Should we laugh or cry?

In the NY Times, Carina Chocano profiles Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who stars as Vice President Selina Meyer in HBO’s upcoming political comedy Veep:

“Veep,” by contrast, comes not to justify Caesar but to goose him. It captures our post-Reagan, post-Clinton, post-Bush, 24-hour tabloid news and Internet-haterade dystopia, and reflects our collective queasy ambivalence toward a political system that we fear simply reflects our own shallowness back at us. If “The West Wing” was a fantasy of hyper-competence, “Veep” is its opposite: a black-humor vision of politics at its bleakest, in which both sides have been co-opted by money and special interests and are reduced to posturing, subterfuge, grandstanding and photo ops.

She adds, drolly, "Naturally, it’s hilarious." Too bad Veep's portrait of politics today is all too real. And that's not hilarious at all.