Money, Power, & A Comedy Outlet

Comedian Josh Johnson Making Sense of the Senseless

Jun 17, 2025

"One of the ways to reincarnate is to tell your story."—Spalding Gray

"The thing I try to get across to the writers - and I do a lot of writing, too - is that when I do stand-up, nothing I talk about is funny. Everything is really sad and tragic and then I make it funny." —Chris Rock

“Comedy gave me this outlet: there’s nothing that’s too bad or too dark to be talked about or shared with people as an experience.”—Josh Johnson

Summer Break offers many breaks, including, oddly, a pause from comedy in the classroom.

It becomes a time for me to catch a few edgy humorists, to see some pros in action.

Time to slowly reactivate my own amateur chops from my always eventful life.

Time to drop in on a Josh Johnson set.

The aspiring 35-year-old comedian (and writer for The Daily Show and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon) abundantly navigates the troubling waters of topical humor. Unlike many trending comics, he relentlessly dedicates his mischief to mining some relevant personal narratives. His informal persona, mostly light on the obscenities but heavy on the ironies, gradually weaves in funny and occasionally profound revelations — around yes, quite current events.

Topical humor remains a difficult art. Perhaps this has never been more true in an age where reality keeps offering countless absurdities too absurd for satire from much of this nation’s so-called leadership.

We all know humor is subjective, yet since 2016, the political joke platform often gets upstaged by the endlessly bumbling Main Event, whether Trump, Biden or the Farcical Fascist of the Week.

“The political joke platform often gets upstaged by the endlessly bumbling Main Event, whether Trump, Biden or the Farcical Fascist of the Week.”

The low-hanging fruit of reiteration around the latest insanity too often depends on underwhelming ridicule, with too many obvious asides to the choir. Most liberals are just not as funny as they used to be, especially in the mainstream.

Many will likely disagree with my take on the almost decade-long dreary TV stand-up, maintained by, say, Jimmy Fallon, Trevor Noah, John Oliver, Conan O’Brien and my Award for Most Ponderously Redundant, the once radical Stephen Colbert (despite his sky-high ratings).

I certainly do not have the time or motivation to wade through the endless clips of routines, yet whenever I stumble upon such popular late-night entertainers, the audience laugh button keeps feeling frozen on repetitive triteness.

Thankfully, there are many lesser-known live alternatives to give us all another reason to avoid late-night TV.

In other words, we can still make some humorous sense of the senseless.

Cue Josh Johnson.

Although one could note Donald Glover and Michael Che as an influence, along with a hint of a less confrontational Dave Chapelle, Johnson stakes out his own unusual territory, by first setting up any newsworthy commentary with an extended personal anecdote, seemingly unrelated and apolitical.

Enthusiastic audiences seem to patiently embrace these deaccelerated diary entries, trusting he’ll somehow eventually connect his own vignettes, often from his poor Louisiana childhood, with a climatic contemporary headline.

He usually does (although his one YouTube gig video about AI replacing teachers could have used a little more research on the disturbing financial and psychological costs behind such a growing malady in education).

In Detroit, the audience and I loved his slow takedown of the fractured shockwave between the wealthiest man in the world and the most powerful, after the funny set-up of an unforgettable elementary school playground fight between a lumbering bully named John and an anime nerd named Reeve (note the subtle use of the middles names of Trump and Musk).

Sample poignant moment: “If someone has a history of mistreating everyone, you should not assume they would make an exception for you.”

When one MAGA heckler shrieked at him about some supposed inaccuracy, he quickly won back the packed house by thanking the woman for paying her admission.

Johnson may still be unfashionable with the mainstream, for now (including his unassuming trademark gray hoodie and skinny jeans-look), but with so many sold out shows, the size of the performance venues keeps growing, as does his refusal to slow down touring dates.

Curiously, he keeps documenting one of his shows from each tour stop on his YouTube channel, often with over a million views within the week. I’ll let you decide if he’s worth a closer look by clicking on the first of his three sold-out Sunday shows below. . . .

. . . Or you could just wait until he inevitably returns later in the year, likely to a venue not far from your nervous apprehension with the current state of the nation.

Josh Johnson, Detroit, 6/8/2025