It Isn't Even Funny Anymore

We've run out of jokes. We've run out of the need to tell them.

It's because it isn't funny anymore. This guy isn't even worth the trouble to find humor in him.

He's his own running joke. That's why he's wearing us down.

I recall, not long ago, seeing a performance of The Capitol Steps. If you've never done so, I'd recommend it. They really are good. They began as Congressional staffers in DC, mocking the politicians they worked for. Their shows are incredibly clever, what with lyrics made up from classic songs that fit into the present-day, ongoing debacles. At times, you're laughing too loudly at one musical comment while others go right by you because you can't hear them. Nobody gets a break, either. It may be the last, hilarious holdout of the Fairness Doctrine.

After all, we might as well laugh about the problems while we're flailing away at them. To that extent, The Capitol Steps fulfill an endless need.

But I kept thinking as I watched this time--I have gone to see them on weekend nights in DC, where they play incessantly, five times, as well as elsewhere--during the first, increasingly embarrassing time of 45's stumbling, fumbling, sandpaper-coarse term, that the jokes were already wearing thin and falling flat. It's too easy, I kept saying to myself. He's too awful. So are his assistants. This isn't funny. This is awful. Tragic. Ridiculous.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Kellyanne Conway? Sean Spicer? Steve Mnuchin? Wilbur Ross? Mick Mulvaney, who can say that storms go wherever he wants them to? Dismissive. Arrogant. Incompetent. Sycophantic. Purveyors of a twisted reality only they understand.

And, especially, angry. Just. Like. Him.

With forerunners--this show dates back to Reagan--the troupe needed exaggeration and some sense of conjuring to come up with effective parody. Not this crew, though. All they have to do is show up and the embarrassment begins anew. They don't need to be parodied. They merely need to be described.

So 45 fires John Bolton as National Security Director and he promises to reply "in due course." Bolton's going to tell him off? Uh-huh. And he considers himself an authority worth listening to, who hasn't already scared the hell out of us as a warmongering icon?

But no. It isn't me who's crazy, he's likely to say and/or imply. This guy is crazy. He's the one who has it all wrong. He's the one leading us down the primrose path. He should be trusting me, not Pompeo, the new pomposity now in charge, the religiously afflicted Secretary of State without personality. 45's going to give him two jobs now, as if they're basically the same: Diplomacy and aggression, all rolled up into one fun gig.

I can feel you starting to laugh. See? You don't have to pay 35 bucks to see the humor in all this anymore. It's right there in front of you. The comedy is on. The tragedy perseveres. The remedy still seems too far off.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark