Funny Because It's True
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MONTAGE didn’t feel like it had staying power.” Many younger puzzle-solvers, on the other hand, Funny Because It’s True want their crosswords to reflect the mov- ies, music, and news they follow, and sites Showrunner David Mandel guides the final season of Veep— like American Values Club, a reincarnation of and finds himself politicized. The Onion’s now-defunct crossword feature, have cropped up to satisfy them. by s.i. rosenbaum That divergence hints at a larger tension in the crossword world, as a younger, more ethnically diverse indie scene emerges. “The or david mandel ’92, filming the -fi outrageous or scandalous within the show— norm” in many crosswords, Pasco says, “is nal season of HBO’s political comedy well, either they seem mild now, or they’ve lots of Lord of the Rings clues, lots of baseball Veep was a race against reality. For sev- come to pass,” Mandel said recently on the clues, and lots of things that [older white F en seasons—the last four with Man- phone from California. “We did an entire men] would be expected to know. It’s really del at the helm as showrunner—Veep had [story line] about the president acciden- homogeneous.” He’s especially excited about made its name as a jet-black satire, sending tally tweeting something and blaming the organizations like The Inkubator, which pub- up the foibles of American government by Chinese” in a previous season, he added, “and lishes bimonthly crossword puzzles created painting its characters as just slightly more now it seems we had a time machine.” by women. In more traditional crosswords, craven and corrupt, racist and ruthless, than If anyone could handle the increasing he says, “there are always these references to real-life Beltway politicians. absurdity in American politics, though, it’s old opera stars or golf, and those are somehow Then in 2016, Donald Trump became pres- probably Mandel: he’d honed his satirical okay, but if you include one reference to a rap- ident-elect, and, Mandel says, “All the rules edge as a writer for Saturday Night Live, Sein- per, everyone’s all up in arms.” He intends to changed.” Suddenly, he and the show’s writ- feld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he was continue to raise consciousness about differ- ers had to worry about accidentally predict- also a director and an executive producer. ent parts of culture through his own puzzles. ing—or being one-upped by—the actions of And his background in merging politics and “When you clue the same words in the same a real-world White House that made their humor runs deep. As an undergraduate, he ways, it kind of reinforces what parts of cul- fictional version look tame. balanced a course load as a government con- ture are worth knowing about.” “If you look back at Veep, things that seem centrator with a workload at the Lampoon. Alan Brinkley A Life in History DAVID GREENBERG, MOSHIK TEMKIN, and MASON B. WILLIAMS, eds. “A marvelous and moving tribute to a historian who changed our understanding of political history and of the twentieth century. The book is testimony to the way he touched so many minds and hearts.” —Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard University COLUMBIA U NIVERSITY P RESS CUP.COLUMBIA.EDU Harvard Magazine 65 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE Since 2016, says showrunner David Mandel, shown here with Veep stars Julia Louis- Dreyfus and Tony Hale (opposite), it has become increasingly difficult for the show to outrun reality. ing political satire at Saturday Night Live. Though he says he wasn’t “the best govern- ment major,” he brought with him the fasci- nation with politics and history that had led him to choose that field of study. Working on Veep was a return to these roots, making Mandel a perfect fit to take over the reins from creator Armando Iannucci. But a show like Veep is also technically sci- ence fiction—likeThe Handmaid’s Tale or The Man in the High Castle, it takes place on some alternate timeline, where political history has unfolded differently than in the real world. Veep’s universe never had a Presi- JUSTIN M LUBIN/HBO dent Barack Obama (or a President Trump). With fellow Winthrop House residents Jeff reer in politics; see “Al Franken: You Can Here too, though, Mandel is in his ele- Schaffer ’91 and Alec Berg ’91, he parlayed his Call Me Senator,” March-April 2012. page 31) ment: a lifelong science-fiction and comic Lampoon work into a summer job writing for had offered him a made-to-order job: cover- book fan, he keeps a separate apartment at Comedy Central, where he met Al Franken ing the presidential election with Comedy home in Los Angeles just for his nerd memo- ’73—and by graduation day, Franken (who Central’s InDecision ’92. rabilia (his collection includes