Please see my latest wire as Brexit diarist for The New York Sun, ‘Brexit: Saturday Night Jive, on Election Eve’:
To gauge what passes for progressive humor on topical politics, one can do worse than watching each week’s cold open that precedes the credits for “Saturday Night Live.” For more than three years, its mainstay has been to heap ridicule on President Trump. Last weekend, SNL widened its net to capture Britain’s Prime Minister.Briefly but effectively, the comedy troupe skewered Boris Johnson’s failing strategy to put distance between President Trump and ingratiate himself with a global elite that is, undeniably, inimical to Britain’s independence from the European Union.
The skit, set in a high school cafeteria, parodied Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s unguarded remarks, during cocktails at the recent NATO summit, concerning Mr. Trump’s overlong pressers. Messrs. Trump and Trudeau are caricatured, along with President Emmanuel Macron, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Britain’s Mr. Johnson.
Unfortunately for him, the American president was not SNL’s sole target. Video clips of Mr. Trudeau’s actual faux-pas simply show Boris Johnson listening intently to the Canadian premier’s account, laughing, along with other world leaders, at antics attendant at any international gathering.
Yet in SNL’s scenario, Mr. Johnson is positively gleeful in being part of the global “in-crowd” poking fun at Mr. Trump (a too-seductive temptation for conservatives in politics, academia, and the broadcast press.) Nor is SNL wholly wrong in its depiction of the on-again, off-again bromance between the US-UK leaders.
Remarks are welcome on DMI’s Facebook page.
My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.
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