Mark Russell, a singing and piano-playing socio-political satirist based in Washington, D.C., passed away today at age 90.
Russell wrote and performed his parodic songs and routines from the 1960s to 2010 and became iconic enough to become parodied himself, with versions of him appearing in The Simpsons and on Saturday Night Live. Russell told jokes about figures in both parties, but his humor was usually gentle. By the standards of The Daily Show and its imitators, or of most stand-up comedy then and now, Russell’s jokes sound safe and soft, almost too easygoing to qualify as satire.
There was something almost innocent and good-natured about Russell’s portrait of Washington. Jokes about the incompetence of members of Congress, their idiocy, corruption, and vices were offered with a disapproving shake of the head, with no real castigation or acidic anger. Republicans could watch one of Russell’s PBS specials and groan at one of his jokes about Newt Gingrich or Bob Dole but know that a joke about Bill Clinton or Al Gore would be coming along soon.
Back in 1987, Russell did a routine about Joe Biden and his plagiarism scandal.
Senator Joseph Biden, you recall, had to pull out of the presidential race. He said, “I’m no longer a candidate and I will definitely finish high school.” No! Well, with the plagiarism thing with Biden, I mean you knew that the speeches sounded kind of familiar, didn’t it? I think it was a time months ago when he said that if he got the nomination, his running mate would be Lyndon Johnson. Now, I’ve heard that before! So reporters asked Senator Biden, what about these charges that you have plagiarized famous speeches? And Biden said, “To be, or . . .”
A generation ago, Washington had a lot of politically neutral comedy acts. There was the Capitol Steps, for example, which employed me as the world’s most spectacularly incompetent public-relations manager, in 1997. And apparently the comedy group Gross National Product is still kicking around out there.
Last year, Graham Vyse wrote in the Washington Post about the rise and fall of the Capitol Steps:
Yet in January 2021, after more than 40 albums, the Steps announced that they “simply weren’t built to survive going a year or more without live performances” during the pandemic. That got me thinking about the Steps’ unlikely origins and their considerable success, and about how growing political polarization made their middle-of-the-road approach to comedy harder to sustain — especially in the Trump era.
Political humor had changed. It was less lighthearted, more snarky and sarcastic. Washington had changed, no longer a place where Democrats and Republicans would rib one another without too many hurt feelings. Moreover, America had changed, probably forever.
Mark Russell was winding down during the presidency of George W. Bush and retired before the Trump era began. Perhaps it was just age catching up to him, or the fact that our culture moved beyond his gentle and bipartisan style of humor. Whether you think the U.S. has become a humorless place, this is now certainly a country where each political faction is much less willing to laugh at jokes about itself. And the political satire that is out there is usually brimming with contempt for the opposing side.