By Yash Seyedbagheri
Among demagogues and bombings, I stop watching news. Mom’s a rabbi; too much heady stuff anyway.
Instead, I insert laugh tracks into idiocy. Nazis saluting in cold unison, Nuremberg. Romanovs, three hundred years of delusions, bowing, God’s anointed. The anti-Semites who drove my great-grandparents to America.
Evangelicals, proclaiming morality, while fucking around.
I laugh at invisible studio audiences, who don’t know they’re being repurposed.
I laugh at repurposing, which purposes the obvious. Because I get called kike and liberal. Swastikas get painted on our front door and I try to insert a laugh track.
I wish I could insert tears instead.
What 101 carefully chosen words can convey… Thanks for a strong well constructed mini epic.
This is a potent piece of writing — hard-hitting, rich with allusion, and (in a time when a president’s lies pile up like arctic snow) needed. Thanks.
This is very moving and worth reading and re-reading.
I admire the darkly humorous connection here–the insertion of laugh tracks as a way of mitigating the apparently unmitigable. Thank you.