But while the “Racists for Trump” ad received by far the most attention, the cold open, which parodied New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s awkward Trump endorsement, perhaps more subtly associates Trump’s recent comments with both racist and fascist ideologies. I haven’t quite been sold on Darrell Hammond’s characterization of Trump, but during this sketch, he does capture Trump’s preening and posturing. More notably, the sketch features Trump bragging that “the media are saying they haven’t seen anything like this, not since Germany in the 1930s.” He goes on to brag that he won “racists, ugly racists, people who didn’t even know they were racists.” It’s a pretty blunt appraisal of Trump’s campaign messaging and one that shows they power of comedy to comment on politics in a clever, engaging way.

But in just the last week, at least four pivotal interactions occurred, all of them touching on Trumpism in some form or another. First, there was Chris Christie’s notorious introduction or endorsement of Trump, which he seemed to read with all of the enthusiasm of someone who’d been kidnapped. The image of Christie standing impassively in the background inspired some of the best social media parodies, including my personal favorite, this Vine, which uses the theme music from Curb Your Enthusiasm in order to read Christie’s seemingly pained expression at being placed in an impossibly awkward situation, a reading that Christie himself has disputed.

The second key moment involves the fascinating debate between CNN political commentator Van Jones and Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord after Lord sought to identify the Ku Klux Klan as a “leftist organization.” This debate came on the heels of Trump’s apparent unwillingness to disavow the support of former Klan leader David Duke and other white supremacist organizations. Trump later and repeatedly disavowed these groups but not before Lord sought to make the case that Democrats, for decades, were guilty of “dividing the nation” on the basis of race.

The third key moment involved the image of the previous GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, delivering a sweeping denunciation of Trump and stating that the party should do everything possible to bring down the Republican frontrunner. Romney sought to depict Trump as a “phony” and “fraud,” themes that would be echoed later in that week’s Republican debate on Fox News, but what was notable about the speech was the fact that Romney tacitly endorsed further fragmentation and refused to throw his support behind any specific candidate. Instead, he seemed to propose the idea of a contested convention, one in which party power brokers (rather than primary voters) would be in the position of deciding the nominee.

Finally, there was the Republican debate itself, in which Trump famously defended the size of his penis from attacks by Marco Rubio. Which basically places us just a couple of steps from the satirical futuristic society depicted in Mike Judge’s brilliant film, Idiocracy. But these questions about Trump’s manhood–and the need he felt to defend it–actually tell us quite a bit about the state of the electorate and the degree to which Trump’s performance depends on there not being a “problem” there. But I would also want to highlight the degree to which Fox News sought to single out Trump’s business dealings, as when Megyn Kelly, Trump’s chief foil within conservative media, questioned him on his failed businesses including Trump University. It’s unclear whether these negative attacks will have any effect on Trump, of course. Jeb Bush, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and other Republicans have sought–and failed–to discredit Trump, to expose him as a serial liar with no basis for his policies.

However, to some extent, I see Trump’s supporters as being beyond persuasion, in much the same way that Colbert diagnosed with Bush supporters many years ago when he coined the term “truthiness.” For Trump, we are reaching something that might be called “Trumpiness,” with the pun at the end of that word fully intended. Trump’s “truth” is one that is felt, and it is one that is completely grounded in his performance of success and winning, of feeling the pent up rage of working class people who feel screwed by the system and then magically transforming that into a success narrative. It is a powerful narrative and one that should not be underestimated.

The series is distributed via Univision and seems targeted for a young, international audience, which says a little bit about how the U.S. election is “translating” to other countries, where audiences are likely watching with a mix of humor and horror as events unfold. As the Post article notes, it’s entertaining to see political impersonations operating in a different format.

He then shows that voter impersonation during elections is incredibly rare, showing that in South Carolina, there were only five cases that could potentially be considered possible voter impersonation cases out of millions of legitimate votes. This observation sets up his brilliant conclusion, which I won’t spoil here, but it brilliantly illustrates the hypocrisy of many of these voter ID proponents.

Oliver is one of my favorite political comedians, in part because he often “covers” issues that are not in the daily headlines and in part because his position on HBO allows him to create monologues that can run 10-15 minutes long, much longer than any segments on commercial television. This allows him much greater flexibility in building an argument that can make a political point. There are plenty of examples where Oliver has used this power for positive effect, as when he did a powerful segment on net neutrality that led to the FCC website crashing because so many of his fans (and other activists) went to leave comments. At any rate,John Oliver is back, and that alone is worth celebrating.

