Conan O’Brien offered a depressing diagnosis of modern American politics during a recent conversation at The New Yorker Festival, arguing that the current state leaves him “angry and depressed” and increasingly rewards people willing to abandon any true sense of personal principle.
Asked by an audience member about comedy’s place “in this strange moment in American history,” O’Brien said he believes every comedian has to decide for themselves what they can contribute. “I have a lot of respect for political comedians,” he said. “That was never my gift.”
While noting that his late-night shows regularly went after politicians including Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, O’Brien said his political comedy generally came through the absurd and psychological rather than direct commentary.
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“I myself find the current state of things very depressing,” he continued, “so I’m grateful that I don’t have to every night try and find something funny about what’s happening right now, because I get very angry and depressed.” Instead, O’Brien said he has increasingly found value in creating smaller, more human moments, pointing to interactions like his recent appearance on Subway Takes.
“Maybe the thing I can do that provides the best service is the stuff where I can maybe connect with someone on the subway and make a funny moment happen that’s human,” he said. “I think everyone has to do what they have the talent to do that will be somewhat helpful in a human sense.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, O’Brien expanded on what he finds so dispiriting about contemporary politics, arguing that people need to have “a soul” – not necessarily in a religious sense, but as an internal set of governing boundaries.
“You have to have a set of things that you will do and won’t do,” O’Brien said. “You have to have a conversation with yourself about who you are.” Pointing to a controversial campaign ad from Vivek Ramaswamy as an example, O’Brien continued, “I look at it and I think, well, you have no soul if you do that. You have no soul.”
He then compared contemporary politicians to cars optimized in wind tunnels, where different models eventually take on similar shapes because they’ve been engineered for maximum efficiency. “I think that in modern politics, we’ve gotten to the point where someone figured out if you don’t have a soul, you’re more aerodynamic and you will go faster,” he said. O’Brien finished his point by saying that the current political climate is “the most nihilistic thing” he’s ever seen.”
