Good comedy afflicts the comfortable

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This article was published 02/05/2018 (2895 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been said the role of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

That journalism maxim, paraphrased from Chicago journalist Finley Peter Dunne, could just as easily apply to comedy. Good comedy punches up, not down. Good comedy does not make the afflicted the punchline. Good comedy tells the truth. Good comedy makes powerful people uncomfortable. And good comedy makes people laugh.

By those metrics, Michelle Wolf is a good comedian. On Saturday night, she delivered a scorched-earth roast at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., that made many people very, very uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, in fact, that Saturday night’s event may be the last.

Ms. Wolf pulled zero punches. She called U.S. President Donald Trump out for being a no-show, joking that she’d drag him there herself, “but as it turns out, the president of the United States is the one pussy you’re not allowed to grab.” (Judging from all the pearl-clutching that followed on Sunday, only the president of the United States is allowed to say the p-word, apparently.)

She didn’t stop there. She said Ivanka Trump was “as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons,” and then likened White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Aunt Lydia, the cattle-prod wielding enforcer from The Handmaid’s Tale, and a barking gym coach.

Joking about Ms. Sanders’ “resourcefulness,” Ms. Wolf quipped: “She burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye.”

Well, “a perfect smoky eye” is what crossed the line. Several journalists, including the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, rushed to Twitter in Sanders’ defence. “Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable,” Ms. Brzezinski tweeted in part.

But Ms. Wolf was not attacking Ms. Sanders’ looks. She was commenting on Ms. Sanders’ complicity and dishonesty, which is the real reason it made people uncomfortable. That so many journalists are defending Ms. Sanders is troubling.

The fallout from Ms. Wolf’s roast has raised questions about political correctness and free speech.

Ms. Wolf’s act was not politically correct in that it didn’t defer to the people in the room. And she exercised her right to free speech, sharply criticizing the president and Washington’s power players.

It’s Ms. Wolf who should be defended.

Her final mic drop wasn’t even a joke. It was just a fact, plainly stated: “Flint still doesn’t have clean water.” Now, that’s deplorable — not a joke about a smoky eye.

Afflicting the comfortable seems to be a job increasingly left to comedians. And it’s not just satirical news programs such as The Daily Show, Full Frontal, and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver offering incisive, important commentary. Even otherwise anodyne late-night hosts such as Jimmy Kimmel are getting political because they recognize the power of comedy. Comedy can “go there.”

Finley Peter Dunne, whose “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” became shorthand for speaking truth to power, was himself a political satirist.

Mr. Dunne understood, as Ms. Wolf does, that the media is an institution, too. On Saturday, she delivered her own indictment of the modern press.

“I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him.”

Politically incorrect, indeed.