Is Today's New Yorker Cartoon About the End of Democracy Funny?Yes, I Know, New Yorker Cartoons Aren't Funny. But Is It Clever?
“O.K., I’ll put that on my calendar and we’ll just keep an eye on the weather and the fall of democracy.” In 2022, I sold a podcast called Democracy, Meh. It was based on a TV show I had failed to sell called Democracy, Meh, and was eventually turned into a book called Democracy, Meh that I never pitched because my agent told me it was unsellable. I never got to make the podcast because of a disagreement about a clause in my podcast contract with Pushkin, which they believed said I couldn’t work for another company, and I argued, “Please, c’mon.” The idea was that I’d report on non-democratic forms of governance with an open mind, to calm myself about the coming authoritarianism here. It was supposed to be funny. I could not pitch it today. Unless I wanted it to be angry. Or happy and airing on Russia Today. Most comedy does not age well¹. It’s always a bummer to show your kids a Mel Brooks movie. Or to hear yourself sadly explaining that, yes, the joke is just John Belushi saying “cheeseburger, cheeseburger.” I saw Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter do Waiting for Godot on Broadway last month, and they went as quickly as possible past the one scene that was assured laughs in the 1950s: the vaudevillian hat switch, which has long ceased to be excellent:  That’s because a lot of jokes are surprising observations. They’re commentary. They’re new. They’re more like fashion than art. If you’re too early, like the brilliant movie Idiocracy was in 2006, you just seem weird. If you’re too late, you’re wearing last year’s joke. Yesterday, the New Yorker’s Department of Hoopla released a new take on a classic that really does hold up because it is about the permanent human condition.
The new take is a woman who is also scheduling a meeting. Her line is, “O.K., I’ll put that on my calendar and we’ll just keep an eye on the weather and the fall of democracy.” This is only funny if you think, as I did six years ago, that the fall of democracy is possible, but unlikely. It’s a surprising observation. That stopped being the case with Joe Biden’s 2022 “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” speech. If democracy is probably going to come to an end in America, and you think that’s bad in the way that 100 percent of New Yorker readers do, then the joke has lost its surprise. Like saying, “O.K., I’ll put that in my calendar and if you don’t have your passport renewed by then, we can change it to Greenland.” I do not think we should stop making jokes about the alt-right. What Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Jon Stewart, and some other old white men I don’t know about are doing is brave. It’s a signal that we not only have the right to criticize but the joy to do it. So I’m glad the New Yorker ran this cartoon. I just don’t think it worked the way it would have six years ago. It’s behind. I could hear this exact line in earnest from my mom. She watches MSNBC all day. She also looks a little bit like the woman in the drawing, especially with the wine glass. You might be able to argue that the cartoon isn’t mocking the loss of democracy, but instead making fun of liberals who are reacting nonchalantly to it, but the New Yorker isn’t known for roasting its readers. In 2024, Jerry Seinfeld said this on comedian Tom Papa’s podcast:
The gates are moving very quickly. If you don’t move, you’re not only not funny. Your party is going to be fighting battles that are already over, and losing the new ones. 1 Exceptions include slapstick, absurdity, romcoms, and, oddly, every column I’ve ever written. Thank you for paying to read my column. Wait: This is for the people who didn’t pay? Then I owe you nothing. You are the ones contributing to the end of my career. If you want to pay an exorbitant amount of money to get one extra post a month – which often won’t even be that good – upgrade to a paid subscription here:
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Wednesday, January 7, 2026
Is Today's New Yorker Cartoon About the End of Democracy Funny?
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