Idea | Stand-up Policymakers
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Most policy discussions are made so boring that they scare off valuable public engagement — e.g. engagement with people in whom’s interest the policies are made. Such discussions need America’s tradition of political satire and humor.
Humor is no joke. Back when I was on a data science team trying to find a way to replicate the retweetability of political tweets, I found that wit was one of the most significant predictors of retweetability. This posed a semantics analysis problem in the field of natural language processing, but that’s another story. The point: wit scales, engages people, and facilitates understanding…all a responsibility upon public servants. This goes for other sorts of humor as well.
Proposal: Somebody start a think tank which produces all policy products in standup or YouTube comedy format, and presents them to Congressfolk, federal agency leaders, and state and local level policy institutions…but most important, to people whom the policies affect.
Stand-up for the Public Good Samples:*
The Standup Economist
Adam Ruins Everything on the Electoral College
“The Untold Delights of Duluth”
An 1871 speech by the original stand-up Congressman, J. Proctor Knott, that killed the railroad ancestor to modern projects like the Highway to Nowhere. If only we now had a Congress with could laugh with, instead of laugh at, or more likely, cry about.
Let me know if you have more samples, or if you’re a talented policy person who has a sense of humor and wants to try this, I’d be excited to get a coffee and see if I can help.
*Don’t necessarily agree/disagree with any of the substance.
