In Las Vegas, Clark County election officials faced so much heckling and protesters that they tightened security at their counting center. Then the bearded lawyer, whose reputation as a heckler of witnesses was assured, rose dramatically from his chair. Interjections were an important part of variety theatre. Sometimes it was integrated into the room. Milton Berle`s weekly variety television series in the 1960s featured a heckler named Sidney Spritzer (German/Yiddish for «Squirter»), played by Borscht Belt comedian Irving Benson. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Muppet Show, also built around a vaudeville theme, featured two hecklers, Statler & Waldorf (two old men named after famous hotels). Interjections are now particularly frequent during comic performances to destabilize the performer or compete with him. Politicians who speak in front of a live audience have less leeway to deal with the heckling. In the early 1930s, before becoming premier of Ontario, Mitchell Hepburn stood on a manure spreader and apologized to the crowd for speaking from a Conservative platform, after which someone in the crowd shouted, «Well, Wind`er Mitch, she`s never carried a greater burden!» [4] Hecklers may also appear at sporting events and usually (but not always) direct their taunts at a visiting team. Fans of the Philadelphia Eagles football team are known for heckling; Among the most notorious incidents were the subsequent boos and snowballs of an artist dressed as Santa Claus at a halftime show in 1968 and the encouragement over the injury of guest player Michael Irvin in 1999. Often, sports heckling also involves throwing objects on the field; This has led most sports stadiums to ban glass containers and bottle caps. Another famous heckler is Robert Szasz, who regularly attends Tampa Bay Rays baseball games and is known to shout one opposing player per game or series.

Former Yugoslav football star Dejan Savićević is involved in an infamous heckling incident in which, during an interview, a man on the street shouts off-screen: «You are a piece of!» Dejan cursed the man and finished the interview without missing a beat. In 1992, then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton was interrupted by Bob Rafsky, a member of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP, who accused him of «dying of ambition» at a rally.[6] After being visibly excited, Clinton took the microphone from the podium, pointed at the heckler, and responded directly with the words: «… I treated you and everyone else who interrupted my gatherings with far more respect than you treated me. And it`s time to think about it! Clinton was then greeted with thunderous applause. [7] [Non-primary source required] His «joke» reacted to the so-called heckler who shouted at him in front of an audience. He was a stocky man, dressed in a dark jacket and had the appearance of a heckler. He wondered, at first vaguely, why he was such a passionate heckler. During a campaign freeze shortly before winning the presidency in 1980, Ronald Reagan was interrupted by a listener who interrupted him several times during a speech. Reagan tried three times to continue his speech, but after being interrupted again, he looked at the heckler and snapped, «Oh, shut up!» The audience immediately gave him a standing ovation. Bill Burr`s Philadelphia Incident was played out in Camden, New Jersey, where he reprimanded an audience of over ten thousand people. [87] [88] Michael Richards was annoyed by the hecklers and repeatedly referred to them as the N-word. [89] When a bystander said that rape jokes were never funny, Daniel Tosh reportedly spontaneously replied that it would be funny if she was raped immediately.

[90] Etymology: The word «heckler» is derived from the term given to Scottish textile workers who painted linen for processing.