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" In this series, we ask comedians to name the comedians they enjoy. Then we ask those people, too.  Last week, Sheng Wang chose Yannis Pappas, a comic known for his vibrant character sketches. Below, Pappas talks about Nate Bargatze, a clean comic and Tennessee transplant living in New York City. Check back next week to read about Bargatze&amp;#039;s pick.       He didn&amp;#039;t like me at all at first.  We&amp;#039;re completely the opposite. He&amp;#039;s a completely clean comedian \u2014 he doesn&amp;#039;t curse at all. And that&amp;#039;s rare. But he still appeals to a wide audience. He&amp;#039;s from the South, he&amp;#039;s conservative, he&amp;#039;s religious. And I&amp;#039;m this liberal guy from New York. My comedy&amp;#039;s a bit more aggressive; there&amp;#039;s often a target. He&amp;#039;s more laid-back. He speaks slow, he&amp;#039;s got a Southern accent, and he exudes charisma. Ninety percent of his stuff is personal stories, not so in-your-face. And his delivery is slow and deliberate. I&amp;#039;ll say this: He&amp;#039;s the comedian that comes to mind when you think of someone with a sitcom. He reminds me of Ray Romano or Jerry Seinfeld, big personalities with so much charisma that you could kind of build a sitcom around.  He&amp;#039;s a guy who can make jokes. Most of his stuff is autobiographical, but then he&amp;#039;ll make a great joke coming from this rural, small-town, conservative perspective. And I don&amp;#039;t agree with his beliefs, but he&amp;#039;s the only guy I know who could make it funny. He&amp;#039;s got this joke about Wal-Mart, like, &amp;quot;People say Wal-Mart killed the mom-and-pop stores. No, Wal-Mart is a mom-and-pop store that got their act together.&amp;quot;  We did a college tour together in 2008, right before Obama got his first term. We didn&amp;#039;t get too political. We just presented ourselves as examples of the liberal voter and the conservative voter. And we had some great times together. We were actually on stage when it was announced Obama won. This kid ran in and said, &amp;quot;Obama won.&amp;quot; The first black president. It kind of felt like when people say they remember where they were when JFK was shot. I&amp;#039;ll always remember that moment, being on stage with him. It felt historic.  \u2014As told to Julia Carpenter  PLUS: Meet the Other Comic&amp;#039;s Comics   Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a17714/nate-bargatze-15180132/>