Come on, Get Happy

Such a joy to be with my Have I Got News For You castmates today as we shot promos for the second season. Our first episode airs Saturday on CNN, and while I have no idea what we’re going to talk about, I feel confident we won’t be limiting our discussions to our thoughts on the Super Bowl halftime show.

I’ve thought a bit about how to talk about the state of the nation as we begin anew. It’s a tough assignment for a comedy show because, on the one hand, our job is to be funny. At the same time, nothing feels very funny. Absurd, yes. Surreal, absolutely. Funny? I haven’t been laughing that much of late.

I mean, it’s kind of funny that we just selected a former heroin addict, science denialist, brain worm victim, and whale-decapitator* to be in charge of public health. But it’s not that funny, particularly as we see states like Louisiana banning public health workers from even promoting vaccination.

Also, I guess it’s kind of funny that we just selected a Russian apologist to be the Director of National Intelligence. A woman who, for years, has parroted Putin talking points is, theoretically, the funniest person to be our Director of National Intelligence. But, when it actually happens, it somehow doesn’t feel that funny, unless you work at the Kremlin. Then, I bet, it’s fucking hilarious.

Is it funny that my congressman, Earl “Buddy” Carter just introduced a sincere bill to rename Greenland “Red, White, and Blue Land”? Yes, that is legitimately hilarious.

Burger King can try to rename bodies of water, I guess, but my understanding is that the people who live in sovereign nations usually get to make up their own minds about what they’d like to be called. Then again, this administration has a hard time respecting other people’s autonomy, so perhaps the idea that the US gets to name other nations shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.

Then there’s everything else, like Trump’s bizarre fixation on Canada becoming an American state. Or the fact that much of the Justice Department is currently resigning to protest the corrupt quid pro quo New York mayor Eric Adams case dismissal.

All of it would be a real knee-slapper if it were the sequel to Dr. Strangelove. But it’s not. Also, there’s a problem with making a Dr. Strangelove sequel, because the first one ended with the start of World War III, which was a very funny ending for that movie, but doesn’t have quite the same comic panache when actual global instability is growing by the day.

So, I don’t know how this week’s show’s going to go. And yes, that is the nation’s most pressing concern.

I will say that I’ve come to the same realization about all of this that I’m sure many of you have already arrived at; we’ve got at least four years of this shit ahead of us and I cannot allow this administration to steal my joy as easily as Elon Musk and his coterie of adolescent edgelords stole all of our private data. I can’t spend the next four years of my life wallowing or whinging. Instead, I’ve got to figure out how to maximize my own happiness while doing what I can to oppose the fusillade of bullshit.

Look at these stupid idiots. Their theme song was “Come on, Get Happy.” You think they were happy? Of course not. They were miserable. But they faked it! And that’s what YOU’RE going to do! So help me God, you’re going to fake it until you get a goddamned smile on your faces.

Fortunately, jokes are pretty good ammunition against lies. Mockery is a pretty good weapon against the narcissistic and self-important. Laughter is a more effective tool than pearl-clutching. So that’s what I’ll do.

(I will, of course, continue to clutch my pearls in the privacy of my own home.)

If that fails, I suppose I can become a saboteur. I think I’d make a pretty good saboteur because I like wearing black turtlenecks. Also, I think I’d enjoy having a code name.

Fair warning to all of my fellow saboteurs: if I get caught, I’m immediately spilling every single piece of information I have because I don’t think I would handle torture very well. As soon as they bring out the cattle prod, my pants are getting soiled and I’m dropping names.

So yeah, second season of Have I Got News For You starts this week as we celebrate the epic conclusion of The United States of America. At this point, it’s hard to know which of us will get canceled first.

Things may not be very funny right now, but I’m determined to laugh. As Abraham Lincoln - who many people say was treated almost as badly as Trump - once said, “I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all.” The biggest f you to these cretins is to meet their malevolence with smiles on our faces.

*Just in case you missed that RFK Jr. whale decapitation story. Here it is.