Watching Ansari’s impersonation on The Tonight Show, it’s easy to forget that before the Louisiana governor became a good ol’ Southern boy and habitual GOP base-panderer he was known as a policy wonk. In that respect he was a model of the high-achieving American of South Asian immigrant stock, but instead of putting his brains and hard work to use as a doctor or engineer he somehow became a politician. Indian-Americans loved Jindal, but then he began his campaign against “hyphenated Americans,” which was an attempt to appeal to his party’s racial anxieties while assuring his new confreres that he was one of them. Now Jindal is seen by Indian-Americans as something of a traitor. Ansari’s sad clown take on Jindal—“Well, thank you, Jimmy, but I’m actually very depressed!”—makes me think that Jindal, caught between his ambitions and his identity, is nodding along somewhere.