Stand-up John Mulaney and I were born two days apart, and I have always assumed this is why his polite, reference-dense humor lands so perfectly for me. But if tonight’s two nearly sold-out Paramount Theatre shows are any indication, I’m completely wrong and you don’t need to have experienced the 1992 presidential election through the eyes of a 10-year-old to appreciate Mulaney’s wry “sweet idiot” take on life.
“If you were a kid when Bill Clinton was first released, it was the most exciting thing ever,” says Mulaney on his Netflix special The Comeback Kid. “We’d never seen a cool politician before. He would go on MTV and have cool answers to kids’ questions, like, ‘Governor, what’s your favorite food?’ And he’d be like, ‘I don’t know, fries?’ And we’d be like, ‘Yay! We eat fries!’” Mulaney continues into this long-form joke, which lasts 12 minutes, explaining that he learned the piano chords to Clinton’s campaign song “Don’t Stop,” “by Fleetwood Mac from Rumors—an album written by and for people cheating on one another.” “He let us know who he was right away,” he adds with good-natured skepticism.