On “The Opposition,” Klepper channels Alex Jones, updating political satire for our confusing moment.
Klepper has never been coy about his primary inspiration: Alex Jones, the founder and Cassandra-in-chief of the alternative-media network InfoWars.
.. And yet, if we’re being honest, his delivery is among the best in the business. His voice is a mellifluous yawp, at once abrasive and mesmerizing, with the dynamic range of a slain-in-the-Spirit preacher.
.. Klepper doesn’t have Jones’s pipes, but his vocal performance strikes an analogous tone—unnecessarily loud and full of unearned bravado.
.. Jones has advertisers, but most of his revenue comes from his brand of dietary supplements, such as Anthroplex and Survival Shield X-2, which he hawks relentlessly.
.. “If you see me, in an interview or a deposition, say that I’m playing a character, that’s because in that moment I’m simply playing a character who, to throw them off the scent, would say that he’s playing a character.”
.. For two decades, Jones’s shtick played equally well on the far left and the far right. Then Trump came along, and Jones’s brand shifted: less antiauthoritarianism, more Americana; less “Resist the police state,” more “Blue lives matter.” Jones’s problem is not that his mind is closed. If anything, his mind is far too open.
.. what’s a satirist to do? The answer is as simple as Strunk and White: be specific.
.. he caught Fox News anchors directing their viewers toward unvetted theories on Facebook; he played several boldly self-contradictory clips from InfoWars’ post-Vegas pontification. The shooter had connections to Islam; the shooter had connections to Antifa; there were multiple shooters