For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved Stand-Up Comedy; even as a kid I unwrapped what would feel like a Jenga set sized stack of VHS cassettes for Christmas. Family friends always had a safety net when it came to buying gifts for me, “He loves stand-up comedy, so just get him a video” could have been recorded into a Dictaphone, and played for anybody who needed to ask. However, something has changed recently, and I’m finding myself growing tired of an artform that I have loved for decades, and now I think I know what it is.

Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Krusty the Clown retired, and when he was asked for a reason, he gave a simple “Because comedy ain’t funny anymore”? Those words have become eerily prophetic, and one man is responsible for it.

“President Trump” is killing comedy.

“So, this Mexican guy walks into a bar…”

Since the start of the Presidential campaign, Donald Trump became a comedic piñata. Smack him with a stick, and out comes something funny, smack him a few more times, and then you hit the mother lode, and everyone gets to share in what comes out. Here’s where the problem lies; the candy is gone, the piñata is smashed on the floor, barely recognisable in its current state, and all that’s left is a piece of string, draped over a branch, and people just keep on swinging at it, trying to get that one last piece of candy.

And before this is derided as merely being “some butt-hurt Alt-Right, Trump supporter who can’t take jokes aimed at the Fuhrer”, all three are erroneous, and don’t really have anything to do with the subject matter, but that’s neither hear nor there. That being said; let me introduce you to something I have provisionally called “Woooo Comedy”.

Wooooo! The great Bill Burr has stated that Ric Flair is one of the funniest men to ever use a microphone.

To put it in plain terms, “Woooo Comedy” isn’t legendary pro-wrestler, Ric Flair trying his hand at stand up (but I’d love to see him try, the man’s a treasure when he has a microphone in his hand). Rather, it’s a brand of comedy that I always believed was the domain of the “politically minded” hacks on the “Alternative” comedy circuit. Where, instead of telling a joke in order to garner a laugh, the performer opts to channel their inner Bill Hicks. With righteous indignation in their hearts and venom on their tongue, they go on to pontificate a series of agreeable soundbites, spoken at increasing volume and cadence, in the hopes of eliciting a golf clap and a high pitched “Wooooooooooooooooooooooo” from the audience. It’s nothing more than a poor pro-wrestling “good guy” promo, where an untalented speaker says something he knows will get what’s known as a “Cheap Pop”. It’s virtue-signalling masquerading as humor.

It’s a disease, and it is spreading.

Instead of the Alternative hacks, pandering in order to gain some semblance of a positive audience response, picking the low hanging fruit because they don’t have the ability to feed themselves in any other way; formerly talented comics are now chowing down in the pig trough that Donald Trump jokes have become. Jim Jefferies, seemingly abandoning his ever present “Like this one time, I did a load of coke and this happened to me” material, has shoved his face into the pig trough with open maw, gobbling up every “Trump’s stupid” bit, every “Everyone who voted for him is a racist” morsel, and every last globule of “HAHA, let’s all call him Drumpf!”. He’s not the only one, look to the Twitter feeds of both greats and hacks alike, Patton Oswalt, Kumail Nanjiani, Cameron Esposito, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, I can keep going. All of them, with their faces in the trough, with the same jokes, which is actually fortunate for Amy Schumer, can’t be accused of plagiarism if everybody else is telling the same jokes.

Which leads me back to earlier in this diatribe. It’s not the target of the jokes; Trump provides a veritable smorgasbord of things to be made fun of. However, with so much focus being placed on one target, comedy as a whole has become homogenized. There are only so many times we can hear the same thing. Think of all the comedy catchphrases you’ve heard over the years, from Del Boy Trotter’s “You plonker, Rodney!” to Barney Stinson’s “It’s gonna be legen — wait for it — dary!” from Larry Greyson’s “Shut that door” to Catherine Tate’s “Am I bovvered?!” Take any one of your choosing; now, have almost every comedian, comic, satirist, humorist, and spoken word artist saying that same catchphrase, over and over again. You more than likely got sick of hearing that catchphrase from the performer saying it ad-nauseam, now magnify that by thousands. What was once humorous has become hum-drum, and it’s sad to see.

While I appreciate that comedy is a powerful medium to skewer those in power, where you are supposed to say everything you’re not supposed to say, it’s beautiful in its defiance. However, the beauty is eroded over time when these things that are not supposed to be said, become the only things that are being said.