Suzanne Harrington: Stockpiling contraceptives, relying on comedians to keep you sane
Suzanne Harrington: "We don’t have the luxury of ignorance, we cannot later say, 'oh, we didn’t know'. We do know. We are saturated in knowing." Pic: Andrew Dunsmore
Trae Crowder is unusual – an American who describes himself as a 'liberal redneck' (that’s the title of his book) and a 'progressive hillbilly'.
He was born into abject poverty in rural Tennessee, but thanks to a sharp brain and a gay uncle, swerved the bible-thumping ultra-conservatism of his surroundings. Instead he became a stand-up.
He's on TikTok and YouTube skewering the current “deluge of dumbassery” gushing from the Orange Office – it sounds even better in a Tennessee drawl – and the myth that America was built on “honky gumption”.
How if ICE did manage to round up all the pittance-earning undocumented workers on American farms, food would run out within days.
How the price of eggs has gone through the roof, which, he archly observes, never happened under Biden.
Crowder wonders if every morning the current president puts on a blindfold and plays “pin the trade war on the former ally” while freezing funding for science and education in case they’re woke or gay.
He ponders the growing buyers’ remorse of MAGA voters – those who voted for harmful, spiteful policies did not expect to be on the receiving end of them, and yet here they are. On the receiving end of them.
Meanwhile Jon Stewart’s pillories the current administration’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion, in a sketch where a black male broadcaster is replaced by a white female broadcaster who is replaced by a tall white male broadcaster; height, whiteness and straight maleness being the most important attributes in this current administration. Not qualification, not competence.
Even as a distant spectator, it’s exhausting.
Even if you avoid the news, sidestep the media, it still permeates – we’re swimming in it.
We don’t have the luxury of ignorance, we cannot later say, 'oh, we didn’t know'. We do know. We are saturated in knowing.
If the Orange Office possesses anything as coherent as actual policy, beyond move fast and break things, it’s to induce a feeling of overwhelm, of vertigo. Like watching someone smashing up a room.
Yay, then, for the comedians. The funny, irreverent people who stand up and say out loud all the things that we, the rest of the world, are thinking.
They say it louder, better, funnier, and it provides momentary relief from the current assault on thinking, on facts, on reality.
The cognitive dissonance that leaves us winded, even though we’re thousands of miles away.
Imagine being inside it. Stockpiling contraceptives, avoiding illness, resisting arrest, and relying on the comedians to keep you sane.
“We used to fight Nazis,” quipped Jon Stewart. Yes, you did.
And we used to admire you.
