Charlotte squawks because of Brian Kahn. He is perhaps our most famous political satirist. By day, Brian is a financial services litigator leading an international team at one of the world’s largest law firms. Small potatoes. By nights and weekends, Brian curates and creates political satire produced by him and WFAE’s Mike Collins. He’s done this work for 17 years.
And as he has said in the lead-up to this year’s production, the public’s reception of satire has changed. In the Obama years, he created satirical bits on all the candidates opposing Obama from Hillary Clinton to Mitt Romney. Those were really received. In the Trump years, things changed. Audiences no longer thought they were as funny.
So that makes Brian’s job perhaps a bit more challenging. Emboldened to preserve the spirit and purity of satire as comedy that’s biting and shocking, while at the same time never punching down. That’s a Brian truism: don’t make fun of someone while they’re down. Perhaps the most human part of Charlotte Squawks is the opening monologue at the show shared to newcomers: “There will be moments . . . when you’ll be pissed off. Suck it up. This is not a safe space.” Here’s to a guy who cultivates and protects the sanctity of a complex emotional experience.
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