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...America... Great...

David Cross

Liberal Jew-Run Media Productions · Album · 2016 · 74 min

An anxious, irritable time capsule of late-2016 American political panic.

David Cross returned to stand-up after a six-year absence with a style of comedy that relies on a specific brand of smug, irritable incredulity. The focus is the absurd political theater of 2016, though this audio release captures a different side of the tour than its Netflix sister special. Recorded at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto rather than Texas, Cross plays to an audience of Canadians who are watching the American political circus from a safe, yet nervous, distance.

His targets are familiar for anyone who followed him during the Bush administration: American swagger, gun culture, and religious hypocrisy. He spends several tracks on the rise of Donald Trump, a subject that some critics and listeners felt leaned too heavily on predictable partisan jokes. Yet Cross is at his most engaging when he moves away from direct political ranting.

He spins a long, absurd bit imagining an artisanal gasoline brand for hipsters, and he constructs a bizarre, elaborate scene of a man named Joseph trying to catch Adolf Hitler’s attention at a rally while getting confused between saying hello and saluting.

The album earned a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album, though the reception from long-time fans was mixed. Some appreciated his vintage anger, while others complained that the material traded genuine wit for easy targets.

Following the 2016 election, Cross announced he would donate all proceeds from the album’s sales to the ACLU, calling some of his own pre-election optimism painful to look back on.

The set list

5 bits

  1. Calculating how many people need to die before gun control legislation passes

    Crunches the numbers to deduce that exactly 1,776 more people must die in a single incident, satirically suggesting hiring a white gunman to shoot up the Kentucky Derby.

  2. An NRA gold-star congressman

    Imagines a pro-gun congressman watching his young daughter get killed by internet-bought automatic weapons and comforting her dying body with 'Freedom isn't free, honey.'

  3. Patrio-jism

    A pun and running joke where American symbols and mass shootings trigger an erection.

  4. Why God allows children to be shot

    Suggests that God allows children to die so they can go to heaven and service ISIS suicide bombers as their 72 virgins.

  5. The closer (spoiler). Show it

    Restoration Hardware catalog philosophical encore closer

    Presents a high-minded philosophical tract invoking Einstein's unconventional genius, which turns out to be marketing copy written by Gary Friedman for a new tableware collection.

How it plays

Tone
Scathing, cynical, irreverent, biting, and provocative.
On stage
A pathologically real-talking soothsayer devoid of propriety who alternates between scathing cynicism and clueless, navel-gazing personas to parody right-wing dogmas.
Pace
A precision trot punctuated by sudden strategic pauses and deliberate stage pacing, delivering dense, ornamental, paragraph-length sentences and rants.
About
Donald Trump and right-wing political rhetoric, Gun control and mass shootings, Religion and atheism, American swagger and faux-patriotism, Commercialism

What the critics said

Praised by critics for turning Trump-style vulgarity and absurdity on its head to make a biting case for liberal humanism and common sense, though some routines on religion and gun violence polarized audiences.

In the room: Energetic and packed, but polarizing; walkouts were prompted during offensive routines about religion and dead children.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: imdb.com, netflix.com, officialdavidcross.com, stag.vogue.com, nytimes.com, vogue.com, allmusic.com, nationalpost.com, en.wikipedia.org, media.netflix.com, wbur.org.

Backstory

Filmed and recorded amid the 2016 U.S. presidential election circus, marked by the rise of Donald Trump's campaign and debates over gun control and mass shootings.

Details

Released
Taped
The Danforth Music Hall, Toronto
Runtime
74 min
Where
Liberal Jew-Run Media Productions (album)
Director
Alex Coletti
Honors
Nominee: Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album (2016)
Topics
Before
Making America Great Again! (2016)
After
Oh, Come On (2019)

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