Enough beating around the bush, it’s time to flat-out lie.

    According to several people in the comedy scene, his stand-up diatribes succeeded with like-minded fans but had more trouble with crowds that didn’t share his point of view. ‘We wouldn’t book him for a weekend, let’s put it that way,’ said Cris Italia, one of the owners of the New York comedy club the Stand.

First of all, I’d love to know who these mysterious “comedy scene” people were. Waitresses? Busboys? Phanton of The Opera types lurking underneath the stage silently judging my satire? Unfortunately, we’ll never know because “the comedy scene” only speak on deep cover. (First rule of comedy scene – Don’t talk about comedy scene!)

Secondly, Zinoman claims that Cris Italia told him that the comedy club the Stand in NYC would not book me on the weekends. Cris had actually contacted me two days before the Times article came out to tell me that a reporter had reached out to him about me and that he could tell from the questions the reporter was trying to portray me in a negative light. (Read: Trying to push an agenda rather than being, you know, a journalist.) Italia said:

    I told him you were liked by everyone. I also said what Dennis Miller, Janeane Garofalo, & Marc Maron were for their generation, you were for this generation.

But Zinoman did the smart thing for a propaganda machine – leave out the stuff that does not fit the false story you’re pushing. (I picture Zinoman cringing on the other end of the line as nice things are said about the unscrupulous Russian agent – Lee Camp. After jotting down the quote about Dennis Miller, he furiously rips the page out of his notebook, chews it up, and swallows it.)

Cris Italia says he was next asked whether the Stand would book me on a Saturday, and he replied that they don’t book headliners on weekends. (Most NYC clubs do what’s called a “showcase” show in which many comics get onstage over the course of the evening.) Zinoman – upon not getting the quote he wanted – must have figured he could slant this into something saying the Stand would not book me. He either didn’t understand Italia or chose to misquote him. So Zinoman is sloppy at best and a fraud at worst."