February 2022
Comedy doesn’t have a Human Resources department, so leave it to Piffany to dole out honors and/or discipline accordingly. Piffany’s Employee of the Month for February 2022 is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine. Congrats Mr. President!
We’ve been thrust into an even braver new world, and it’s about time we here at Piffany recognized the people doing the most for the most people this month, regardless of their comedy credentials. Who better to mark this moment, than the man who went from playing a president in a TV sitcom to standing up for his countrymen as the embattled real-life president under siege from an invading Russia.
At the beginning of February 2022, perhaps you only knew that Ukraine had elected a comedian as president but not much more than that.
If you followed politics, then you probably knew that man was at the center of the first of two impeachment trials against then-President Donald J. Trump, and most likely the fact that Trump wanted Zelenskyy to do him a favor and investigate Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for anti-tank missiles from the U.S., because who knew in July 2019 when that might come in handy for the Ukrainian army?!
Zelenskyy was 41 when he became Ukraine’s president in May 2019.
Two months after taking office, Zelenskyy found himself stuck on the phone, trying to win over a clown who all clowns would be offended to be compared to (Trump’s really more of an internet troll, and in real-life, the Heckler In Chief), hoping to ward off a cartoonish villain next door whose villainous is sadly and horribly all too real (as Vladimir Putin was killing and imprisoning his political rivals long before he decided to invade and kill Ukrainians). And Zelenskyy is the comedian?!?
For the first 40 years of his life, sure, Zelenskyy made his name and fame through making people laugh. Did you know Ukraine had a “Major League” comedy competition league? At 17, he joined his local team, eventually won the league in 1997, and he and his troupe starting making TV shows in 2003. Zelenskyy began starring in movies, too. Most of his early work was spoken in Russian, and before he got involved in politics, he was actively protesting a Ukrainian ban on Russian artists. But of course, it’s the 2015 TV series Servant of the People that changed everything for him and his country.
Zelenskyy starred as a high-school teacher whose viral video rant against government corruption somehow propelled him to the Ukrainian presidency. A political party named for the show sprouted in 2018 from the show’s production company, and a year later, he found himself winning a plurality in the first-round election for president and a vast majority in the second-round runoff, defeating the incumbent, President Petro Poroshenko.
Here’s a scene from Servant of the People that’s both funny ha-ha and also funny how our world is a dumpster fire of an actual satire sometimes.
Somehow, light years before that, but only news to us in America this week, we learned that Zelenskyy went on Urkaine’s Dancing with the Stars in 2006, and obviously, he won that, too.
But wait. He also voiced Paddington, too? Paddington 2, too??
Those are all amazing, not just then, but also now in retrospect.
Now let’s look at the videos he filmed and shared on social media this month…
He’s embodying the definitions of cool, calm, collected, rising to the occasion in ways most Americans could not imagine any of our comedians doing today. These videos not only convey confidence and leadership, but also quite literally and visually show him as a man on the street, a man of the people.
While so many of us are out here in our own heads wishing to become “influencers,” here’s a comedian, a TV/movie star, meeting the moment.
You don’t have to develop a crush on him. And please, don’t. Instead, take his cue to level up in your own community, see how you can best serve your neighbors. Better to do so now if where you live is relatively peaceful, before it all turns to the shit of war.
Past Piffany Employees of the Month have included: W. Kamau Bell (January 2022), Nicole Byer (December 2021), Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin (November 2021), James Austin Johnson (October 2021), Phoebe Robinson (September 2021), Ms. Pat (August 2021), and Kevin Hart (July 2021).
Please let me know who you think should be considered for honors in January come the end of this month!
From The Comic's Comic 
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