Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Althouse

Legal Commentary

: Althouse

Liberal comedians have turned away from sarcasm, "because people will momentarily wonder if you?re not on their side," but "the right has embraced it."

"The conservative humorist who has found the most success with this technique is now the President of the United States.... In his love of insults, his penchant for hyperbole and his commitment to shtick ? that knowing performance of himself that blurs the line between personality and persona ? Trump is unprecedented among American presidents. The most striking feature of his rhetorical style is how much it resembles that of a nightclub comic.... Organizations like The Times and CNN have to take the president seriously. When he says something that isn?t true, they must soberly point out that it isn?t, even when the intent of the untruth is not to deceive but to achieve some rhetorical effect. As a result, news organizations unequipped to cover an ironic president get lumped in with partisans who misconstrue his irony in bad faith. Both groups are cast as humorless scolds, solidifying the loyalty of MAGA types who think of themselves as in on a joke the media does not understand. Ambiguous irony also lets the president hedge his bets. Trump is constantly saying things he doesn?t mean (Jim Acosta is 'a real beauty'), or things he kind of means but goes on to retract (his authority is 'total'), or things he didn?t mean at first but later does ('build the wall'), or things nobody thought he meant that he apparently did ('lock her up'), as well as things he seemingly did mean before he retroactively declared them sarcasm ? like his televised claim that injecting bleach might stop the coronavirus. Ambiguous irony opens up space for Trump to revise the meaning of his statements later, when he knows how they have played. This miasma of ill-defined but ever-present irony makes Trump virtually impossible to mock, because that job is taken. The real Donald Trump acts as if he?s doing an impression of some normal-looking, occasionally self-aggrandizing president we don?t know about.... Trump has effectively neutralized political comedy by shifting the place where jokes happen from the soundstage to the White House."

Full post as published by Althouse on October 07, 2020 (boomark / email).