Tis the season of coping mechanisms for those of us made miserable by Donald Trump's resurgence and his traveling circus of grievance monkeys and aspiring alpha wolves.
... nihilism is completely useless. The coward’s way out. So you work through that. And I have found, generally, that the light at the end of the tunnel — albeit that light might be smaller than you would like it to be ideally — is that there are activists making small, incremental progress on the ground, and that progress is really, really important....
Are you trying to make the world a better place? Because some people would say, “I just want to make people laugh and entertain them.” You seem to have a much bigger aim here. The most important thing to me — and to lots of people at the show — is to do this in service of writing really funny, weird jokes about interesting things. So that is our outcome. It’s not necessarily to make the world a better place. I’m not sure that comedy can do that. To a certain extent, sometimes it’s fiddling while Rome burns.
It seems to have made you uncomfortable that I’ve accused you of trying to make the world a better place. [Laughs.] This might be a hangup of being British. British people took a real stab at, if not making the world a better place, making it a more British place, and it didn’t go too well. So, yeah, you don’t want me involved in that.
... I guess comedy is the way I handle the world. So in the darkest moments of my life, I still find myself compelled to try and make jokes either to take the weight off some of what’s happening or sometimes to feel what’s happening a bit more. I find people employing comedy at moments of tragedy incredibly meaningful. I know some might find it glib or offensive. To me, it is the absolute opposite of that when done well. ...
Explain that to me. I love comedy so much. So, I do not see a distinction between how could you joke about this? For me, it’s more how could you not? How could you not tell jokes about a situation that is absolutely absurd? Darkly absurd, but absurd. And that would apply to the West Bank, too....
... Do you think it also gives people access to uncomfortable emotions? Probably. Look, I’m British, right? So my ability to deal with my emotions has been limited at best. The very fact that I’m telling you, Yeah, I find it better to laugh at things rather than, you know, feel them sincerely as a human being says something. ...
It seems to be so many of us come through this holiday season more than a little numb to the prospect of what's ahead. The numbness will pass when action seems possible ... meanwhile, the spectacle of MAGATs blowing apart is pretty funny.
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