They Promised Us Trump Would Be Good for Comedy

From Jon Stewart to state-sponsored jokes, how irony was co-opted, podcasted, and politely escorted out of the room.

(Originally submitted to the New York Times. They passed. You benefit.)

“Donald Trump will be good for comedy. Just like Nixon in the ‘70s, which saw the rise of punk rock, disco, and great comedy.”

This was the comfort line in November, 2016, as the electoral results rolled in and even the FOX News commentators seemed as if they’d been punched in the gut. But here we are, rolling into the depths of his second term and even the sharpest monologues sound as if they’re delivered through clenched teeth. Where one of America’s sharpest political satirists was fired for speaking truth to power—and another had dinner with it at the White House.

Then again, a certain kind of intellectual laziness of the American variety—the kind that anoints comedians as “modern-day philosophers”—has been looking at comedy to fill the void left by the collapse of critical thinking and historical perspective after more than fifty years of defunding public education

In the early 2000s, televised comedy in the form of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” segment had casually shrugged their way into the public trust, replacing for most their slowly decaying faith in corporate-funded mass media. And certainly, the media did little to shore up the faith the people once held in them.