Aside from the rich men in Donald Trump’s immediate orbit, pretty much the only people whose lives have improved in the wake of the inauguration of the 45th president have been the hacky comedians getting cheap laughs out of making fun of, like, the size of his hands on the internet.
Well-meaning liberal uncles worldwide chatter “haha so true!” while retweeting whatever quick-fingered laughmaster managed to get the first response to a Trump tweet calling him a “sentient dumpster fire” or some other instantly overused insult. It’s had the function of turning people who are basically just competent internet users armed with joke-shaped phraseology into viral sensations and it is always exhausting. Which is exactly why I urge you not to watch today’s product of a malfunctioning liberalist-comedy-headline-generator: “This is what @IvankaTrump would sound like as a @LanaDelRey song.”
Videos by VICE
Posted by Super Deluxe, the video’s a parody song written by the Tennessean musician and comedian Nick Lutsko—who’s hit this particular retweet jackpot before with projects like “Donald Trump’s Tweets As An Early 2000s Emo Song” and “Alex Jones Rants as an Indie Folk Song.” Much like those songs, this one’s a ripped from the headlines affair—repurposing bits of the younger Trump’s speeches into a dead-eyed pop song in the style of everyone’s favorite philosophy-major-turned-pop star.
It’s, like, mostly inoffensive and Amber Coffman—formerly of Dirty Projectors—does a pretty spot on impression of Del Rey. The opening couplet (“My father is the opposite of a man/It’s almost impossible to love him”) is pretty indicative what you get throughout, the sort of dry ennui and Oedipal drama that people projected upon Ivanka’s relationship with her father since long before the election.
Part of the issue is a temporal problem that any comedy that takes time and effort to produce faces in the Trump era. The horrors come so fast that you can have an idea that’s funny on Monday that’s already been memed to death by Friday. I can almost guarantee that Lutsko—or someone responsible for even less funny content than him—has some sort of viral-baiting video about the nuclear tensions with North Korea in the works, despite the fact that the “fire and fury” comments already feel like a dream from another lifetime.
But part of it’s just that the internet rewards people like Lutsko for obvious jokes. This would have already felt played out even if he published it on inauguration day. I like making fun of the Trumps as much as anyone! I like Lana Del Rey as much as everyone! But it’s depressing that this sort of engagement-driven micro-comedy passes well enough for political commentary that the entire blog ecosystem feels obligated to post even though no one’s actually laughing. What if we all just donated money to people fighting against systemic oppression every time we felt the urge to watch something like this.
So true! Haha. Send Tweet.
Colin Joyce is an editor at Noisey. He likes having fun on Twitter.
