep-centric jokes as their favorites of the set, “If you’re ever at one of his shows, ask him about Brian F. Wallace or about his face in the first photo of the chapter.”

Hofstetter also worked for WKCR and Spectator, first as a news writer then as a humor columnist. His Spectator column caused great buzz—sometimes positive and sometimes reactionary­—as he challenged Columbia Community Outreach and Take Back the Night in the same article.

“Nothing I ever say on stage is something I wouldn’t defend in conversation,” he said. “I will never ever use the excuse, ‘Well, it was just a joke.’ That’s just the form it was in when you said it. It was still what you said.”

Hofstetter has stood by this philosophy since his time at Columbia. According to an e-mail from Barnard English professor Ellen McLaughlin, with whom Hofstetter took a playwriting class, even as a college student he created “genuinely funny and provocative work that never dumbed itself down.”

“He always had an uncanny ear for the way people really talk and a sense of economy in his characters­—something that is essential, particularly for comedy,” McLaughlin said.

Because of his dual roles as stand-up comic and humor columnist, Hofstetter has honed his writing skills in two styles with individual objectives. “In print, the key to a good laugh is getting someone to read and go, ‘Wait a second!’ and then reread it and go, ‘Oh, that’s really clever,’” he said.

“The key to a good laugh on stage is to have people know it automatically. That’s a very big difference. They’re two different ways of writing.”
Hofstetter is excited to be back in New York, performing at Columbia last week, and at the Broadway Comedy Club in Midtown this weekend and next week. New York, to him, has “a certain edge.... You can get away with more on stage.”

Of course, Hofstetter’s dark sense of humor isn’t for everyone. In fact, he has devoted a section of his Web site to “Hate Mail,” which he is now turning into a book called “People Who Hate Me,” expected to be out in a couple of months.

“The reason I do that with my hate mail is I turn something that should hurt me—because everyone’s got feelings, you know—into something that will make me a profit.”

Although comedy isn’t the route of most Columbia alumni, Hofstetter touts its virtues: “Unlike the I-bankers, I still have a job.”

He will be performing at the Broadway Comedy Club at 318 W. 53rd St. (at Eighth Avenue) on Sunday, Sept. 20, and Tuesday, Sept. 29, at 9 p.m. Barnard and Columbia students receive a discount by entering the promo code “SpecTwo” on Hofstetter’s Web site.