It took a couple of weeks longer than it should have. But a couple of comedians finally took on Congressman George Santos (R-NY), he of the fluid sexual orientation and vocational history. And imaginative accounting skills.
SNL inexplicably put Bowen Yang as Santos on the fictional sidelines of an NFL game where he eventually appeared in drag, as Santos himself is alleged to have done during his salad days back in Brazil when his income is alleged to have consisted mainly of petty theft. Next up on the Tonight show was the usually reliable Jon Lovitz who portrayed Santos as informed by his classic character, pathological liar Tommy Flanagan.
You know what? Neither performance was particularly funny. Even Santos himself complained about them. Indeed, I found SNL’s “NFL Today” parody the writers contrived to get Mr. Yang’s character on the sideline to be particularly unamusing.
And I wondered, why didn’t these performers hit home runs? Granted Mr. Yang’s oeuvre has always been a little “out there” for my tastes. But I’ve always enjoyed the work of Jon Lovitz. And after all you would think that a guy like Santos would pretty much write his own copy.
Then it occurred to me. Some people are beyond parody.
Consider what parody of a person is. It is when you take a sample from a person’s being-typically a person that is otherwise admired-an exaggerate it for laughs. Think of recent Presidents. Reagan and W typically have been portrayed as amiable boobs. Obama as a diffident snob. Clinton as, well, a horndog while his wife was portrayed in a pantsuit with a belly laugh that could shatter glass. Trump with yellow hair and surrounded by lunatics. I don’t think they’ve quite figured Biden out yet. Portraying him as burdened with a walker would be cruel. And effective parody isn’t cruelty. So you get the idea.
But the problem with trying to do a parody of Santos is two-fold. First of all, most parodies are based on people with at lease a modicum of integrity although I’m pushing the example with Trump. And Santos appears to have none. Secondly, virtually everything he has told us about himself as been a complete fabrication. Parody consists in exaggerating things that are familiar. Every politician lies at some point or another. But I ain’t never seen nothing like George Santos.
To paraphrase the old saying, when it comes to George Santos, there is no “there” “there.” And maybe that’s why Yang and Lovitz couldn’t nail him. There’s nothing familiar upon which to build a character.
George Santos is a vacuous con artist who literally film-flammed his way into Congress despite all of the information we can easily gather on anybody nowadays. His worst nightmare will be if he is ever forced to take an Oath to tell the truth as he is incapable of it. We don’t even know if George Santos is his real name for God’s sake.
A guy like that cannot be parodied. Or as I frequently say, typically while wearing my lawyer hat, “you can’t make this up.”
And if you can’t make it up, you can’t make it funny.
