The Lou Perez
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Lou Perez is a Webby Award-winning comedian, host of The Lou Perez Podcast, and former head writer and producer of We the Internet TV.
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Hannah Gadsby and Pablo Picasso

I am not looking forward to Hannah Gadsby's exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum: "It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby."

I mean, I already watched her stand-up specials.

In both Nanette and Douglas, Gadsby connects her trauma and identity to these grand narratives of comedy, art history, and, well, typical woke bullshit.

Her talks include authoritative takes on punching up vs. punching down, truth to power, and identity politics.

There’s an academic feel to her stuff. Gadsby looks the part of a lecturer — with her eyeglasses and two-piece suit.

She looks “smart,” you know. But the stuff she’s saying isn’t smart. It often has the ring of a freshman gender studies essay.

There’s always the Patriarchy and straight white men...

In Douglas she really sticks it to Where’s Waldo? and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

In Nanette it’s cubist painter Pablo Picasso and other powerful (not fictional) men. Every one of 'em safe targets.

In Nanette we learn that Picasso was forty-two when he had an affair with a seventeen-year-old girl.

As Gadsby puts it, “Picasso fucked an underage girl” and he said, “‘It was perfect — I was in my prime and she was in her prime.”

By today’s standards, yeah that’s scandalous, but Picasso was with high-school junior Marie-Thérèse back in what, 1927? Nearly one hundred years ago.

Gadsby’s bit is anachronistic. The historical and cultural context isn’t important though.

What is important is somehow finding a way to link misogynist Pablo Picasso to a number of other high-profile dudes on the douchebag spectrum — with the worst of them being, of course, The Donald. The safest target ever. Hitler being a distant second.

Sometimes trying to go deep just ends up bringing you way out of your depth.

Take Gadsby’s defense of Monica Lewinsky in Nanette:

Gadsby is correct that Lewinsky “used to be an easy punch line.” Looking back, I was a kid in the ’90s, it's messed up how Lewinsky was treated.

But here is how Gadsby holds up that mirror to American society — with a particular callout of those who run the comedy game (see image attached).

Lewinsky was so moved by this that she and the Kiwi comic came together on stage at an event for Vanity Fair to discuss “Dealing with Trauma in the Public Eye.”

The whole thing is kind of weird, isn’t it?

Because, obviously the man Gadsby is referring to — the one “who openly admitted to sexually assaulting vulnerable young women because he could” is President Donald Trump.

But “the man who abused his power” in Gadsby’s Lewinsky bit is...President Bill Clinton.

I repeat: Hannah Gadsby is talking about Bill Clinton.

Bill “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” Clinton.

Bill “What does the word ‘is’ mean?” Clinton.

Bill—penetrated Monica Lewinsky’s twenty-two-year-old vagina with a cigar—Clinton.

BILL. CLINTON.

So if my math checks out that would make the “middle- aged woman with an appropriate amount of experience [who should be] in the White House” Hillary Clinton — the same Hillary Clinton who was First Lady to...Bill Clinton.

You know, while comics were ripping Lewinsky jokes every day Hillary was calling the former White House intern a “narcissistic loony toon.”

That’s the woman Gadsby wanted in the White House?

Because with Hillary in the White House you'd still have “the man who abused his power” in the White House — except this time around Bill Clinton would be demoted to the First Man, I guess.

That’ll show him!

Move Bill back into the home where he has so many fond memories.

Even Lewinsky didn’t pick up on the irony of Gadsby’s bit.

I mean, I highly doubt the middle-aged woman Gadsby was referring to was 2016 Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina.

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