Žižek on American late night comedians

In fifteenth-century Russia, when it was occupied by Mongols, a farmer and his wife walk along a dusty country road. A Mongol warrior on horseback stops at their side and tells the farmer that he will now rape his wife. He then adds: ‚But, since there is a lot of dust on the ground, you should hold my testicles while I’m raping your wife, so that they will not get dirty!‘ After the Mongol finishes his job and rides away, the farmer starts to laugh and jump with joy. The surprised wife asks him: ‚How can you be jumping with joy when I was just brutally raped in your presence?‘ The farmer answers: ‚But I got him! His balls are full of dust!‘ This sad joke tells of the predicament of dissidents: they think they are dealing serious blows to the party nomenklatura, but all they are doing is getting a little bit of dust on the nomenklatura’s testicles, while the nomenklatura continue raping the people. And can we not say exactly the same about Jon Stewart and co. making fun of Trump — do they not just dust his balls, or perhaps in the best of cases scratch them?

—Slavoj Žižek, The Courage of Hopelessness, (London: Penguin, 2018), 265.