Killer Mike isn’t ashamed to float ideas and schemes and watch them crash. It’s an ethos that pushes back against a polarised culture, where entrenched viewpoints are argued with feigned certainty, each side unwilling to admit even the slightest doubt. Trigger Warning takes a less specific approach: where Killer Mike is heading isn’t always clear, and often seems unknown even to him. Killer Mike always glorifies the individual and the power of local connections.
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, at its best, does similar. Netflix is about to start a second run of Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj, which is to some extent a weekly news-comedy show, but also likes to take a buzzing story and dig deep into a wider, timeless issue behind it. This gives him universal appeal, despite him rarely leaving Atlanta.Īmerican topical satire is better at taking this sort of step back than its UK equivalents, which are often too concerned with politicians’ personal foibles to notice the effects of their politics on the ground. His preoccupation is always what one person, or one small group of people, can do to effect change. He starts with roughly a black-nationalist perspective, but this soon widens out into solidarity with any marginalised group. He barely mentions specific US policies or even presidents. The obvious precursors for his stunts are Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore, but Killer Mike’s strength is that he glorifies the individual and the power of local connections. He comes up with a new scheme in every easily watchable, sub-30-minute episode, doing everything from trying to “buy black” for 72 hours – which culminates in him having to sleep on a park bench with a can of black beans as a pillow – to buying a farm and starting a self-governing microstate.