It is sometimes said that humor is at its best when a country is at its worst. So, in this time of No Kings protests, are we living through a golden age of comedy in America? Humor has always been at the heart of America’s culture wars, but those skirmishes have been more divisive and antagonistic during the Trump era than in any other in modern memory.
In August 2016, three months before the presidential election, I wrote an essay for PopMatters entitled “Can Trump Satire Take Down Donald?” In it, I engaged with satirist Michael Moore’s assertion that reason and rational argument had failed to prevent Trump from becoming his party’s nominee, and they would be equally unsuccessful in stopping him from becoming president. Moore said at the time, “It’s going to require something else. Personally, I hope satire brings [him] down” (qtd. in Ellis).