How to be a right-wing performance artist
You never knew where Andy Kauffman the character ended and Andy Kauffman the human being began. Whether he was wrestling women or reading The Great Gatsby aloud, onstage, until he had emptied a theatre of his own fans, the great performance artist always asked the question of whether it was merely an act or whether the antics reflected real instability. When Kauffman died of lung cancer at the age of 35, some people even wondered if he had faked his own death. Many comedians have aped Kauffman’s deranged realism but his true heirs are not comics. They are right-wing performance artists like Alex Jones, Jacob Wohl, and Laura Loomer. Are they Trump-loving, left-hating, conspiracy-theorists? Or smart businesspeople exploiting their audience? Are they mad?
