I simultaneously feel bad for and envy professional comedians and comedy writers right now. On the one hand, he gives them such good material to work with (I’ve been so happy about the return of Jon Stewart this whole time); on the other, those poor fuckers over at the Onion have seemingly had a good chunk of their jobs taken from them by reality. Can you imagine getting paid to come up with ridiculous, amusing fake quotes from political figures for your fake articles or your standup routine or whatever, material that worked well and landed with your audience – and then one day you wake up and the actual president is doing your job better on the toilet at 3am on Twitter, than you can bright-eyed with a cup of coffee in you and an editor? That the actual headlines scrolling across the ticker on CNN are, somehow, now, more ridiculous than what you were writing up just mere months or years ago as outlandish satire.
Like, that’s gotta sting on some level. And I feel like the quality of the Onion has slightly suffered as a result. They were at their best making fun of normal, pre-MAGA politicians, not someone who already does a terrific job making a fool of themselves, very publicly, all on their lonesome.
I simultaneously feel bad for and envy professional comedians and comedy writers right now. On the one hand, he gives them such good material to work with (I’ve been so happy about the return of Jon Stewart this whole time); on the other, those poor fuckers over at the Onion have seemingly had a good chunk of their jobs taken from them by reality. Can you imagine getting paid to come up with ridiculous, amusing fake quotes from political figures for your fake articles or your standup routine or whatever, material that worked well and landed with your audience – and then one day you wake up and the actual president is doing your job better on the toilet at 3am on Twitter, than you can bright-eyed with a cup of coffee in you and an editor? That the actual headlines scrolling across the ticker on CNN are, somehow, now, more ridiculous than what you were writing up just mere months or years ago as outlandish satire.
Like, that’s gotta sting on some level. And I feel like the quality of the Onion has slightly suffered as a result. They were at their best making fun of normal, pre-MAGA politicians, not someone who already does a terrific job making a fool of themselves, very publicly, all on their lonesome.