Jokes are supposed to be funny, not tribal.
Liberal comics are so far up their own bubble, though, they can’t make a distinction between mocking President Trump and belittling his supporters. Ben Shapiro rightly observes over at National Review that conservatives are more likely to respond with votes instead of their own jokes. But that partisan backlash to political comedians isn’t good for democracy, and it’s definitely worse for comedy.
Years of liberal mockery helped create the Trump administration, to be sure. Hollywood put down conservatives for so long that they voted for Trump. It didn’t matter that he was a parody of normal politicians. What was important was his lack of traditional Republican manners and his promise to smash liberal pieties. Now in office, Trump is indeed smashing them and attracting plenty of comedic criticism in the process.
Overreaction to that comedy only gives those comics more material. It doubles down on the real-America-us vs. the elite-them narrative, helping to inspire cringe-worthy populist spinoffs like Don Blankenship, who defy parody. The tired bits and the predictable backlash are both bad.
That provides an opportunity for the funny man who can speak truth to power by poking fun at politicians without also poking their supporters in the eye. It was a thing before Twitter. Back when “Saturday Night Live” was funny, Dana Carvey absolutely skewered President George H.W. Bush. His impressions were insightful, humane, and wickedly funny. Everyone laughed. In contrast, when Alec Baldwin cakes on the orange makeup today, he bares only his own contempt for the president and the people who put him in office.
Anyone who emulates Carvey today could strike mainstream comedic gold. Enter John Mulaney.
Mulaney is quickly becoming a household name. Wry delivery and plenty of self-deprecation have landed the former “SNL” writer a Netflix special, sold-out shows for his “Kid Gorgeous” set, and an audience at Radio City Music Hall. Like every other comedian in the world, Mulaney makes fun of Trump. But he delivers laughs without lectures and he makes sure to ding both sides.
During one segment, Mulaney describes this presidency like a horse let loose in a hospital, a populist bull in a partisan china shop. Mulaney correctly diagnoses that “it seems like everyone, everywhere, is super mad about everything.” And then Mulaney lightly roasts the current political environment and all the people in it:
That is enough to send Shapiro scrambling to cut Trump a check. It’s supposedly an example of confirmation comedy bias, an indictment of a comedian sneering at all of the conservatives in middle America. Shapiro protests that if this president is a horse, the last president was a snake in the hospital, an argument that Mulaney doesn’t necessarily dismiss.
Earlier in the same bit, Mulaney re-enacts a conversation with a conservative, likening it to a middle school slumber party and mocking liberals in the process. I won’t ruin the joke. Go watch it on Netflix for yourself instead. Be sure to look out for the part when Mulaney straight up concedes that liberals don’t have facts to support their arguments. Wait for the moment when Mulaney makes liberal ignorance part of the punchline.
No, Mulaney doesn’t dunk on liberals as hard as possible. But he did that in his first show, the one that catapulted his career. Go find it on Netflix too, where Mulaney roasts former President Bill Clinton as “a smooth and fantastic hillbilly.”
Mulaney isn’t as gentle as Carvey impersonating Bush. He certainly ruffles more feathers. But the point is that Mulaney manages to artfully get political without getting overly partisan. It is a stark contrast to Baldwin on “SNL” and anyone else currently cracking jokes on late night television.
If that gentle ribbing is enough to trigger conservatives, like Shapiro says, then sure, Republicans will turn out at the polls in droves. But if they can’t take a good faith joke at their own expense, comedy really will have become tribal like everything else.
