History As Stand-Up Comedy
03/22/2022
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A friend writes:

There’s a way of viewing the American political scene, if not the world scene, in terms of the role stand-up comedy has played in the last ten years. (Even pop culture’s biggest villain, the Joker, is now a former stand-up.)

Four events.

2011: Comedy super-producer Judd Apatow writes jokes for Obama to tell about Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner

It is here that Obama’s stand-up inspires Trump’s personal grudge against Obama. Obama’s advisor, David Axelrod, personally blamed Judd Apatow’s jokes for Trump wanting to run for President again, and told that to Apatow’s face.

“Although Judd Apatow, you have to take some responsibility for the current events because you participated in maybe the most famous Obama White House Correspondents’ Dinner routine ever, which was 2011,” he said. “Donald Trump was sitting in the audience. I think I was two tables away from him and watched his face as these jokes landed.”

“When I worked at the Correspondents’ Dinner and gave some jokes that were performed, I was just amazed at how good he [Obama] was at standup,” Apatow recalled.

Being good at stand-up: beginning probably with Reagan, something that is a prerequisite for becoming President. [note: Biden is not really president so does not count against this being a rule]

October 2014: #MeToo starts here

Black comedian Hannibal Buress, who seemed to feel personally attacked by Cosby’s rants about the depressing state of young black men, went after Cosby on-stage and brought up past rumors that Cosby had raped women. This stand-up bit would unofficially kick off the celebrity #MeToo movement years before it got hot in 2017.

Hannibal: "Bill Cosby has the fuckin’ smuggest old Black man public persona that I hate,” Buress says in the video. “He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up, Black people! I was on TV in the ’80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom!’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches. ‘I don’t curse on stage!’ Well, yeah, but you’re a rapist, so…”

Summer 2015-November 2016: Trump’s Stand-Up Tour

In a way, Trump’s rallies on his way to the presidency is the most popular comedy tour of the 21st century. People forget: Trump was really rooted in stand-up during this period. He would riff on whatever was going on in the news that day in a pretty funny and cutting way.

On Bill Cosby: “His humor was always, like, slow and stupid to me,” Trump said of Cosby. “I never saw it. I think he’s weird. And I never found his humor good at all. Just sit in a chair, talk very slowly? …I was never a fan.”

“I have this thing called Twitter and Facebook, which is amazing actually. It’s like owning The New York Times without the losses.”

“It used to be cars were made in Flint and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico. Now cars are made in Mexico and you can’t drink the water in Flint.”

In fact, if you were describing Trump’s political persona to someone who knew nothing about politics but everything about the history of stand-up, you might tell them that 2015-2016 Trump’s schtick was essentially what Joan Rivers’ on-stage husband would’ve acted like.

Imagine the two of them on-stage as a husband and wife, bickering and talking about what they watched on FOX that day. Between jokes about Obama being gay, she calls Trump fat and broke. He calls Joan old and ugly and brags about one day replacing her with a younger woman. Is there anything out of place, comedically, about this? No, it is perfect. (There is a world where ‘Rivers & Trump’ could have outdueled ‘Nichols & May’ as the best New York comedy duo ever.)

2019: A Comic is Crowned

A comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky, is elected president of Ukraine. It’s something out of Black Mirror.

[Comment at Unz.com]

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