No one gets into comedy because he has a burning desire to get up in front of an audience and say, “Respect authority.” The conventional wisdom is wise! If something seems off, accept it unthinkingly!
Hence comedy must get pulled to the right. Once, the medium prided itself on being countercultural, but today the former counterculture is the culture. Comedy, to remain oppositional, must become the counter-counterculture. For comics of the left, the sense that they’re being drawn in the wrong direction must be causing a lot of internal anguish. Any sentient observer of the cultural scene cannot help noticing the truth-denial, cant, hysteria, and absurdity that infect progressivism today, but if you’re a progressive, calling attention to any of this feels like lobbing grenades into your own trench.
Which is why so much of comedy depends on the old standby: Hey, America, get a load of what Donald Trump said today. In a few months, comedy will be starting its fifth year of nonstop Trump jokes. Anybody feel that this material is getting a bit hackish? There’s another kind of cop-out, which is to pretend that yesterday’s contrarianism is still daring.
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