Conan O’Brien Criticizes Comedians Only Into Saying “F Trump”: “You’re Being Co-Opted Because You’re So Angry”
Conan O’Brien discussed the state of comedy and the trend of comedians expressing anger at President Donald Trump during a conversation at the Oxford Union. “I think some comics go the route of, I’m going to just say F Trump every, all the time, or that’s their comedy,” O’Brien said. “And I think, well, now a little bit you’re being co-opted because you’re so angry. You’ve been lulled. It’s like a siren leading you into the rocks. You’ve been lulled into just saying F Trump, F Trump, F Trump, screw this guy.” “I think you’ve now put down your best weapon, which is being funny and you’ve exchanged it for anger,” O’Brien continued. “And that person or any person like that would say, well, things are too serious now. I don’t need to be funny. And I think, well, if you’re a comedian, you always need to be funny. You just have to find a way. And you, you just have to find a way to channel that anger into a way that is because good art will always be a great weapon will always be a perfect, uh, weapon against power. But if you’re just screaming and you’re just angry, um, you’ve lost your best tool in the toolbox.”
OXFORD UNION: We were talking about all this upstairs before, but you made some very interesting observations about Trump and how his character himself and how his presidency has impacted comedy. Mind sharing them with the, with the chamber as well. CONAN O’BRIEN: I’ve just been saying for a while that, you know, people that maybe know less about comedy or haven’t given it a lot of thoughts say, Oh my God, you know, Trump is president. This must be so great for comedy. And I think it’s actually, it’s not because when I was on the lampoon, one of the things we were famous for is doing parodies of magazines. So what’s parody people magazine, what’s put Brooke Shields on the cover, holding a fish, um, which we did. And, uh, um, I wasn’t on staff then, but, uh, it was really funny. And they would do these parodies of a magazine where they would mock the tone. They would make fun of it in a satirical way. And it was, they would come out and they were very popular. There was one magazine we could never do a parody of, which is the national inquirer because the national inquirer, a typical, I don’t know, I don’t know if you have that here, but in the, in the States, the national inquirer is the one that says Elvis found in Titanic lifeboat, uh, 105 years after sinking. Um, uh, he is now a woman and, uh, he’s married a giant peanut butter sandwich. And, um, that is a legitimate real inquiry cover. How do you parody that? You can’t. And I think with Trump, we have a similar situation in comedy, which is people saying, we’ve got a great Trump sketch for you in this one. He’s kind of talking crazy and he’s saying stuff. And he tears down half the white house to build a giant ballroom. And he says, it’s going to be the new Mar-a-Lago. Yeah, no, that happened yesterday. Oh, well, where’s my check? You don’t get a check. Come back to me and tell me when you’ve got an idea. And so comedy needs a straight line to go off of, and we don’t have a straight line. We have a very bendy rubbery line. We have a slinky, we have a fire hose that’s whipping around, uh, spewing water at a hundred miles an hour or something else. I don’t know. Um, and, uh, so comedically, um, it’s been very, uh, very challenging. And I think some comics go the route of, I’m going to just say F Trump every, all the time, or that’s their comedy. And I think, well, now a little bit you’re being co-opted because you’re so angry. You’ve been lulled. It’s like a siren leading you into the rocks. You’ve been lulled into just saying F Trump, F Trump, F Trump, screw this guy. Um, you know, and I think you’ve now put down your best weapon, which is being funny and you’ve exchanged it for anger. And that person or any person like that would say, well, things are too serious now. I don’t need to be funny. And I think, well, if you’re a comedian, you always need to be funny. You just have to find a way. And you, you just have to find a way to channel that anger into a way that is because good art will always be a great weapon will always be a perfect, uh, weapon against power. But if you’re just screaming and you’re just angry, um, you’ve lost your best tool in the toolbox.
