Comedy video series ‘Congressional Hits and Misses’ compiles Congress’s funniest moments of the week

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GovTrack Insider
Published in
6 min readMar 4, 2021

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Thomas McKinless, editor of Roll Call’s video series Congressional Hits and Misses

How do you create political comedy about Congress during a week when domestic insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol Building and five people died?

“That installment was very hard to put together, as you can imagine,” says Thomas McKinless, senior multimedia reporter for the D.C. area political newspaper and website Roll Call, speaking about his weekly Friday video amassing Congress’s funniest moments.

“That Thursday night, I was working really late. I ended up making two different versions of the video, one which included references to the attack, another which had every reference to that tragedy removed,” he tells. “I showed both to my boss, but she said the one with no references felt a little too light. We’re ignoring our responsibility to summarize the week on Capitol Hill as it happened.”

That week’s video, titled “A week like no other,” struck a Get Out or Parasite style balance between comedy and horror.

Most of the running time remained devoted to lighthearted moments. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) drummed a rhythmic beat on the table with his gavel while chairing a hearing. Newly-elected Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY15) looked at his new member packet and wryly observed, “Even though I’m single, I have a pin for my spouse. To my future spouse, there is a pin waiting for you.” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC1) tried and failed to open her congressional office door. Daniel, the four-year-old son of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), adamantly refused to look into the camera while taking a family picture in the Senate chamber.

Then, over the final 30 or so seconds, violent footage of the Capitol attack played. Between windows getting smashed and people getting hit, a visceral sense of the mayhem was conveyed. All the while, though, the light and airy orchestral song Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker played in the background, just as it had during the earlier comedic portions of the video. That musical continuity subconsciously carried a message: that this all happened during the same week.

Congressional Hits and Misses publishes Friday afternoons on both RollCall.com and their YouTube playlist here. Its YouTube view count usually numbers between about 10,000 and 25,000 views — although the installment from President Joe Biden’s inauguration week has topped 150,000 in only a few weeks. Sure, that’s less than the millions of viewers who will tune into the political jokes for the biggest late night comedians’ monologues. But among a certain segment of politicos, including this reporter, the videos have acquired “must watch” status. Why?

Because much of the most popular political humor only lampoons the most famous politicians, namely the supposed presidential contenders, and deals little to none with the process of actually legislating or crafting policy. “Bernie Sanders is old.” “Donald Trump has crazy hair.” With the possible exception of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, where else are you going to see comedy about a relatively anonymous Congress member’s speech during a House Agriculture Committee hearing?

“I do try hard to make fun of both parties. I get emails from staffers of both parties saying they love it, or recommending videos from committee hearings to include,” McKinless says. “I saw a tweet recently which made me very happy. A staffer tweeted the most recent video and said, ‘Ah, the weekly tradition of watching this video praying you don’t see your boss.’”

Sure enough, that particular staffer’s boss, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA3), did not happen to be included in that week’s video. Some of the Congress members featured in the February 12 installment, whose staffers surely were embarrassed, included:

  • Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ9), whose phone went off in the middle of his speech on the House floor, with a ringtone of the 1982 rock song Bad to the Bone by George Thorogood and the Destroyers.
  • Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN6), who accidentally appeared upside down as a disembodied head while speaking via webcam in committee. A fellow Congress member said, “You’re upside down, Tom,” to which he replied, “I don’t know how to fix that.”
  • Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT2), who fell asleep during a committee hearing.
  • Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-MN7), who froze onscreen as she gave a committee speech via webcam about how millions of Americans still lack access to broadband internet — to which Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO4) quipped, “She’s making her point.”

And that was just during the most recent video. Other moments during 2021’s installments so far this year have included:

  • Gun rights supporting Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-NM2), who referred to a constitutional process by which a president can be removed by saying, “I cannot support the Second Amendment. I mean, excuse me, the 25th Amendment.”
  • Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) mispronouncing “incited an insurrection” as “incited an erection.”
  • Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) struggling for a long time to take her mask off while stepping to the microphone at a press conference, then sheepishly saying, “It’s not easy to get out of those.”
  • Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) saying, “I ask that a quorum call be vitiated,” before ad libbing, “…and now you’re gonna have to look up the word vitiated.”

True, some of those moments are silly. But some of them also legitimately compel the viewer to look up what the 25th Amendment to the Constitution says, or how many Americans actually lack access to broadband internet, or what the word vitiated actually means. (In that particular context, it essentially means ended.)

The best humor often combines intelligent and goofy. You hook viewers in with the lowbrow, then pull a “bait and switch” with the highbrow. The Simpsons, named by many as the greatest television comedy of all time, once featured an entire sequence where the character Sideshow Bob continually steps on a rake which smacks him in the face… but the show also features jokes that literally only scientists would understand.

Indeed, McKinless cites The Simpsons as one of his premiere comedic influences. “I always used to watch that on Fox 5 in D.C. from 6 to 6:30, and 6:30 to 7,” the Arlington-raised McKinless says. “That’s a language I speak naturally.” He includes brief cutaways to lines from the show so frequently that, after cutting away to a Tom Hanks cameo line from The Simpsons Movie during a recent installment, his boss remarked, “This is the most relevant Simpsons quote you’ve ever included.”

Such pop culture cutaways are a staple of the video series. For example, another recent installment featured Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH4) lamenting the modern cancel culture perpetuated by the left: “You engage in wrongthink? You engage in wrongspeak? You’re going into Thunderdome.” The video then cut to Tina Turner’s character Aunty Entity from the 1985 Mad Max movie declaring at the top of her lungs, “Welcome to another edition of Thunderdome!”

Asked for his favorite moment he’s ever included in a video, McKinless cites the ending of this March 2019 installment.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA12) delivered a speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of cable television public affairs network C-SPAN. “It has enhanced our discourse,” Pelosi said, “and in doing so, enriched our democracy.” McKinless then cut to footage of a moment which actually appeared on C-SPAN that very same week: somebody sitting in the public seating of Interior Secretary nominee David Bernhardt’s confirmation hearing while dressed as a swamp monster from Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Is that absurd? Yes… but also no.

The protester was there to draw attention to Bernhardt’s arguable membership in “the swamp,” a nickname for the D.C.-based revolving door of lobbyists and policy makers. For any viewers curious enough to google why there was a swamp monster at Bernhardt’s confirmation hearing — and surely at least a few viewers were — they would find legitimate journalism articles about Bernhardt’s policy decisions at the Interior Department, many of which seemed custom designed to financially benefit his former (and likely future) clients as a lobbyist. The costume was in the finest tradition of satire.

“These,” Thomas Paine wrote in 1776, “are the times that try men’s souls.” Only a few years in American history have truly matched that dire description. 2020 and 2021 have been two of them. These are, indeed, the times that try our souls. During times like these, Congressional Hits and Misses lets us laugh a little bit… and maybe learn a little something, too. Not too much. But maybe just enough.

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This article was written by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin.

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