This New Year has really tested people’s ability to laugh about politics, with the United States’ intervention in Venezuela. Whether you are for or against this action of the Trump administration, it’s a complicated thing to discuss, especially in mixed company. How can everyone laugh about a topic everyone feels so strongly about?
In fact, the Venezuela headlines of Fox News’ political humor outlets, “Gutfeld!” and “Fox News Saturday Night,” avoid making fun of the invasion at all, simply praising the liberation of the country, with “Gutfeld!” saying that Venezuela is now a beacon of hope to all other dictator states around the world — valid opinion, not very funny.
The Onion probably has the most purely comedic take, with an absurd list of pros and cons to the invasion. But with such basic wordplay jokes such as “PRO: Caracas is fun to say” and “CON: Americans don’t know how to roll our R’s,” they seem to avoid discussing the military maneuver and instead make generic jokes about Latin America. You can see the humor, but it feels cliched and not relevant to the issues.
But the danger of really getting into politics is shown by two examples, one liberal, one conservative. Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” often decried for its liberal slant along with its humor, especially when Saturday Night Live is on holiday break (which seems very convenient due to the news cycle). To its credit, “TDS” dove headfirst into a 15-minute-long segment discussing the invasion, reacting directly to news footage of the events, which basically ended up being a series of press statements by President Trump. So what started as reporting on a new story ended up being a barrage of vocal impressions and hair insults at the president, which, whether you agree with that or not, is something that everyone has been doing since at least 2016. You can see the humor, but you’ve seen it before.
A most odd example of how difficult Venezuela comedy is comes from the “Conservative Onion” satirical periodical “The Babylon Bee.” An article describes how the U.S. military, through a secret operation, managed to depose California Governor Gavin Newsom. And the article describes the Venezuela-esque military action in California in detail, and the eventual capture and blindfolding of Gov. Newsom (beat for beat like Maduro’s actual capture). It could be a critique of Trump conquering all of his enemies, or someone working out their Gavin Newsom issues. Hard to tell. Either way, not very funny.
My takeaway from all these examples is that political humor is really a negotiation, taking these topics that you wouldn’t discuss in mixed company, and pulling them into jokes that people can laugh at, however abstracted from the truth of the initial story. Or in the case of Fox News and Babylon Bee this week, reinforce your personal rhetoric on something you can’t personally laugh at.
Hopefully these political comedy attempts give you some laughter and release while keeping you aware of the news. Or even better, you see that these humorists are not fully getting into the Venezuela issue, and you do more research for yourself. Find your own humor.
