Believe it or not, I hadn’t seen Larry David’s Bernie Sanders impersonation until this morning. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested. I didn’t need to. Larry David has been doing a proto-Bernie Sanders impersonation for the last twenty years. I’ve seen it a million times.
And now having seen this ‘Bern Your Enthusiasm’ video all my assumptions and hopes and fears are confirmed.
Much like Tina Fey’s legendary Sarah Palin impersonation, Larry David’s Sanders is not so much an impersonation as a sort of shamanic soul-theft. Like Fey, having seen David’s Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders himself will now only be a pretty much imitation of the Larry David version. We’ll watch Bernie Sanders and be unable not to judge how well he’s living up to “Bernie Sanders.” Like I said, soul-theft.