original art- would, of course, go on to have his own ca- From there, Mandel found himself writ- work by comics greats such as Steve Dit- Amrith (Harvard Portrait, Septem- ist), “the most powerful…justice of her ber-October 2017, page 19), a rush time.” Her nomination, by Ronald Reagan Off the Shelf to dam the Himalayas and slake ur- in 1981, and service (through 2006), seem Recent books with Harvard connections ban thirsts portends environmental of an era and a spirit a full millennium, and tragedy and conflict. not just a few decades, ago. The City-State of Boston: The Rise A Lot of People Are Saying: The Shape of a Life, by Shing-Tung Yau, and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630- The New Conspiracism and the As- Graustein professor of mathematics and 1865, by Mark Peterson ’83, Ph.D. ’93 sault on Democracy, by Russel Muir- professor of physics, with Steve Nadis (Princeton, $39.95). An immense, fresh his- head and Nancy L. Rosenblum (Princeton, (Yale, $28). A personal memoir by the ac- tory of the “city upon a hill” conceives of the $26.95). What happens to democratic claimed geometer, winner of the Fields place as an independent city-state that was discourse when conspiracy theories are Medal and National Medal of Science, Cra- absorbed into the new country that arose unanchored to theory or the presentation foord Prize, etc. Though the result is most- around it. Boston’s current moment—at of alleged fact: when they become mere ly accessible, the subtitle (“One mathema- once privileged and peculiar—suggests the speech acts, boldly amplified? The result is tician’s search for the universe’s hidden value of considering its distinctive past in disorienting and dangerous, warn Muir- geometry”) is fair warning of the underly- light of powerful, imaginative scholarship, in head, now at Dartmouth, and Rosenblum, ing, mind-worrying problems in string the deft hands of the author, now at Yale. whose last work before she assumed re- theory, black holes, and other challenges. search-professor status at Harvard fea- Unruly Waters, by Sunil Amrith, Mehra tured in “The Democracy of Everyday Life” Permanent Revolution: The Refor- Family professor of South Asian studies (September-October 2016, page 50). mation and the Illiberal Roots of Lib- (Basic, $35). Another fresh history, this eralism, by James Simpson, Loker profes- one on a continental scale, offers possibly First: An Intimate Portrait of the sor of English (Harvard, $35). A scholar of grave warnings for the present. The sub- First Woman Supreme Court Jus- late medieval and early modern European title, “How rains, rivers, coasts, and seas tice, by Evan Thomas ’73 (Random House, literature teases out how the evangelical have shaped Asia’s history,” may remind $30). The indefatigable author presents English Reformation (intolerant, stridently readers of earlier hydrological approaches another in a series of fluidly written, lead- literal, immersed in predestination) to understanding the governance of the erly biographies—this time, of Sandra Day touched off a culture of permanent revolu- most populous part of Earth. Now, says O’Connor (2009 Radcliffe Institute medal- tion and came to underlie liberalism (free 66 March - April 2019 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE A show like Veep is technically science fiction—it takes place on some alternate timeline…. ko and Gil Kane, as well as Storm Trooper sion to end the show,” Mandel costumes from the original Star Wars). His explained, “is just this new re- most famous episode on Seinfeld drew on ality.” At times, he said, it felt as his innate nerdiness, as Jerry et al. run into if they were competing against “Bizarro” versions of themselves—their in- a different set of writers work- verse counterparts. (In old Superman comics, ing on a show called Trump. And Bizarro World was a cube-shaped planet even though Veep had always where everything is backwards and Super- been strictly nonpartisan, Man- man is evil.) del found himself becoming less Veep’s characters are meant to be a dark and less so in life. “I’ve always mirror: Bizarro counterparts to reality. View- been a political person,” he said. HAYES/HBO COLLEEN ers who followed the exploits of fictional “But Trump has made me more political and of his concentration. “I wish we were in an career-politician Selina Meyer, played with more activist…all of a sudden I’m donating alternate timeline,” he said. “I wish the rea- profane gusto by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, could to attorney-general campaigns in states I’ve son for Trump in the White House could be depend on her to be just a little less compe- never been to.” blamed on some errant time traveler who tent and a little more loathsome than her re- Now that Veep has shot its last episode— stepped on the wrong butterfly.