Can you figure out who said this, or who it was said about? All I’ll tell you is that it was an off-the-cuff answer by a famous person to a question about another famous person. I’ll post the answer and context here tomorrow.
I think his success says much more about something in this culture than it does about him. I think he found a ready-made audience of young, white males who are frustrated and angry and confused and alienated. I don’t want to sound heavy-duty sociological here, but it’s true. They’re not comfortable with assertive women who are competent and capable. And they’re uncomfortable about immigrants. I think that has to do with the job market, the supposed threat of the job market. And they’re not comfortable with homosexuals because they’re not really sure of their own manhood at this point in their lives.
I always felt comics and satirists and humorists attacked the powerful, attacked the people who were messing with everyone, pulling the strings, and his targets are the underdogs. Now I don’t think he came out of the box saying, “I think I’ll attack all the underdogs,” but I think he found and gravitated toward an audience that agrees with that, that likes that.