History’s Clown Car with Andy Borowitz

Selected Shorts

Symphony Space

Arts, Fiction, Books, Society & Culture

4.4 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2024

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Meg Wolitzer presents four works drawn from an evening of satirical stories about American political history, hosted by Andy Borowitz. Nothing is sacred. First, Joe Yan imagines Abraham Lincoln, huckster, in “I’m Abraham Lincoln and I Beg Of You, Please Commemorate My Birthday With Mattress Sales,” read by Ikechukwu Ufomadu. In “Running for Governor,” Mark Twain imagines himself in the political horse race. The reader is John Cameron Mitchell. John and Abigail Adams had a famously happy marriage, despite often being apart, and why not imagine them taking advantage of the 18th century version of modern media options? That’s the premise of Alexandra Petri’s “John and Abigail Adams Try Sexting,” read by Ophira Eisenberg and Ikechukwu Ufomadu. And the show wraps with a piece by Borowitz himself, “A Very Nixon Halloween,” inspired by a photograph of Nixon as an awkward civilian after he left office. The reader is Caroline Aaron.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What do Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon have in common?
0:11.0	Well listen, if you said said presidents you're halfway there. For the
0:15.5	other half let's look to fiction from a night of selected shorts featuring
0:19.4	Andy Borowitz. I'm Meg Walitzer and join me for History's Clown Car stories about where history
0:25.7	could have gone if it had a better sense of humor. You're listening to
0:31.5	Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time.
0:41.0	Politics isn't funny. I mean not to many of us lay people who just read the news.
0:48.0	The business of governance with all its coalitions and compromises, bill writing and fundraising, doesn't lend itself to
0:55.7	a lot of humor.
0:57.4	Thankfully, we've got these people called satirists, and these days, alongside the many scribes who write stand-up jokes for late night TV or for online
1:06.2	publications, we have leading lights such as Andy Borowitz. He's the creator of the Borowitz Report, formerly a part of the New Yorker magazine, and the editor of
1:16.1	titles including The 50 Funiest American Writers.
1:20.1	His latest book, Profiles and Ignorance, is about how we've gone from shunning idiocy in our politicians
1:25.8	to celebrating it.
1:27.6	It's less ha ha ha ha a gotta laugh or I'm gonna cry funny. We at Selected Chorts love working with Andy Barrowitz.
1:37.0	Today's show is drawn from an evening of satirical stories about American political history,
1:42.0	which Barrowitz aptly named History's Clown Car.
1:45.6	As you'll hear, Barrowitz played the consummate host.
1:48.6	He also contributed a story of his own which we'll hear at the end of the show, after listening to other works, including a piece by one of Barowitz's heroes, Mark Twain himself.
1:57.0	In writing workshops, there's always a lot of talk about voice.
2:01.0	What is it and how does a writer find their own.
2:04.0	Andy Barwood seems to have found his own singular and drill voice
	...

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