This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
If you tuned into Saturday Night live the weekend after last fall's election, you may remember the sketch.
A group of friends or liberals are gathered around their tv as states begin to report voter tallies.
It doesn't go the way they expect.
Okay, all she has to do is come back and win Wisconsin, come back and win Michigan, come back and win Pennsylvania.
And some of the counties are supposed, the urban counties are.
They're so black people vote lay.
Making jokes about politics, politicians and voters is a tradition as old as America itself.
Cartoonists portrayed King George as a tyrant and a buffoon during the Revolutionary War.
More than a century ago, Mark Twain wrote that fleas can be taught nearly anything that a congressman can.
And in the 1960s, the Smothers brothers used their tv platform to criticize the Vietnam War, much to the chagrin of network censors.
And if you ever get a war without blood in your boy, I'll be the first to go.
But until then, Mister McNamara.
These days, of course, comedians have a new target, President Donald Trump.
Today we thought we'd talk with one of those comedians, the iranian American Maz Jobrani.
For him, the Trump administration ban on travelers from seven nations, including Iran, has hit close to home.
Mars is a liberal and has strong feelings about President Trump, feelings that are increasingly showing up in his stand up routine.
Listen, first of all, whether you like Trump or not, you gotta admit, when he first started running, everybody thought it was a joke.
Everybody was like, ha, ha, ha, ha.