As a comedy writer, I tell myself lies to make myself feel better about my life decisions. “That two-star review reads more like a four!” “If I lived in the 1960s I’d definitely have been in Monty Python!” “My wife wouldn’t love me more if I were a lawyer!” The biggest of these is one I pull out at my most insecure (usually when surrounded by people with real jobs) – “comedy can change the world”. At my most pretentious, I believe that satire brought down Margaret Thatcher, that Jon Stewart stopped the worst excesses of the Bush administration, and that one day I will write a Twitter joke so nailed on that the ERG decides to cancel Brexit. Up until last weekend, this question of whether comedy could change the world was just a hypothetical one. But then, on April 21, the comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy became the president of Ukraine, and it all became frighteningly more real.
2019 Presidential Election
OP-ED
Jack Bernhardt: Comedy is a tool, a trick – Ukraine will soon see, running a country is no joke
Ukrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy reacts during a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Kyiv following the presidential election on April 21, 2019.
