---
title: How to Be “Foolish”
date: 2023-10-04T05:30:00-04:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/how-to-be-foolish"
section: Articles
---
# How to Be “Foolish”

*October 4, 2023* — by [Sala Levin ’10](/author/sala-levin-10)


> Alumna Sarah Cooper, Who Went Viral for Lip-Syncing to Trump, Releases Memoir

*2 NREH8 X 1920x1080 — Comedian Sarah Cooper '98 went mega-viral in 2020 for her TikTok videos lip syncing comments by Donald Trump. Her videos led to a Netflix special, "Sarah Cooper: Everything's Fine" (left) and appearances on late-night talk shows. Now, she's released a memoir, "Foolish: Tales of Assimilation, Determination, and Humiliation," that recounts how that year changed her personal and professional trajectories.*

GrubHub, Zoom and Moderna weren’t the only brands to skyrocket during the pandemic. Comedian and writer Sarah Cooper ’98 became a TikTok sensation with videos featuring her lip-syncing then-President Donald Trump’s most confusing, circuitous and clumsy musings on COVID-19. She mugged and pointed and sniffed while suggesting the virus “hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” or asserting that Trump had “tested positively toward negative.”

The clips, with titles like “How to Medical” and “How to Bathroom,” racked up tens of millions of views, scoring Cooper appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and a guest-hosting gig on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Soon, Cooper had a deal with Netflix, working with Maya Rudolph and Natasha Lyonne on the special “Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine,” that came out that October.

In her new memoir, “Foolish: Tales of Assimilation, Determination and Humiliation,” released Tuesday, Cooper recounts that frenetic year and the personal and professional upheaval it catalyzed. The cracks in her marriage, to a software designer she’d met when she worked as a designer at Google, began to show. “Jeff was worried I was treating him differently,” she writes in the memoir. “And the truth is, I had to. For eight years, he had been my No. 1 priority, but now I had legit other sh-t to do. And it was hard not to sound uppity when saying things like, ‘I can’t talk now, I have a Zoom rehearsal with Dame Helen Mirren.’”

Cooper also delves into her childhood, adolescent crushes, early career, fertility woes and much more in her fourth book. From New York City, she talked with *Maryland Today* about Brad Pitt, the negative voice in her head and the time she got locked in McKeldin Library.


*Sarah Cooper's book cover for "Foolish: Tales of Tales of Assimilation, Determination and Humiliation"*




**Topics:** [People](https://today.umd.edu/tags/people)


**Tags:** [Arts](https://today.umd.edu/topic/arts)


**Units:** [College of Behavioral and Social Sciences](https://today.umd.edu/topic/college-behavioral-and-social-sciences)