Say it Ain't So, Jay!
When I visited Twitter this morning, as I do every morning because I am weak and sad and hopelessly addicted to social media, I was surprised to see the name of Mr. Show funnyman Jay Johnston trending.
Johnston has an annoyingly common name, one I habitually confuse with former professional baseball player Jay Johnstone, Jay Johnson, an actor and ventriloquist best known for his role on the hit 1970s television comedy Soap and Joe Johnston, the Academy-Award winning director of The Rocketeer, Honey, I Shrunk the Kid and Captain America: The First Avenger.
When I saw what Johnston was trending for I dearly hoped that it was a mistake and the world had mixed up the veteran comedy performer for the similarly monikered baseball player, film director or ventriloquist.
Even if the Jay Johnston trending on Twitter was not, in fact, the retired professional athlete, filmmaker or Soap star I still hoped that Johnston was a victim of mistaken identity and that the gentleman the FBI was looking for in connection with his role in the January 6th insurrection was someone who merely looked suspiciously like Johnston but was in fact a welder from Pittsburgh or a gym teacher from Spokane or something.
It didn’t take long, however, for the discourse surrounding the FBI’s request for information about someone who looked exactly like a beloved comic performer to go from “Isn’t it hilarious that the FBI is looking for a traitor who looks uncannily like the man who made us all laugh with his masterful pratfalls in classic sketches like “The Story of Everest” to “OMG, Jay Johnston from Mr. Show really WAS one of the lunatics storming the capitol on a day of infamy that embarrassed our nation on a historic, global scale.”
I’m not sure why but seeing Johnston’s familiar, funny face scowling with rage in a photograph disseminated by law enforcement hit me on a visceral level. It made me sad. It felt like a punch in the gut.
On one level it’s not hard to understand why people like myself were bummed to find out that Johnston is a hardcore Trump cultist. Mr. Show was important to me. It was seminal. It remains a cherished memory, a highlight of college years years spent writing for The A.V Club, where Mr. Show was revered.
I expect country musicians and NASCAR superstars to be Trump supporters. It goes with the territory.
I would be shocked if Kid Rock and Ted Nugent weren’t huge Trump guys. With comedy it’s different. It hit me so much closer to home.
It’s not like when it was revealed that alternative musician Ariel Pink was one of the folks at the Capitol on January 6th. I have only a vague sense of who Pink even is. Johnston, however, is someone whose work has meant a great deal to me over the years.
Johnston was an essential part of something that was, and continues to be, important to me. So it’s utterly jarring learning that he’s not just a Trump guy, but someone willing to storm the capitol on behalf of the twice-impeached ex-president’s massive ego and delusional conviction that he won a landslide victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Johnston’s strange emergence as a MAGA true believer can’t help but taint my love of Mr. Show a little.
On Mr. Show, Johnston wasn’t just funny; he was funny-looking, with a big chin and rubbery features. He looked like a human cartoon character, which is a very good thing for someone pursuing a career in comedy.
Now, when I look at Johnston’s face I see something very different. It took a couple of decades but Johnston’s life and career seem to have gone from a comedy to a tragedy, or at least a tragicomedy, although I’m having a hard time finding anything particularly amusing about the funnyman’s unexpected emergence as a Trump true believer.
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