Calling oneself a “pornographic actress” has always been a bit of innovative wordplay. It’s a bit like deeming oneself an “Instagram model” or “Twitter comedian”—terms that basically mean you’re neither a model nor a comedian.
Nonetheless, America’s most famous porn star, Stormy Daniels, was called upon this weekend to dutifully recite her lines in a Saturday Night Live skit ridiculing her erstwhile relationship with President Donald Trump. Her appearance alone was enough to provide shock value, although her actual delivery was representative of a woman whose on-camera lines have heretofore been limited to “you’ve got detention” and “but I didn’t order a pizza!”
Proving that we are all living in the computer simulation of a madman, Daniels (real name: Stephanie Clifford) traded innuendo-laced lines with Alec Baldwin, whose Trump “impersonation” is often just a rote recitation of things the president actually said during the week. For her cringeworthy effort, she was loudly applauded; at the end of the show, she exchanged pleasantries and hugs with cast members onstage. Her appearance codified the ancient proverb: If the enemy of my enemy engaged in a one-night stand allowing them to extort money from my enemy while bringing democracy to a halt, they are my friend. (Or something like that.)
Daniels, whose only marketable skill is having sex with men in front of a camera, is being feted by the left largely because she represents a threat to Trump. In fact, nobody can exactly figure out what her lawsuit against the president is about, other than allowing her to rake in far more than the $130,000 in “hush money” she accepted in 2016 to keep quiet about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. The only public service her crusade against Trump has served is to make sure Americans’ televisions are no longer devoid of the presence of her lawyer, Michael Avenatti.
But l’affaire Stormy also further feeds the comedic industrial complex that has grown around the Trump administration. Comedy shows mock and ridicule every movement of every bit player in Trump’s ongoing reality show, leaving little room for us to actually contemplate what in the hell is going on. When comedians make jokes about a fresh tragedy, they are often criticized for their jokes being “too soon.” But Daniels’s appearance on SNL took place even before the verboten “too soon” time window: She was on television ridiculing a situation of her own making that is currently ongoing. Again, Daniels’s exact grievance against Trump is elusive; at some point, she said one of his goons threatened her to keep quiet, which is believable—but to be honest, “That’s a beautiful little girl—it’d be a shame if something happened to her mom” sounds like a line that could be in a porn movie about the mafia.
The ability to mock is helpful in that it helps us all deal with difficult, stressful issues. But in this time where our leaders are clearly unstable, it seems like comedy has supplanted actual news. It is almost as if real-life things happen solely in service of the jokes that Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert will tell later that day. While laughter is often a salve, perhaps we’re enjoying ourselves too much. The Trump era should hurt a lot more than it does.
In the current climate, everyone is a comedian; any time Trump lies or a Republican Senate candidate calls the Senate majority leader “Cocaine Mitch” or Kanye West utters something historically ignorant, Twitter users fire up the Joke-O-Matic 3000 machine and start the lukewarm riffs. Even major newspapers are getting in on the act—national publications often do roundups of what all the late-night comedians said the night before. Explainer websites try to earn clicks by posting video of John Oliver “totally destroying” some right-wing organization.
But the news doesn’t exist to keep late-night comedy writers employed. We are witnessing the actual degradation of the presidency, the erosion of morality, and a crumbling of civil society. Treating Stormy Daniels as if she is bona fide celebrity only serves to push decency out and supplant it with prurience. Everyone loves to laugh, but the incessant joke-ification of the news only breeds more King of Comedy-style Rupert Pupkins, each one desperate to get their one shining night on stage. Only this time, it’s the American people who are held hostage.
