TikTok comics are making the mainstream obsolete

In 10 days, the Iron Man of politics returns

I would ask what happened California, but we all know too well why fires burn while the DEI mayor fiddles and the first lesbian fire chief scissors things up.

Let us talk about more pleasant things like Jim Gaffigan, a rare mainstream comic these days who makes me laugh.

Oh, the Jeff Bezos Post makes me laugh. Its big scoop—linked by Drudge—“This could be AOC’s moment.”

Brace yourself. The story said she got the committee assignment this term that she wanted: the Energy and Commerce Committee. Wow. JD Vance already is sweating over the 2028 election.

Gaffigan deliberately tries to make me laugh and often succeeds. He admits now that last year he stopped trying.

Comedian Eric Abbenante tweeted with a video:

Comedian Jim Gaffigan admits that entertainers and media personalities were instructed to not criticize Kamala Harris:

“What I thought was interesting about this election—maybe because it was so important, maybe because it was such a short election for Kamala—that people were like ‘Don't criticize her.’

“That's actually bad to have that approach. And I think hindsight people feel that way.”

The same people who said Kamala ran a flawless campaign were instructed behind the scenes to not criticize her.

Who instructed Gaffigan? Maybe he refers to NBC executives in his 4 episode gig on SNL in which he impersonated Tim Walz.

But come on. Gaffigan’s a big boy, a well-established stand-up comic who does sold-out tours of the country. He’s made it big even if he never got a sitcom in syndication or a big movie. What gives?

His comedy was apolitical until 2020 when he jumped on the Truck Fump bandwagon, complete with bashing Trump’s MAGA supporters.

Dean Obeidallah of CNN praised the change from comedy to politics, writing:

Gaffigan, who I’ve known personally for years, unleashed a profanity-infused Twitter storm where he warned Trump supporters, among other things, that the President is “a traitor and a con man who doesn’t care about you.”

Gaffigan, whose animated series Pale Force made him known for jokes about how White he is, didn’t stop there. He slammed Trump for his “incompetent” handling of the Covid-19 crisis, adding, “You know all those people didn’t need to die.” The comic also warned that Trump “is a fascist who has no belief in law,” while defending Joe Biden against Trump’s claims that his Democratic rival is a socialist. And then Gaffigan did something he would ever do on stage: he cursed, writing, “I don’t give a fuck if anyone thinks this is virtue signaling or whatever,” adding, “We need to call Trump the con man and thief that he is.”

Of course there is no proof of Trump conning anyone out of their money or stealing anything.

Obeidallah wrote, “In a word: Wow! Gaffigan was prepared to break out even if it meant hurting his commercial appeal.”

Why would a comedian who cared little about politics before suddenly turn against half his audience? Could it be that someone paid him off? We know from the Twitter Files that the federal government paid Twitter to censor people when Jack Dorsey ran the show.

We also know that Kamala’s campaign paid Oprah a million bucks—through her production company—to produce a fake townhall meeting.

The late-night talk show hosts also traded in comedy for political rants. Not that they ever were all that funny.

Jimmy Fallon was the third banana when he was on SNL behind Tina Fey and Will Farrell. Adam Carolla was far funnier than Jimmy Kimmel on The Man Show. And Stephen Colbert has not developed beyond mocking Bill O’Reilly nearly a decade after O’Reilly lost his show.

There are no coincidences in crime or politics. When you tax-and-spend $100 trillion and borrow-and-spend another $36 trillion, surely you have enough money to pay off a few lousy comics.

Or maybe the network bosses bought into the whole deplorables thing and thought Trump was just a bump in the Long and Whiny Road of Obamanism. CEOs like to stay on the good side of government.

Which is why in Trump’s second turn at being president we are seeing a great capitulation as billionaires and heads of state make their pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. Yesterday’s enemy is today’s ally. In a stroke of luck, Senator John Fetterman got an invitation.

The mainstream media is catching on. Morning Joe Scarborough and his co-host bride went to Mar-a-Lago and kissed the ring.

Not invited? No sweat.

Abbenante also tweeted:

Comedian Whitney Cummings describes how she ‘broke’ from the left’s stringent instructions to not criticize the party or the candidate:

“It's just wild to me that we are in a time where if you are on the left and you don't criticize your party, how much do you even care about your party?

“I finally just broke. Stockholm syndrome, whatever it is. But I just think that if you love yo

“I don’t think the left is as liberal as it used to be. It's like the left became the party of censorship. And my body, my choice. But you have to take this vaccine. And my body, my choice, pro-choice party. But you don’t have a choice in your candidate.”

Whitney Cummings is a summer solider storming the beaches of Normandy in 1948. We appreciate the effort, but it’s 4 years after it matters.

I disagree. It still matters.

But it just does not matter as much as the comedians believe it does.

Just as bloggers and Twitter are doing in the mainstream news media, comics on TikTok are doing in mainstream TV shows.

Ava Fischer listed, “31 Funny TikTok Accounts That Are Sure To Make You Laugh.”

I never heard of any of them and given that I am not in their target audience that’s OK with them because they gave far bigger audiences of young people. They have huge followings.

Chris Olsen has 13.7 million followers on TikTok.

Colbert averages less than 2.6 million viewers. Olsen has more followers than Gutfeld, Colbert and the rest combined. He’s in second place, though.

Lindy and Jlo—a wife and husband team—have 18.5 million followers. In fact, 11 of the 31 comics listed beat Colbert. Others merely beat Kimmel or Fallon.

Comedy isn’t dying in America. Officially approved jokes are.