Andy Borowitz, and the Hunt for Invasive Lionfish
The New Yorker Radio Hour
WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. |
| 0:10.8 | Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. |
| 0:14.5 | You probably know Andy Borowitz from his column in The New Yorker The Borowitz Report, |
| 0:19.3 | and he's been writing satire and humor for decades. He |
| 0:22.4 | started out in the world of sitcoms. As a sitcom writer, you need characters that you can throw |
| 0:28.0 | stuff to every week, week in, week out, who are dependable and we'll get the laugh. And politicians |
| 0:33.3 | become kind of this little sitcom cast because we know how they're going to behave. |
| 0:38.3 | We know that Rudy Giuliani is going to be a crazy drunk guy, and Marjorie Taylor Green is going |
| 0:44.0 | to talk about Jewish space lasers. |
| 0:45.9 | And so they become very reliable sources of comedy. |
| 0:50.2 | It's probably not surprising at all that Andy ended up writing about politics. |
| 0:55.0 | But his new book, well, funny, is not really satire. |
| 0:59.4 | It's called Profiles and Ignorance. |
| 1:01.4 | And Andy believes we're now living at a time |
| 1:03.5 | that some of our smartest, most educated politicians |
| 1:06.5 | are actually just pretending to be dumb in order to get elected. |
| 1:12.4 | Andy, welcome. |
| 1:14.1 | The book is hilarious. |
| 1:15.6 | I have to say the subtitle of the book is how America's politicians got dumb and dumber. |
| 1:22.7 | And it's mostly about, obviously, modern politicians. |
| 1:25.9 | Were there no dummies early on? |
| 1:28.1 | No, there were. |
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