First, it’s pretty clearly playing well with some members of the Republican base and Cruz’s base. Bashing Clinton, even during a primary election, continues to be a winning strategy for Republicans, and Cruz seems to imply here that he will be better equipped to do that than other members of his party. The advertisement does an effective job of linking the “fax machine” scene to Clinton seemingly destroying an email server that contains potentially top-secret emails. And although there are concerns about how this will play with older voters in South Carolina, it’s easy to forget that Office Space is nearly twenty years old (it came out in 1999), and fans of the film when it first came out may be in their late 40s or 50s. And while the ad features Cruz’s approval, he does not appear directly in the advertisement itself, so he is not directly, visually linked to something that might alienate older voters. Even so, political tribalism–as seen through Facebook and Twitter shares and retweets–frequently trumps questions of taste, and the message of a video or image macro, if it resonates politically, is often more important than potentially offensive meanings of the original text.

Still, Cruz has built his campaign around a subversive, anti-establishment discourse, one that frequently evokes popular culture, often in ways that defy the original or privileged meanings of those texts (note his performance of a key scene from The Princess Bride). I’m no fan of Cruz, but his campaign has carved out a clever advertising strategy that has embraced some of the lessons of how “pop politics” can help to define the perceptions of candidates in the public imagination.

Update: MSNBC mentioned that the ad was specifically scheduled to run during SNL, a time when viewers skew a little younger and are more likely to be familiar with the original film that is being parodies.

That being said, debates can provide some of the most memorable pieces of political imagery, shaping our views not only of specific candidates but also the role of government itself, of competing political visions. They can, like elections themselves, have consequences. The most recent example of this is the exchange between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, in which Christie successfully lands the critique of Rubio that he is a Washington politician who simply repeats the same “25-second soundbite” rather than actually accomplishing anything.

Rubio’s stumble here is magnified by the fact that he repeats the soundbite twice after Christie has called him on his reliance on soundbites. Of course, we now know that Christie did not himself reap any benefits from this exchange. His poll numbers in New Hampshire remained stagnant, and he has since dropped out of the race. But he has clearly put the Rubio campaign on the defensive, at least for the next few weeks, and Christie’s comments have provided substance for an existing perception of Rubio’s candidacy, one that will find itself expressed repeatedly through Facebook memes, Twitter hashtags, and other forms of political entertainment.

The exchange also illustrates one of the powerful appeals of debates. Their liveness assures us that “anything” can happen, that the potential for a consequential moment is always on the horizon.

The sketch parodies Curb’s obsession with manners–and Larry David’s habit of violating social norms–to mock some of the conventions of campaign narratives in a clever and fun way, especially for fans of the original show.
 

In Political TV, I made the argument that most of SNL’s presidential impersonations have only limited satirical effect. In most cases, these imitations simply exaggerate a personality trait–Gerald Ford’s clumsiness, Bill Clinton’s appetites, George W. Bush’s folksiness–without speaking to the political implications associated with them. The exception, to my mind, has been Fey’s imitation of Palin, which helped to tease out the political cynicism that brought her into prominence and how that allowed someone who was clearly unprepared for national office to appear as a VP candidate. This observation became especially acute when Fey’s Palin appeared in sketches alongside of Hillary Clinton, as played by Amy Poehler. While Kate McKinnon has played Clinton as fragile and out-of-touch, Poehler brought a layer of sympathy to her portrayal of Clinton, depicting her as an accomplished whose candidacy was trivialized by Palin’s ascendancy. Together, Fey and Poehler brought a subtly feminist critique to the show.

Fey’s reappearance tends to go for straightforward mockery, and her impression of Palin here almost feels like a “greatest hits” performance, capturing Palin’s glib speaking style. But what struck me about this sketch is how it frames our encounter with Palin through the eyes of Donald Trump (as played by Darrell Hammond). In many ways, it invites us to sympathize with Trump and to see him as being in on the joke (that Palin is crazy). I’m searching for a way in which the sketch might be critical of Trump, but as Hammond plays him, Trump seems to be a goofy guy who’s bemused by Palin’s theatrics. In that sense, it almost works against the 2008 sketches and the feminist critique they articulated.