Comedian Zac Galifianakas made Barack Obama seem cool and likeable on his talk show spoof Between Two Ferns back in 2014, but has failed to recapture that lightning in a bottle with Hillary Clinton in 2016.
To be fair, I don’t think that George Carlin, Richard Pryor, or any of the greatest comics of the past few decades could have gotten much of a performance out of the humourless, lifeless, Gormless Hillary Rodham Clinton. I suspect that Galfianakis leans to the left, and because he leans to the left always likes to think the best of those that he shares small-l liberal values with. With that in mind, we can only speculate that he assumed that Hillary had at least one self-deprecating bone in her body. She doesn’t.
Hillary is a sociopath with an ego as big, or perhaps even bigger than that of Donald J. Trump. But at least Trump is surprisingly self-deprecating, playing along with jokes about his hair, his tan, and all manner of things throughout the campaign. He has to be, otherwise the relentless media hit job would have irreparably rattled him like a couple of alt-right memes rattled Hillary.
Trump may also be a sociopath, but Hillary is an off-the-charts level of sociopath, so much so that she steadfastly refuses to be self-deprecating, even when it is a golden opportunity for her campaign team to humanise the candidate in front of millions of millennials who are crucial to mobilise in a potentially election-changing viral video, bouncing off one of the most high profile comedians in the country.
Hillary’s refusal to even halfway play along, or possibly a lack of understanding of the concept due to absent faculties (she really does look like someone suffering dementia) is really quite remarkable. Galfianakis’ spoof talk show completely relies on the guest being a good sport, and rolling with the punches. It’s ostensibly a mini Comedy Central Roast.
Hillary does neither. Some are saying it’s intentional and part of the act. It isn’t. Hillary clearly no-sells jokes that fall flat on their face as a result. When the comedian quips that she might be the ‘first white president’ that young kids have ever known she gets that confusion in her eyes that regressive leftists get when they become entangled in the minutiae of identity politics, and let’s a great joke that could have established a less sociopathic, more self-deprecating candidate, as a good sport and somebody you might trust in the top job.
When Hillary expresses regret for agreeing to appear on Between Two Ferns, we suspect that it isn’t part of the script. Much has been made of Trump’s temperament, but Hillary comes across as a powder keg, banana-republic dictator to be carefully tiptoed around. If Hillary is this thin-skinned when being ribbed by a good natured comedian, can she be trusted with nukes or foreign policy when the likes of Iran or North Korea are saying mean things?
One thing’s for sure, although the mainstream media isn’t castigating Clinton over the appearance, they aren’t exactly gushing about it in the same glowing terms as they did when Obama appeared on Between Two Ferns, and Marc Maron’s W.T.F podcast.
That speaks volumes about the damage this appearance has done among the young and disenfranchised millions who don’t pay a lot of attention to CNN or Fox, but will go out or stay home on Election Day depending upon that Midas touch that Hillary should have gotten from guffawing in all the right places with Zac Galifianakas, yet failed to exploit so spectacularly.
It isn’t as game-changing as her ‘basket of deplorables’ gaffe, or her 9/11 collapse, but Between Two Ferns was definitely up there, purely because it allowed an unscripted glimpse into the darkness of Hillary’s soul.
Different generations perceive negative attributes in different ways. For many Americans, distrust of Hillary stems from her destabilisation of the Middle East, shameless Clinton Foundation corruption, her faux socialist rhetoric that serves as a smokescreen for a very real globalist agenda, her preoccupation with identity politics over real issues…the list goes on.
For the millions more who are less engaged, yet may have initially been influenced to get out and vote by all of the media white noise in a belief that Trump is literally Hitler, they may be less enthusiastic about mobilising and simply drift back off to sleep after seeing the cranky dithery old lady who was s—house on Between Two Ferns.