Robert E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Other Humorous Takes on the Civil War
Here are a few of my favorite comedic videos about the Civil War and Civil War reenacting. Enjoy.
First up is a funny take on Ken Burns’s The Civil War series featuring Robert E.T.
I absolutely love this video in which Conan O’Brien joins a group of Civil War reenactors.
And here he is poking fun at Donald Trump.
Key & Peele drop in on a group of Confederate reenactors and manage to undercut the Lost Cause narrative of the war.
Finally, we go back to the 1990s HBO series “Mr. Show” starring Bob Odenkirk.
Have a great day.
Although I see the humor in all of these, I also had a bit of a negative visceral response to some of them too—not unlike the sinking feeling I experienced when I heard Hillary Clinton, in a widely publicized campaign speech, call people who supported Trump "deplorable." I thought at the time that she would prevail in the presidential election despite the "emails," but when I heard that speech I knew that she wouldn't. To this day, I still believe that was the nail in the coffin. Immediately after, I started getting emails from friends in my hometown signed, "Me deplorable." It was not unlike the video of Romney calling Obama supporters parasitic at a donor dinner four years earlier. If you want to bring someone around to your point of view, you can't make fun of things that are part of their identity (regardless of whether those things are ridiculous or meaningless) until you establish common ground and hopefully elicit their trust that you will provide a safe space for discussion of those things over which you disagree. Otherwise, you do nothing more than cause a deeper chasm between them and destroy any opportunity to come to a point of agreement on the more important things.