Late night performances have been suspended amid the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike. But a Jimmy Kimmel Live! The author is still making hysterical, Emmy-worthy impersonations on his Twitter account, and angering Republicans spreading conspiracies in the process.
“I can’t write jokes for work,” comedian Blaire Erskine tells The Daily Beast. “When I’m not scouting, I have to do something to entertain myself.”
On May 24, Erskine shared a post. funny impression Kandiss Taylor, Georgia’s GOP regional president and failed gubernatorial candidate, debunks her widely ridiculed comments about our planet during a debate with two flat-earthists on her podcast recently.
Erskine says in the video: “People are like, ‘If the Earth is flat, what about day and night?’ “I don’t know. Let me think about it. Maybe it’s because the Earth is double sided and God turns us over when it’s time to go to bed and flips us when it’s time to wake up.”
Taylor’s real comments on Jesus, Guns and Babies – yes, that’s the real name of her podcast – weren’t that far off. For the most part, the head of the GOP is concerned that we are all being brainwashed into believing the Earth is round through world propaganda.
“All spheres, everywhere,” Taylor said in the episode. “I turn on the TV, there are globes in the background. There are spheres everywhere. You see them all the time, that’s constant. My kids will be like ‘Mother, globe, globe, globe, globe’. They are everywhere.”
Erskine’s impression of Taylor was apparently so good—or maybe conservatives are so absurd these days—BuzzFeed included her on their “14 People Who Failed Too Much This Week” and apparently confused her with the politician herself.
“I think it was due to a combination of several ‘sources’ that confused me with it,” explains Erskine. “But thanks anyway, Buzzfeed. Don’t replace your authors with AI.”
To be fair, one of Erskine’s viral political parodies during the pandemic wasn’t the first time he’d left the internet scratching his head. The previous video he recorded pretending to be Ted Cruz’s communications director stunned during the infamous Cancun scandal in 2021 Subrogation star J. Smith Cameron. Unfortunately, her posting of Taylor reached the GOP official’s desk and caused one of the most galaxy-brain conversations to circulate on Twitter lately.
Taylor said, “I never said the world was flat. He replied with a 12-minute video. “I never said I was a flat earther. I never said the spheres were fake. What I said was that NASA takes billions of dollars every month from our taxpayers’ money and is funding something we’re not seeing any progress on – going to space, to the moon, to Mars. Progress. no.”
The entire answer is as erroneous and misleading as Taylor’s initial comments worrying about the prevalence of orbs. She refers to Erskine as a “radical liberal psychotic girl,” before distinguishing the two from followers who are confused by the size of her upper lip. “Red was a nice touch, but your lips aren’t for it,” she replied. She also made him a Saturday night live writer.
Erskine Released a clip from Taylor’s videoHe added, “thank you for making that clear,” jokingly saying he “learned a lot about myself”, including “having a full front upper lip” and “apparently working in snl.” @KandissTaylor”
When the Daily Beast reached out to Taylor for comment, she replied, “Blaire Erskine is a failed comedian and completely disconnected from the heart of America. The truth is that the media are ‘safe and effective’ vaccines, from ‘safe choices’ to men who can now have babies. He lied about EVERYTHING. Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, but we can’t suffocate and demonize people for their curiosity in their pursuit of political correctness.”
When asked if she believes the Earth is flat, Taylor replied, “I would love to visit space one day and see it for myself!”
Although Taylor has some followers in her mentions, Erskine said the politician isn’t worried about getting a ton of backlash from the online right-wing or frontier camp of flat-earthers.
“He got, like, 3.4 percent in the Republican primaries,” Erskine said. “I don’t think he has many followers. I’m taking his answer seriously though, especially the part where my accent is fake because I’m from Atlanta.
Like the best parodies, the 31-year-old Georgia native says she has a familiarity and underlying love for the archetype Taylor represents, given her Southern roots, even if she doesn’t agree with her misinformed ideologies.
“I love brave Southern women,” she said. “They raised me. Fortunately, it wasn’t far-right bigots who thought the globes were a conspiracy who raised me. It all appealed to me when he first arrived on the scene, and then it was impossible not to parody the play ‘Jesus, Guns and Babies’.”
“He could have been an amazing comedy writer if it wasn’t for everything else about him,” the comedian adds.
Despite the absurdity of Taylor’s words, Erskine doesn’t want her parody to give social media a false impression of her hometown or provoke elitist ideas about Southern people. He makes comments that generalize Georgia to some of his elected officials or make fun of Taylor’s “punk” accent. [her] outside.”
“I love Georgia and I know Kandiss Taylor doesn’t represent our state as a whole,” she said. “Georgia has her own problems – Marjorie Taylor Greenes, so to speak. But it’s also full of the smartest and most talented people I know.”
Still, it’s funny. And Taylor provided Erskine and the rest of the world with a lot of material they could benefit from. And this latest discussion wasn’t even Erskine’s first social media encounter with a GOP official.
During Taylor’s candidacy for governor in February 2022, comedy writer posted a video “All abortions will be illegal because this fetus could be a Jesus,” she mocks his proposal. Taylor he answered solemnly“Blaire Erskine is right, All abortion is murder and will be criminalized in Georgia. She is also right that America was founded through divine intervention, Jesus is with our movement and we will take Georgia back from the corrupt swamp and return it to the people.”
“I never thought I would satirize this woman a year later,” Erskine said. “But that’s what happens when he speaks out against the Big Globe when I’m in the middle of a writer’s strike.”
Additional reporting by Zachary Petrizzo.
Listen to Blaire Erskine for more. The Last Laugh podcast.