Donald Trump and his cronies have generated almost endless material for late night comedians. I watch some, if not all, of these comedians skewer Trump and his administration. And they deserve it.
But recently some things have begun to bother me about this. The humor has gotten noticeably more crass and low brow. The audience waits for the penis or vagina joke or the variation of fuck. That’s when they scream and yell and make sure their individual yell is heard above the crowd. It seems more and more that the real effort is not the satire but the ability to push the limits of taste. I am not a prude, but I do believe more in intelligent expression than pandering. Especially since the monologue is usually followed by egoistic chit chat with a celebrity hawking their latest movie.
The other thing is that laughing at this satirical comedy can bring a comfort that leads to self-satisfaction then to a sense of having accomplished something that leads then to passivity. If you marched in any of the recent marches (the Women’s March, the March for Science), you saw signs and placards that were extremely clever—as clever as some of the comedy we watch. And they were there as an active presence.
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