Here’s his latest:
This guy is fucking brilliant. One-of-a-kind. Not even Jon Stewart could do this work as well as Klepper does it.
I’d link to nearly every piece he’s done for the Daily Show for the past 5 years just to show how insightful and deft he is, but that would take me far too long to do in one sitting.
Mr. Klepper, if you should find your way here to read this: you totally fucking rock. Thanks and (please) keep up the good work!
No one provides an opportunity for a Trump supporter make a mockery of themself like he does.
I liked this bit, in which a Trump supporter claimed not to be sheeple while saying he’d wear a mask if everyone else was.
Yeah I like Klepper and Triumph the insult dog, for all the reasons the op states.
I’ve always wished I could be that quick witted.
Roy Wood, Jr. has been doing long form interviews with his fellow The Daily Show correspondents about their field work and various set pieces, and he interviewed Klepper and his field producer Ian Berger about how they prepared for interacting with Trump supporters, and being on site during the January 6 insurrection which is well worth watching:
The fact that these comedians (and yes, they are just comedians, not journalists in denial) are doing a better job at displaying the hypocrisy and guilelessness of Trump supporters so much better than media outlets like CNN is just an indication of how deficient and insubstantial news coverage actually is. Newsheads are shrieking and arguing with each other in a round table format about how all of this could so suddenly happen, and this jokester is actually doing real preparation and is out in the field getting these people to speak their truth to the camera on a regular basis.
Stranger
No kidding! His level of self-control in that clip is absolutely amazing. There’s no way I could’ve lasted longer than 10 seconds with those morons without telling them to their faces they’re fucking stupid.
But it is so much more fun to spur them on in their complete obliviousness to self-contradiction. The surprising thing (to me, at least) is that he’ll point out the hypocrisy (“Have you read it [The Constitution]? It’s pretty short.”) and yet they don’t even seem to comprehend that he is mocking them. The problem, of course, is that oblivious or not, their vote still counts, and that is discouraging to say the least, but as fodder for satire it is a source in perpetuity.
Stranger
It is a rather sad indictment of American new media that The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight are putting out consistently better-informed and better-considered current affairs analysis than any of the straight news channels. That they’re doing it (in whole or in part) for laughs only makes the comparison worse.
Hey, don’t leave Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert off of that list; they do good work in that regard as well.
I wonder when Jordan Klepper goes to these events and points out the hypocrisy, is he worried about being punched in the nose? Because from what we’re shown, none seem to recognize the cognitive dissonance but if someone ever did, you think they’d get angry at him.
One thing they have over journalists is they aren’t bound by a bizarre idea about “balance” that only allows constant interviews of Trump voters to have them explain in their own words why Trump won, and then about how they feel about him losing, and then about how they feel about him winning, and then about how they feel about the end of real voting.
Meyers and Colbert do comedic commentary but it is essentially based on the news (and in Meyers case, often without thorough fact-checking). The kind of field ‘reporting’ that Jordan Klepper, and Ronnie Chang (great piece on how Fox News is stirring the pot of Asian hatred) does actually highlights what Trump supporters belief, and while they are certainly cherry-picking clips for maximum humor and/or irony, they aren’t creatively editing them to make it seem like they are saying something they really aren’t. Klepper talks about how they’ll try to prepare with jokes or prompts but often the people they interact with will say things that are so much more absurd that anything they expected that they dump their prep and just run on the fly with whatever nonsense a supporter is spouting.
Watch the “Beyond the Scenes” video linked in the post above; he and his producer talk about the security they bring with them and what they do to avoid conflicts. On January 6, they actually got a little closer to the insurrection than they planned because they headed up to the Capitol prior to the crowd and then found themselves in the throng where the crowd was already breaching barricades.
Stranger
Thank you lecturing me, the OP, on the why Mr. Klepper’s work is great. It was totally necessary and didn’t come across in a negative, pandering way at all.
Who are you replying to? I have read nothing in this thread that comes across as “lecturing,” “negative” or “pandering.” People other than you read the thread too you know, so it’s nice to get some additional information on a topic even if you may already know it.
I used to watch the Daily Show’s “America’s first openly asshole president” and laugh. Sorry, I can’t link it.
Modnote: This kind of post is out of place in The Cafe, Please do not do it again.
Now to all, please drop the sidebar.
This is just a guidance, not a warning. Nothing on your permanent record.
Klepper’s pieces really make me laugh and then want to cry. He is very precise and devastating when he confronts people’s BS beliefs and misinformed opinions but it leaves me wondering if he can actually convince anyone of their idiocy. I assume he doesn’t.
Another comedian who excels at this is Walter Masteson, who does similar bits though he’s a little more of a troll. His speech in front of the Smithtown School Board (in my link) is truly amazing. Interestingly, there is also a clip of Masterson seeing Klepper at a rally and trying to strike up a conversation, which Klepper had no interest in perusing. I’m sure he knows who Masterson is and just doesn’t want to deal with it, but I would like to see them interact once.
If you could convince someone of their “idiocy” they wouldn’t be an idiot to begin with. Part of the problem is that words have come to have no real meaning; people repeat catchphrases with no conception of the self-contradiction and hypocrisy, like the guy insisting that “read the transcript” and “think for yourself” even while admitting that they haven’t read the transcript and are just parroting things they’ve been told. You literally could not make this kind of comedy up in a writers’ room because it is dumber than a Rob Schneider movie, which is the fundamental threshold for how stupid fictional comedy can be.
Stranger
That is an outstanding benchmark.
That old dude talking about the plane in Afghanistan being a balloon plane and one of the Afghan citizens in the video was really the Qanon shaman was painful.
The entire video is full of morons but it is more disturbing when it is some guy who looks like a gentle grandfather having batshit crazy views.