Jordan Klepper’s ‘The Opposition’ Does The Impossible: Makes Alex Jones Unfunny
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Comedy Central’s second effort to fill the void left by Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report is a show that seems cut from the same cloth: The Opposition with Jordan Klepper. However, where Colbert’s character was a pitch-perfect satire of conservative cable news shows, Klepper’s show is (thus far) just a more-boring and less silly version of ideological online opinion shows, especially those that trend towards conspiracy theory.
If Bill O’Reilly was the muse for Colbert’s character, Klepper’s is Alex Jones of Infowars. He says as much in the first episode, pointing to how Jones preemptively trashed his show because he knew they planned to mock him. On his show yesterday, Jones said that Klepper’s show is part of the larger conspiracy of “globalists” (read: rich liberals and/or Jewish people) to utterly destroy America’s ability to manufacture goods and support its people. He says this is happening because there are only “five” media companies that actually exist and they are going “bankrupt.”
I only mention the nonsense rant from Jones, because it shows what could be a fatal flaw in the concept of Klepper’s show. Jones is nigh impervious to parody because his show is (deliberately?) over-the-top and ridiculous. Infowars surely makes some money from selling subscriptions, but most of their money comes from selling untested miracle cures and supplements. (When these supplements were tested by a third party, it was revealed they are simply over-priced versions of common over-the-counter vitamins and herbs.)
In all honesty, Jones is not that funny. He manipulates his viewers into believing lies and then acting on them, often in ways that cause real harm. His viewers have harassed the parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, which he still won’t fully admit happened. His attention on the nonsensical “Pizzagate” conspiracy, inspired one of his viewers to enter that restaurant with a gun and fire it, hoping to save the lives of child sex slaves that supposedly are trafficked out of the non-existent basement of this pizza shop. He further sows the seeds of distrust in the institutions that help protect America, like the press, the courts, and the constitutional system of checks and balances.
But, he’s also hilarious. The best Alex Jones satire one can do is often to just recut his broadcasts like Todd Dracula has done from Cafe.com and Super Deluxe. The video above, from the spring of 2017, deals with Jones’s infuriated response to his mention on Saturday Night Live when Alec Baldwin identified two black castmembers as “aliens.” He responded by screaming, praying for God to kill the writers, and then challenging Alec Baldwin to a bare-knuckle fight for charity. How do you parody a man who is already a parody of himself?
In the case of Klepper’s show the answer is not that well. The desk pieces he’s done so far have not really stood out the way the inaugural installment of Colbert’s “The Word” or even Larry Wilmore’s “Keep it 100” segment on his short-lived The Nightly Show. There was a very prescient bit about the NFL controversy, in which Klepper argues that “America First” is followed by “Americans Second.” It doesn’t have the viral appeal of “Truthiness,” but it’s a salient point. The jokes, however, were hit or miss.
Klepper also did a field piece — what he used to do in his old job on The Daily Show — from the Trump rally in Arizona. This appeared to a be a promo for his show, but it’s the funniest bit he’s done so far. He interviews a man who said he heard a rumor about Hillary Clinton, and then in his next sentence calls it a truth. “That’s how it happens, right there,” Klepper said. The bit also ends with him getting the crowd to sign a petition to impeach Hillary Clinton and chant “Impeach Hillary.”
To make matters worse for Klepper and Comedy Central, The Onion’s new brand has developed a short-form Alex Jones parody that actually works better than Klepper’s straightforward, self-aware delivery. In the above clip, their Alex Jones stand-in obsesses about pedophiles, much like the real Jones, and even does a send-up of the products he sells.
Of course, hosting a television show is hard in any media landscape, but in today’s it’s doubly difficult. Trump is almost impossible to lampoon because he’s so outrageous he too appears to be beyond parody. Despite his Emmy win, Baldwin’s Trump sketches were wearing thin by the end of the season. This is something Trevor Noah has struggled with, too. Not only do they have to follow iconic hosts like Colbert and Jon Stewart, they are doing it at a time when no one really understands what is happening.
It’s also a much more crowded late-night market than it used to be. Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, and Colbert are all doing very politics-focused stuff each night. Another Daily Show alum, Samantha Bee, has seemingly captured the spirit of her former show far more than Noah has. Even on Comedy Central both The President Show and The Jim Jefferies Show are TDS clones cluttering up the line-up. It’s possible that Klepper will grow into the show, and it will evolve into something more comparable to The Colbert Report for the Trump era, but unlike Colbert he has a lot more competition.
