I found this so arch that it was more tedious than revealing, but Esquire interviewed former Arkansas governor and aspiring scat comic Mike Huckabee “about his comedic process…his influences, his process, and the comedian’s responsibility to speak truth to power.” Get it? The Huckster doesn’t, or maybe he does. Who can say.
Huckabee says Huckabee things, like “a lot of these snowflakes are going to grow up never appreciating the comedy genius that [Jerry Seinfeld] is, because he might upset them.” The interviewer eggs him on, deadpan, with stuff like this: “Let’s get into your tweet from the other day, about Untied Airlines becoming Un-Tied Airlines. Did that just spring into your head fully formed? Did you look at the word United and move the letters around? What’s your process?” Examples of Huckabee’s groaners are sprinkled throughout.
If you think about how self-satisfied the Esquire team must have been in the pitch meeting for this idea, and then you think about how self-satisfied Huckabee is when he tells a poop joke about Obama — well, you might laugh, or you might not.