Indie Spotlight: “Toni Lahren” Spoofs Right-Wing Punditry, One Rant At A Time

We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now. Read previous installments here.

The over-the-top nature of the Trump administration has inspired plenty of parodies, few of which are as inspired as Toni Lahren. Toni, the creation of actress and writer Maggie Mae Fish, is a well-pitched satirical take on right-wing pundit Tomi Lahren.

In her sharp-tongued videos, Tomi (the target, with an “m”) lays into what she sees as as soft-willed and hypocritical nature of the American left. Toni (the parody, with an “n”) takes that approach to absurd levels by use extreme versions of Tomi’s arguments to poke fun at her. It’s essentially the same idea that Stephen Colbert used to turn The Colbert Report into an enduring satire of conservative talk media.

Toni’s biggest fans, of course, will be those whose views are opposed to Tomi’s, but no matter your political persuasion, it is easy to appreciate the sublime accuracy of Fish’s impression. Her parody pundit manages to feature all of the fire and directness of her target, while still offering a clever rebuttal to Tomi’s opinions. Five Toni videos are currently available on her official YouTube channel.

OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT 

• The Adventures of Dolores Briggam. A woman sends videos home to Tennessee to talk about her life in L.A.
• Wes Got Range. Food, travel, and sports blend together in this guest-filled show set in Charlotte.
• 202. The roommates of apartment 202 band together face their hectic lives in this sitcom.

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