The Whiplash Decade
The Decade Political Comedy Stopped Being Funny
Remember when you could actually laugh at a president?
This piece is part of the The Whiplash Decade, a package on the wild ride that was the 2010s.
The 2010s was the decade political comedy became unwatchable. I turned it off, not as a conscious decision, but as a result of politics fatigue. At the beginning of the decade, when I was still in college, forming my opinions about the world, I looked to comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as political authorities. But hardened by the Trump era, disillusioned with not only our farce of a political system, but a mass media that encourages our worst impulses, I increasingly look for solace outside of the news — which is why it doesn’t make me laugh anymore.
Stewart and Colbert were always at their best when they had something to parody. Stewart had his twist on the solemn, desk-bound news anchor when he took over The Daily Show in 1999, and Colbert in 2005 introduced us to an opinion-beast in the Bill O’Reilly mode. By 2010, Stewart and Colbert had been comfortably lampooning pre-existing structures for much of the new millennium, exposing the buffoonery of the politically influential. It was a kind of comedy that seamlessly moved what seemed like an impossible…
