I Want to Discuss Public Health Policy with Comedian Bo Burnham
"Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids"
I am surprised that due to my own deficit in cultural knowledge I had never heard of comedian Bo Burnham until just last month. I’m not quite sure how I allowed that to happen, but somehow it happened.
Now that I have seen and heard his work, it is clear to me that Burnham is the most significant artist of the 21st Century to date. He represents some evolution of Andy Warhol, Mark Kostabi,1 George Carlin, Andy Kaufman and the entire experience of the Internet rolled up into one person, one artist.
Burnham was one of the very early YouTube “viral sensations” back in 2006 when he was just 16 years old. That led to years of success as an ironic sing-song comedian until he cracked open the second wave of his artistic evolution with the phenomenal song Art is Dead.
However it wasn’t until the creation of INSIDE that Burnham stepped into a whole new realm of relevance. INSIDE is a claustrophobic masterpiece written and released during the COVID lockdowns available on Netflix.
Despite the many powerful works of art that are within INSIDE, what captured my attention (for obvious reasons to those who know my activism) is a flippant comment Burnham makes in his song, Welcome to the Internet, where he says;
“Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids.”
…I think this is where my public health conversation with Burnham might begin.
Burnham’s “Obama” comment is a joke, or slight, aimed at conservatives who dislike the 44th President, as Burnham is extremely liberal in his politics. After hearing this line initially I thought, “Well it's just one line of the song” which is true. This one line certainly does not encompass what the song is actually about, nor is it a theme throughout Burnham’s wide body of work. And I certainly don’t need an artist to agree with me politically on everything (or anything) to enjoy their work or to respect them.
But this line is one of the most dramatic moments of the piece, where rapid video edits paired with the power of silence combine for what is an impactful apex in the song. It also comes at the end of a psychotic build up - that is also simultaneously a chaotic break down - that illustrates how insane the internet can be. Burnham says everything from “see a man beheaded” to “you should kill your mom” and worse before this line about Obama, immigration, and vaccination.
That doesn’t feel like an accident.
Welcome to the Internet has over 153 million views on YouTube.