Redefining “I Can’t Even…”
I have been a big fan of The Onion, going all the way back to when it was a Wisconsin-based print publication. Those who have become accustomed to my odd sense of humor won’t be surprised that I grew up devouring issues of satire stalwarts Mad Magazine, National Lampoon, and, for a while, Cracked. In recent years, The Onion has — in a very 21st-century way — filled a void left by the demise of National Lampoon over 20 years ago. The emergence of the Babylon Bee has made making fun of the insane world around us even more enjoyable.
I am beginning to worry about those who traffic in satire and parody though. How does one consistently come up with anything that is more absurd than the news every day?
The idea for this column came to me over three weeks ago. I actually began writing it back then but kept stopping, mostly because merely pondering how ridiculous the world has become made me kinda tired.
Of course, when I say “the world,” I am mostly referring to the Biden mess. If at the end of 2019 anyone had told any of us that this is where we’d be at the end of the summer of 2021, we would have taken them to the ER and had them tested for a concussion.
We have the oldest president in U.S. history but there isn’t an adult in charge. He’s obviously too far gone mentally to even be pretending to play president, but the options if he steps down are even worse. Jeffrey Dahmer would have to be resurrected for there to be someone in America who is disliked more than Kamala Harris is. Should Harris figure out a way to nudge Ol’ Gropes out of the way, she’ll probably do something truly horrifying like nominate Rashida Tlaib to be her vice-president.
Yeah, be careful what you wish for.
I’ve been doing stand-up professionally for over 30 years. I can offer an absurdist take on almost anything to get a laugh.
Or I could.
I now live in a world where Andrew Cuomo is still praising himself for his early pandemic response and mainstream media outlets were talking about his political comeback the second he resigned from office amid a sex scandal.
Joe Biden’s bungling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan has been so tragic that he’s even being dragged by his beloved CNN. Yet I now live in a world where Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has publicly praised Biden’s handling of it not once, but twice in the last few days. Two heartbeats away from the presidency, people.
It’s like a Shonda Rhimes show, if Shonda Rhimes were tripping on acid all of the time.
Whenever I am about to say or write something ridiculous to mock the news of the day, I worry that, no matter how far over the top I go, it might soon become reality.
WHAT IF I HAVE THAT KIND OF POWER?!?!?
I keep joking that the Secret Service adds an extra agent to Biden’s security detail just to make sure he doesn’t choke on any Legos. A couple of years ago the absurdity of the line would have carried it.
We now have a president who makes people think, “You know, it could happen.”
Na zdrowie to all of you who write for satire sites these days, especially the American ones. Satire may not be dead, but it is reeling and about to be intubated. Here’s hoping that the Republic will be returned to the grown-ups soon and we don’t have to worry about our wildest takes becoming reality.
If any of you have White House connections, you should probably get word to the staff that they need to hide the Legos.
