Forget <em>SNL.</em> The Best Election Satire Is on TikTok.
Just hours after Joe Biden was declared president-elect of the United States, and as massive celebrations gripped cities around the country, Dave Chappelle took the Saturday Night Live stage to puncture the jubilant mood. He started his monologue with a story about his great-grandfather, who’d been born into slavery in South Carolina. “I thought about him all day today, because I wish I could see him now. I wish he could see me,” Chappelle mused, almost wistfully, before landing the punch line: “Yeah, if he could see me now, he’d probably be like, ‘This nigga got bought and sold more than I have.’” What sounded like a moving anecdote about the American Dream morphed into a critique of both the entertainment industry and the naive notion of linear racial progress.
The set had its rocky points, but in his best moments Chappelle offered biting commentary on the intractability of American racism, no matter who’s in power. He confronted a certain kind of viewer—those of , and for whom the last four years . His monologue was refreshing in part because so much political comedy in the era of Donald Trump, especially on late-night shows like , has felt derivative and ineffectual, more interested in buffoonery than satire. Chappelle’s longer view of American history shares DNA with some of the most creative and incisive comedy being made elsewhere: on TikTok.
