Trump, Comedian-In-Chief
So much of the outrage about Trump stems from his rejection of prettified language — he speaks and has always spoken in a crude, casual fashion, augmented with jokey colloquialisms and bizarre mannerisms. To this he adds a large dollop of distinct humor, which the elite media has a very difficult time processing. On the one hand, they want to depict him as a Historic Evil, Possibly As Bad As Hitler, but on the other hand, they want to treat him as a mildly comical celebrity-pundit figure. There’s… a disconnect. The latter aspect of Trump is why he got so much free media coverage during the GOP primary campaign, much to the consternation of has-beens like Marco Rubio. His style of communicating was simply more compelling than his rivals (especially Rubio, a total overrated bore) — a 30 minute uninterrupted Trump interview was an event that ordinary voters actually sought out because they found it uniquely interesting. The type of person who’d eagerly seek out a 30 minute Rubio interview probably has a cousin and two close friends on the boards of Defense Contractors and checks his annuity fund several times a week.
So when you’ve got to juggle these contradictory depictions of Trump, inevitably it’ll lead to bad analysis. Hence the phenomenon of Very Serious Pundits reacting sternly and harshly every time Trump cracks a joke. Most voters perceive the thing in question to be a joke, as do 99% of Trump supporters, but then they’re subjected to scolding pundits gravely intoning that everybody needs to be Highly Offended and feel bad about themselves if they chuckled.
The latest perfect example is Trump’s ridiculous New Year’s Eve tweet:
OK, I’m sorry, but that’s just funny. Now, of course, funny does not automatically equal “Good.” You can be a bad person and still manage to elicit laughter. You can even convey an evil idea in funny terms. Simply acknowledging the humorous effect of a joke, statement, or tweet should not necessarily be understood as somehow approving of the joke, statement, or tweet. And yet, to simply admit that one finds this tweet funny would earn one an avalanche of condemnation on Twitter: “How dare you laugh at this menace! This is Serious Business! Stop enabling White Nationalism!” Well — alright. I don’t want to enable “white nationalism” either, but I don’t think lying about whether one finds something funny advances the goal of counteracting white nationalism. In fact, it probably impedes said goal, because self-deceit distorts one’s perception of the true nature of the alleged threat at hand.
Why this impulse to deny that Trump is often funny? I can’t tell you how many people I’ve spoken to, both online and IRL, who admit that they often chuckle at various Trump antics even while they dislike him overall. That’s just the reality of the situation; denial doesn’t help anything.
Trump’s brand of humor is kind of stupid, but a lot of stupid humor is very effective. That’s why adults pay money to go watch “Anchorman 2.”
It’s also worth noting that the outsized attention to Trump’s crudity is symptomatic of larger pathologies and neuroses in the American media. They’ll devote 24/7 blaring coverage to Trump’s latest uncouth tweet — every quip is considered a national emergency — but they can barely spare a moment’s outrage for the Yemeni civilians obliterated as a direct result of U.S. policy. Neither presidential candidate was asked once (with one known exception, see here) about the U.S. role in sustaining and fueling the Yemen conflict, which has stoked an ongoing humanitarian crisis and wrecked that country’s civil society. So our media all-stars don’t particular care about that “crudity,” but they can summon endless outrage for Trump’s mean jokes and taunts. That’s warped, and the worst part is that the Very Important Media doesn’t even understand why it’s warped. They think it’s their proper role to obsess all day about Trump’s latest tweeting patterns, while ignoring Yemen for 1.5 years straight.
Now, none of this is to say that Trump’s personal affect is wholly insignificant. On the contrary, it’s highly feasible that one stupid tweet could cause some kind of apocalyptic world crisis. This has always been one of my top concerns about Trump; his “shooting from the hip” might be amusing for Americans sitting on their couches, but in the context of international diplomacy it could easily spark some kind of horrible disaster. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, but it really might; do we know how Kim Jong-Un, Putin, or the Ayatollahs of Iran will react to Trump’s “joke” during a diplomatic engagement? Probably…not so well. But who knows. We shall see.
Here’s a segment from a YouTube chat I did in October with Chase Madar where I address the “Trump could provoke a constant torrent of diplomatic crises” issue:
So there is definite reason for concern, not only about Trump’s Twitter activities but his overall comportment. The fate of the nation (and world?) may rest on his capacity to not screw up royally by idiotically taunting some foreign leader. It’s just that the focus on these things tends to be obtuse, superficial, and petulant — a.k.a., exactly what the media tends to specialize in.
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