From Colbert to South Park, making fun of Trump has never been more important

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler complained that British propaganda worked better than its German counterpoint in World War I because the former portrayed the latter as savage brutes (“huns”) pillaging the civilized world, while the latter made the former look like a bunch of sissies.

That resulted, Hitler argued, in German soldiers taking the Brits for granted, and getting mowed down for the pleasure of the joke.

His assessment of that disparity in marketing is worth considering — and if there’s anything Hitler has to “teach” us it’s about how relentless, cynical P.R. and brazen lying can get people to do whatever you want them to do, no matter how awful. 

However, it’s also worth considering how much Hitler hated humor in general. That’s a hallmark of dictators everywhere: They only laugh when they’re watching someone they consider their lesser being hurt in some way. But, jeez, Hitler really didn’t like to be made fun of.

In his book Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum does a great service by unearthing the too-seldom-told history of the Munich Post newspaper reporters who covered Hitler in the early 1920s — long before he was der fuhrer and just a criminal rabble rouser with an absurd mustache. They had him pegged from the outset as a vicious punk with a murderous streak made all the more dangerous because it was couched in an essential moral cowardice and bankruptcy that made him capable of any and every outrage.

For his part, Hitler hated practically everything — don’t even get him started on Charlie Chaplin — but he despised few things as much as the Munich Post, which he called “the Poison Kitchen” and sued over and over for what he perceived as defamation, fraud and/or libel. (That was, when he wasn’t having his goons send the journalists death threats in the night.)

Infuriatingly, Hitler won most of those cases because a lot of the judges shared his illiberal tendencies, but the Munich Post kept at it — providing a constant, painstaking accounting of all his legal transgressions and never losing the opportunity to make him look ridiculous. 

The paper was unrelenting in painting Hitler as the creep he was; and, even according to his own associates at the time, the embarrassment and mockery drove him to the brink of ending it all. As his personal lawyer, Hans Frank, described it — and as Rosenbaum quoted — “he could not look at a paper any more, the terrible smear campaign would kill him.”

Of course it didn’t, and more’s the pity, but I’ve been thinking about all that as President Donald Trump’s authoritarian house of cards seems to be teetering under the pressure of the demands for disclosure regarding the “Jeffrey Epstein files” and a deafening chorus of jokes about him.

For evidence that the current humor offensive is crumbling Trump’s political foundations, there was the abrupt cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, whose host is regarded far and wide as one of the best and most astute critics of Trump in the “mainstream media.” 

(Those of us who have reached a certain age will also forever applaud Colbert for his epic takedown of then-President George W. Bush at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2006, and it’s notable that Trump allegedly decided to run for office when then-President Barack Obama roasted him at the same dinner in 2011, and Trump has been steadfast in refusing to attend the annual event ever since.)

Colbert — as well as his former Daily Show colleagues Jon Stewart and John Oliver — has been landing haymaker hits on Trump with punishing regularity since the beginning of the latter’s second term in January, pulling massive network TV ratings to stake a place as the most-watched late-night program in a crowded field.

It couldn’t be more evident that this causes Trump’s already swollen amygdala to detonate with nuclear force. Trump is nothing if not a creature of mass media, which he loves more than anything, and now Colbert has been canceled by Paramount-CBS after not-so-subtle pressure on parent company Paramount Global from the White House as it sought federal approval for an $8 billion merger with Skydance. (Surprise, surprise, Colbert’s cancellation on “financial” grounds went public on July 17 and the Federal Communications Commission approved the deal on July 24.)

But that isn’t all. South Park premiered its 27th season on July 23 with an episode that can be described without hyperbole as maybe the most epic public burn of all time. Titled “Sermon on the Mount,” it’s a searing satirical dismantling not just of Trump as a person, but the entire edifice of the MAGA movement, exposing it for the wretched tumor-cluster of hypocrisies, brutalities and bald-faced idiocies that it’s always been, but which right now is being demolished by comedians, where more than a decade of thoughtful analysis has not.

The greatest part, of course, is that Trump whined about South Park somehow being irrelevant (despite more than 20 years on the air) and the fact that creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker just signed a $1.5 billion renewal contract with no less than Paramount. You can’t make this stuff up.

It might be treading into “Pollyanna” territory, but I have a sense that the unceasing — and frankly hilarious — derision being directed at Trump on TV and other media is finally serving to erode not only his hold on the MAGA faithful, but his own always tenuous grip on reality.

Like every other strongman (wannabe or otherwise), Trump can’t and won’t take a joke. What’s more, it’s his fatal flaw. In a sense, he’s being canceled by culture, rather than “cancel culture,” and here’s hoping we, rather than him, have the last laugh.