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GREENSBORO — Lewis Black feels each day as if he has “been punched in the head 50 times.”

The degeneration of political discourse in America has only made his job harder.

“What I’ve noticed over the course of my stand-up life is that in order to get at the funny, the jokes have to be darker,” he said in a telephone interview from his office in New York. “Especially now, this is beyond human comprehension what’s going on.”

The 63-year-old comedian, author and playwright will take a blowtorch to America’s punditocracy and broken political system Friday at War Memorial Auditorium.

Best known for his blustery commentaries on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” Black has written 40 plays and appeared in about a dozen films, including “Man of the Year,” “Accepted” and “Unaccompanied Minors.”

He won a Grammy last year for his comedy CD “Stark Raving Black,” and released his latest album, “The Prophet,” in September.

A native of Silver Spring, Md., Black got his start in comedy performing at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro. He went to UNC-Chapel Hill for its theater program but also dabbled in politics while a student.

“I was in the University of North Carolina senate,” he said. “And then I quit because it made me sick.

“It was during the (Vietnam) war years, and there was a lot of fighting among committees and all sorts of crap about the war, like whether there should be moratoriums, stuff like that. They were more interested in their own agenda than they were on what should be done for the school. I said, 'I’m not going to sit here and go through this. I’m not arguing this. I don’t need the senate.’ ”

Shortly before graduating in 1970, Black was offered a Shubert Foundation fellowship in playwriting. He wrote the full-length show “Feast” about growing up in the 1950s. The play became a hit and toured seven cities in North Carolina, including Greensboro, of which he has fond memories.

“If it weren’t for UNCG, I’d probably still be a virgin today,” he said. “It’s all their fault. Back then it was all women there, so I was always wandering over to Greensboro.”

He still spends about six to eight weeks a year at an apartment in Chapel Hill writing and helping to put on the yearly Carolina Comedy Festival at his alma mater.

Eventually, Black went to the Yale School of Drama and took a job as playwright-in-residence at the West Bank Cafe’s Downstairs Theatre Bar in New York. It was there, while emceeing shows, that he honed his stand-up comedy skills.

In his act, Black is unapologetically liberal, but he attacks both major parties for what he sees as their role in driving America into a ditch.

“You watch 'Meet the Press,’ 'Face the Nation,’ and you sit there and listen, and they (politicians) don’t speak a language. They speak spin,” he said. “And they constantly refer to the American people, as if they know them, and they don’t. They’re all completely out of touch. They don’t have a clue.

“And if they believe that standing there shaking hands with people who agree with them is getting in touch with the American people, they’re insane. There are a whole lot of people who are really angry, and they’re sitting in the middle.”

However, he reserves his greatest vitriol for conservative talking points. The term “job creators” to refer to the wealthy, he said, especially grates on him.

“It’s not so much the word, as the way in which some people pronounce the word, as if job creator equals saint,” he said. “And then they talk about class warfare and will say, 'When was the last time a poor person created a job?’ How nasty is that? It’s about as nasty as it gets. I dare any of them to stand in front of a deep fryer, actually making a delicious french fry and at the same time come up with an idea for a job.”

But in spite of the toxic political environment, he said he wakes up each day an optimist.

“I couldn’t get so angry about the way things are, if I didn’t believe they could be better,” he said. “I have this faith in the American people that we should be able to (make things better). Not because we’re America, but because we’re really a very, very good group of people who, when we put our minds to it, can get things done. We show it every time there’s a catastrophe, when people march from their homes, pull up their roots and go help.”

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com