Sarah Silverman yesterday...


Lewis Black today...

Anyone who has listened to Black do stand-up knows he is not one easily enamored by politicians or presidential candidates. One of his old jokes, after all, goes like this: “A Republican stands up in Congress and goes, ‘I GOT A REALLY BAD IDEA,’ and the Democrat says, ‘AND I CAN MAKE IT SHITTIER!’”

And he never really caught Obama Fever, either. “Nobody makes a better speech,” he says, “but I don’t think he spent enough time down there dealing with those jackasses in Congress.” But at least for the 2016 election, he does have a candidate he might be able to get excited about: Bernie Sanders.

“I’ve said from the beginning that I’m a socialist,” Black says. “And now I have a candidate running: Sanders is running for the Democratic nomination, which is a little upsetting to me, because I wish he’d just say, ‘Fuck ’em.’ But that’s the way of the world.” Black recognizes that there’s “this big fear of socialists taking over the United States,” but he says the worry is “a form of dementia.”

“We have no party. There’s like seven of us. I’ve got no meetings to go to. So I’m excited. I’m mostly excited that he’s just stating stuff that needs to be reiterated that the [Democrats], basically, don’t reiterate. And it’s in terms of financial inequality,” he says.

Comedians have never enjoyed a higher cultural profile than they do today, both as cultural critics and as political forces, so if the nation's comedians start breaking for Sanders in a big way... that's bad for Hillary, right?