Compared to my illustrious, well-read, and intellectual colleagues who were shaped by Burke, Buckley, Friedman, and Sowell, my early political thinking was heavily shaped by much more lowbrow voices: Dana Carvey’s George H. W. Bush impressions and Dennis Miller’s snarky “Weekend Update” jokes on Saturday Night Live; Johnny Carson and Jay Leno monologues; Doonesbury, Bloom County, and editorial cartoons.
Thankfully, Dana Carvey is still around, and in addition to still being funny, he’s got a sharp eye and refreshing honesty about how changing cultural perspectives, such as a heavy-handed, vindictive progressivism, have reshaped the world of American political humor. In an essay by Peter Funt in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend, Carvey confirmed what many conservatives long suspected.
“There’s a lot of sensitivity around Biden,” notes Dana Carvey, the veteran comic who specializes in presidential humor. Mr. Carvey told me that for a while after the 2020 election, many liberal comedians felt they were in a “vise grip,” squeezed between their own political views and the desire to get laughs. “Has politics gotten so serious and so entrenched that we have something bigger than our jokes right now?” he asks. “Some comedy writers feel they can’t do something that will sabotage their party and let the bad guy get leverage. I don’t think any of this is spoken out loud. It’s just obvious.”
A year ago, Mr. Carvey said, he asked some of Stephen Colbert’s writers at CBS, “If Biden was a Republican, do you think we would go at him harder?” The response was, “That’s a really interesting question.” Translation: Yes.
This mentality gives us the worst of both worlds. Shows that are supposed to be funny ignore ample opportunities to have fun mocking the man who is the face of the executive branch. As in the case of The Daily Show during the Jon Stewart years, comedians end up punching down at lesser-known conservative figures, instead of aiming satirical barbs at the people who are actually running the country. Comedy grows staler, safer, and more predictable; the tone is “hey, look at those right-wing weirdos” instead of, “hey, can you believe the lunatics who are running our government?”
Meanwhile, if the kid-glove treatment of Biden is supposed to help keep Biden’s approval rating up, it’s not working. I sometimes wonder if there’s an inverse effect when the largely liberal creative class hesitates to tell any joke about a particular figure. If the nation’s most high-profile comedians and sketch shows treat a political figure as a sacred cow or above mockery, it inadvertently communicates a sense of fragility, that the figure and/or his supporters can’t handle the usual ridicule or teasing.