Remembering Idiocracy and Silicon Valley Together

Some time ago I wrote about Mike Judge's film Idiocracy and HBO show Silicon Valley together, because while they had their differences the two seemed so complementary to one another. Where in Idiocracy Judge satirized the unintelligent, in Silicon Valley he satirized people who were supposed to be the extreme opposite. In ultra-conventional fashion--after all, were Judge not so we would likely never have heard of him--he identified unintelligence with the lower classes, and intelligence with the super-rich elite.

It also seemed to me safe to say that when, in the case of Idiocracy, he punched down, he did so very visibly, obviously and forcefully at the poor, while in Silicon Valley his punches up were limited to eccentric individuals, rather than to any group as such.

So does it generally go with comedy in America in our time, in which the right to punch down with impunity is hailed as the essence of the free speech, and never mind anything else.