{"id":65877,"date":"2018-02-07T11:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T17:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65877"},"modified":"2018-02-07T12:15:20","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T18:15:20","slug":"predictable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65877","title":{"rendered":"Predictable"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a few years, I listened to the NPR comedy game show\u00a0Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me<\/em> – a tongue-in-cheek program that features a panel of dubious celebrities answering current-events questions to win prizes for members of the audience. \u00a0The host is the razor-sharp Peter Segel. \u00a0 \u00a0Sure, the condo prog politics bubbled under the surface; it’s NPR, after all. \u00a0But it was generally so good – and so in line with what passes for political comedy these days – that it worked.<\/p>\n

But lately – not coincidentally, for the past year and change –\u00a0Wait Waiot<\/em>‘s shots at \u00a0President Trump have gotten flabby, predictable – really, cringeworthy. \u00a0The sound of a staff of writers taking the cheap easy laugh, over and over.<\/p>\n

It’s not just obscure radio comedies. \u00a0Donald Trump seems to be making comics dumber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

…the Trumpian option in their comedy has rendered [Bill Maher, Steven Colbert, Seth Meyers and others] charmless while strikingly limiting their audiences to those who share their politics. I recently wrote a book on the subject of charm, in preparation for which I asked a great many people to name five persons in public life they thought charming. No one could do it. In a political time as divisive as ours, a public figure loses roughly half his following\u2014and hence his charm\u2014just as soon as he announces his politics. For an entertainer to do so is perhaps even more hazardous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The whole thing is worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a few years, I listened to the NPR comedy game show\u00a0Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me – a tongue-in-cheek program that features a panel of dubious celebrities answering current-events questions to win prizes for members of the audience. \u00a0The host is the razor-sharp Peter Segel. \u00a0 \u00a0Sure, the condo prog politics bubbled under the surface; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65877"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65879,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65877\/revisions\/65879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}