The new McCarthyism ...Charlie, not Joseph

“So what do you think about Donald Trump?” It was my old friend Charlie, fresh from another long stint in Africa helping administer humanitarian aid operations for the global charity he’s worked for for the last 27 years.

As a comedian, I’m always getting asked for my take on things, often on matters of great consequence. And while it’s flattering to think that your best lines can provide something more than comic relief, it’s also unsettling to realize how embedded ‘the comedy take’ now is, in both the news business and politics. Not that I don’t seriously respect the skill it takes to craft a one-liner that humanizes a candidate like Ted Cruz, however briefly. But when the President has better staff writers than Fallon and Colbert, how can even the most perfect punchline not contribute more to the darkness than the light?

My first encounter with the then-edgy experiment of using comedians for commentary was when a local TV news crew showed up at the club where I was performing just as shock and awe were raining down on the people of Baghdad. After setting up in the lobby, the local anchor cheerfully turned to me and went for the gold: “So Chris, what’s funny about this war?”

My mind raced through a rolodex of responses like: “Other than idiotic questions like that, not much.” and “Why don’t you ask the children of Baghdad, Bob?” Finally my mouth settled on “Nothing’s funny about this war, but a lot is absurd.” I acquitted myself decently for the rest of the interview, but it forever changed my view of just how dirty a joke can be, especially if it feeds the chronic disconnect from reality we Americans enjoy as a collateral benefit of our ad-sponsored worldview.

9/11, the Iraq War, and the global financial crisis all put temporary dents in that disconnect, but it still thrives in our political process. Facts matter less than feelings in this age of identity politics, where ignorance is a valuable commodity to be supplied upon demand. Combine that with the twin American idols of Wealth and Celebrity, and the betrayal so many Americans feel seeing their path to prosperity slowly crumbling like the country’s infrastructure, and you end up with the spectacle of Donald Trump, billionaire button-pusher extraordinaire.

Is he a pompous, self-congratulatory narcissistic demagogue? A foul-mouthed, race-baiting, misogynistic palsy-mocking bully? Or is he just the man to Make America Great Again? I’m pretty clear on my answer to the first two questions and hope I never have to find out the answer to the third. But that’s not how I answered Charlie.

Instead I told him about how I used to really hate ventriloquists. Not that ventriloquism isn’t a singular talent that requires skill and discipline to perfect. But the premise is so lame and the device so transparently false that a certain level of mediocrity is baked in, in terms of the comedy content anyway. To make matters worse, they’re really hard acts to follow because they almost always kill.

Then one night as I was watching a ventriloquist work in front of the same audience I’d worked for the night before, seething with contempt at every easy laugh and the utter lack of creative ambition, a funny thing happened. He finished his show, and the audience stood and cheered. In that moment I realized how misplaced my judgment was, because why on earth should the ventriloquist change his act if every time he does it the audience stands? That’s his job, after all. If anyone is to blame for the pre-meditated mediocrity of the content, it’s the audience.

“So in answer to your question, Charlie,” I concluded, “I don’t think about Donald Trump. I think about the audience that stands and cheers no matter what words he puts in the dummy’s mouth.” Some, I assume, are good people. But we either have a country or we don’t. And if we’re going to, I suggest that our real strength and future success will have far more to do with the deeds of Americans like my old friend Charlie than the best puppet act that God ever created.

This story was originally published February 26, 2016 at 6:29 PM with the headline "The new McCarthyism ...Charlie, not Joseph."