It’s A Process I Call Thinking Without Speaking: The Latest Daily Show Cultural Criticism Win 

The Daily Show did a sketch about a fictional advisor to VP Kamala Harris’ speech writing and, even if you ignore the political undertones of all this, it’s amazing (and important!).  

There’s a thing in music, where you can learn to play the notes someone plays, but it still won’t sound right. In order to inhabit the feel of an atist, you have to get to the core of whatever is transcending the literal notes. It’s really hard to do too - both to imitate and get to your own voice. 

And it’s way bigger than music. Sketch comedy and impersonations have been doing this at mixed levels of success for years too. There are good and bad versions. Originals and knockoffs abound. Which, like music though, come down to feel. 

Beyond direct impersonations, once in a while, we see someone transcend the feel of a vibe. 

Too many words there. I’ll try again. 

You know how a funk band can be funky without being James Brown funky but without not being bad? 

This is what I’m trying to say. 

You can have the feel of a scene without the original artifact being present. You can inhabit the feel. You can re-purpose the feel with a fresh voice. 

This is the core of a lot of marketing and brand building. Feel and vibe repurposing. It’s also the way to know something is off - just look for when the feel or vibe isn’t right and it’s usually because of a shoddy performance or poor repurposing attempt. 

It’s a bad copy. 

There have been great nonsense speakers for a long time. These are the nonsense speakers who make it sound like they’re saying something but totally say nothing. You know who I mean even if you can’t name one. 

Yet somehow, especially with online video growing (all short-form video in particular, but longer form too), there seems to be more and more of it lately.  

Somebody must be giving them advice. Somebody must be advising how they can imitate. Somebody must also be either unaware of how dumb they sound or, unfortunately, aware of how dumb the listeners are.  

Somebody must have noticed how fun it would be to create a character like Dahlia Rose Hibiscus with the title of Holistic Thought Adviser to VP Harris. 

Enter The Daily Show (and Desi Lydic, bravo). They got the calm tone, the therapy-speak, and the buzzword salad, just perfectly. They found the core threads, how they were woven, and are showing us how to play with them. For amusement. “It’s a process I call thinking without speaking” is gold and I’ll be reusing it. 

But if they can figure it out for amusement, anybody else can figure it out for non-comedic purposes too. 

Want to do the opposite version of buzzword salad? Or your own tonally differentiated variant? Because that’s easy too. 

Be fired up in tone, use battle-speak, and make your own buzzword salad for news clips. 

Laugh at this, but learn something. 

And yes, I’m sure it’s exhausting to be in a constant, press-answering role. I’m also sure the abundance of content availability makes finding these instances almost too easy. But I’m also sure the whole charade is such a copy of a copy of itself at this point that we’d better learn how to laugh at it now before it gets worse. 

Consider this is a public service announcement to pay attention to feel. In the same way The Daily Show can make this funny, somebody else can and will make it unfunny. 

I’m OK with it all being a simulation, I’m just a little worried when it all becomes too much of a cartoon.