Comedy in the Age of Trump

 

"The reason 'conservative comedy' never manages to go mainstream is that it's all fundamentally based on punching down at vulnerable people for no reason but sheer meanness. But in the Trump era, that's what some people want. Cruelty for the lols."

--@forwardcarolina, January 17, 2024

P.J. O'Rourke, the author and the subject of Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of P.J. O’Rourke, could be very funny. He was a satirist, especially of sitting-duck bleeding hearts. It takes a true sense of humor to write satire, and real intelligence.

I speculate on O'Rourke, who's been dead since February 2022, in trying to guess the connection between intelligence and humor and the failure of "conservative comedy" mentioned above. The MAGA wing particularly, who depend for their world view on carefully curated information that blots out evidence not congenial to their hero worship, seem to enjoy cruel put-downs and juvenile insults above all other forms of "humor." When we were ignorant farm kids, we might actually laugh at physical deformity or disability, but as we aged, we sometimes were lucky or persistent enough to learn humility and perspective and some history of humanity.

Teenage girl cyber-bullying belongs to a particular age group for a reason. Like MAGA, they seem to believe any victim deserves it for being weak.