President Trump is making satire great again
BARACK OBAMA was bad for satirists, even if few seemed to mind. Moderate, upstanding and cool, the first black president gave close observers of human ridiculousness little to work with. Most gave up and welcomed him admiringly onto their shows. “I can’t believe you’re leaving before me,” Mr Obama, appearing on “The Daily Show” for the seventh time, told its outgoing host, Jon Stewart. It was not the relationship to power the acerbic Mr Stewart would have liked. Thankfully, Donald Trump is making satire great again.
The most conspicuous beneficiary, “Saturday Night Live” (SNL), a hitherto jaded platform for comedy skits on NBC, is seeing its best ratings in over 20 years. This is partly thanks to Alec Baldwin’s parody of the president as an irascible halfwit. But the chaos in the month-old administration has provided additional targets. On February 4th SNL unveiled a hilarious parody of Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, as a gum-chewing maniac. The belligerent Mr Spicer has since appeared cowed.
There are a couple of lessons here for more sober political commentators. One is to abandon the complacency about Mr Trump that,...