"A Horse Loose in a Hospital" - finding humor amid the chaos

Revisiting the John Mulaney joke that's STILL funny because it's STILL true

After the first six weeks of this Administration, I stumbled upon this clip from John Mulaney’s 2018 stand-up special, and was reminded just how true (and now evergreen) this joke remains.

What are some of the best jokes you’ve heard that capture the anxieties we feel during this chapter in America’s history?

Excerpted from John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City (2018)

Now I don’t know if you’ve been following the news.

But I’ve been keeping my ears open, and it seems like everyone everywhere is super mad about everything — all the time.

I try to stay a little optimistic, even though I will admit things are getting pretty sticky.

Here’s how I try to look at it — this is just me:

This guy being the president — it’s like there’s a horse… loose in a hospital. It’s like there’s a horse, loose in a hospital.

I think eventually everything’s gonna be ok. But I have no idea what’s gonna happen next. And neither do any of you, and neither do your parents. Because there’s a horse loose in the hospital.

It’s never happened before. No one knows what the horse is going to do next, least of all the horse. He’s never been a in a hospital before. He’s just as confused as you are.

There’s no experts. They try to find experts on the news, they’re like “we’re joined now by a man who once saw a bird in the airport.”

It’s like, “get out of here with that shit! We’ve all seen a bird in the airport, this is a horse loose in a hospital.”

When the horse is loose in the hospital, you’ve got to stay updated. So all day you walk around [scrolling your phone] going “What’d the horse do? What’d the horse do?”

The updates — they’re not always bad. Sometimes they’re just odd.

“The horse used the elevator.” I didn’t know he knew how to do that.

The creepiest days are when you don’t hear from the horse at all. You’re down in the operating room, like “hey, has anyone heard [hooves clopping]?”

Those are the quiet days when people are like, “it looks like the horse has finally calmed down.” And then 10 seconds later the horse is like “I’m going to run toward the baby incubators and smash them with my hooves. I’ve got nice hooves and a long tail. I’m a horse.”

And it’s like “UGH, that’s what I thought you’d say, you dumb fucking horse.”

And then you go to brunch with people, and they’re like “there shouldn’t be a horse in the hospital.”

And it’s like, “we’re well past that!”

And then other people are like, “well, if there’s gonna be a horse in the hospital, I’m going to say the N-word on TV.“

And it’s like, “those don’t match up at all.”

And then for a second, it seems like maybe we could survive the horse. And then, 5,000 miles away, a hippo was like, “I have a nuclear bomb. I’m gonna blow up the hospital!”

And before we could say anything, the horse was like, “if you even fucking look at the hospital, I will stomp you to death with my hooves — I dare you to do it! I want you to do it. I want you to do it so I can stomp you with my hooves — I’m so fucking crazy.”

And the hippo’s like, “you think you’re fucking crazy? I’m a fucking hippopotamus, I live in a fucking lake of mud. I’m fucking crazy!”

And all of us are like [head turning back and forth between the horse and hippo] “ok, ok, ok, ok, ok, ok,” — like poor Andy Cohen at those goddamn reunions. “Ok, ok, ok, ok...”

And then for a second, we were like, “maybe the horse catcher will catch the horse.”

And then the horse is like, “I have fired the horse catcher.”

He can do that? That shouldn’t be allowed, no matter who the horse is! I don’t remember that in “Hamilton”.

What are some of the best jokes you’ve heard that capture the anxieties we feel during this chapter in America’s history?