On one hand, of course Donald Trump’s campaign can feature anyone they’d like at their own rally. On the other hand, if that person tells jokes that target minority groups in disparaging ways — especially the very groups whose votes are being courted by the campaign — the offense taken should probably be expected. That seems to be what happened at the Republican presidential candidate’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Oct. 27, just over a week before the election.
“My first reaction was that a comedian would be out of context at a (political) party rally, especially before an election,” said Christian Hempelmann, the editor-in-chief of the journal Humor, the International Journal of Humor Research. “…At such events, what you expect is a speaker and speakers, speak, and what they say should be taken at face value. Whereas, when comedians speak, they…are making statements that are structured like humor and their main intention is to entertain.”
Tony Hinchcliffe, a popular roast comedian, made jokes about Latino, Jewish, and Black people during his 12-minute appearance at the Trump rally last month, resulting in a wave of harsh criticism and a spokesperson from the campaign distancing themselves from his remarks.
Hempelmann, who’s also a professor of computational linguistics at Texas A&M University-Commerce, focuses on the interface between humor, its message, and politics. Amy Becker is a professor of communication and media at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, where she researches the effects of exposure to political comedy and entertainment on political engagement. They each took some time to talk about politics and comedy, the effects of jokes targeting minority groups, and how humor can be used to shape political discourse. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of these conversations, visit sandiegouniontribune.com/author/lisa-deaderick/.)
Q: I’d like to talk about the utility of featuring a roast comedian at a political rally, but first I want to ask you to talk about the specific difference between roast comedy and political humor or satire.
Becker: It’s one thing when a politician makes jokes about themselves and engages in self-deprecating humor. Voters actually tend to appreciate a politician who’s willing to make fun of themselves, or to accept being made fun of. I’ve done a lot of work on the impact of “Saturday Night Live” and Trump’s really the only politician who has come back and kind of attacked “SNL” for making fun of him, or criticizing the portrayal. In general, people appreciate politicians who can make a joke about themselves and also handle being made fun of; Donald Trump is the exception to that. I think it’s one thing when you have a political satire show that makes fun of a candidate or makes fun of an issue; that’s what those shows are designed to do when they’re on the air and the candidate’s not necessarily sitting there unless they’re doing an interview. It’s different than featuring a comedian like that at a political rally. It’s different when you’re assembling all of these people and trying to get out the vote, having someone come on stage and attack a segment of a group you’re trying to reach. That doesn’t make strategic sense, that should be separate.
Hempelmann: That’s a good one. Yes, so roast comedy gives the comedian a specific license to attack the person who is, at the same time, celebrated and roasted. It’s done so aggressively in an understanding that what is happening can be very aggressive. In a classic role, that would be understood that it is a type of in-group humor—the person being roasted is a participant in the roast, more or less willing. The fact that they’re singled out as deserving a roast makes it, at the same time, a show of appreciation. Then, potentially singling out certain things that they could be targeted for, but overall, it’s an extreme form of parody where parody is always both criticism and also highlighting that what you parody is worthy of parody, something noteworthy and then maybe even appreciable…The person who is being roasted is a willing participant in the roast and is present. In this case, that wasn’t the case, this wasn’t a classic roast. He was not roasting. He could have been expected to, for example, roast the Democratic candidate and he did not even mention her.
Q: Hinchcliffe did include a joke about Donald Trump, which would seem to be the point of enlisting his style of comedy for an event. If political rallies are intended to generate excitement and support, in what ways would this help achieve those goals?
Becker: Also, I think its interesting that the reporting coming out of the rally is really focused on the negative things that were said, so it overshadows any kind of discussion of who came to the rally. Who is he trying to reach? That kind of thing. I think it was probably not the best strategic move, from that perspective, but if you put aside the content of the jokes, people appreciate humor. They like to laugh, they like to enjoy themselves, and that can kind of be useful to warm up the crowd, right? To get people to engage with one another. Thats not what this was. Trump, with the rally and some of the other more recent things he’s said, the language that he’s using is very divisive. While the humor seems (to be understood) by people as being controversial, it also kind of seems on brand for him, right? Is it going too far? Or, in his mind, and the fact that he hasnt apologized, is it just the extension of all the other divisive things hes been saying?
Hempelmann: What you would expect is that he would roast the candidate whose rally it is, and highlight a few things about them that are, maybe, worthy of ridicule, but overall praise the candidate indirectly; by way of both, he didn’t do that. What I noticed was that he made a few jokes about the assassination attempt and in that, he actually did roast Trump by saying that it almost wasn’t an assassination attempt because it’s the least life-threatening injury. As (Hinchcliffe) makes the sexist point, little girls get their ears pierced, so it’s the least damage you can do to yourself. And he did turn it around and say there was a parallel to Biden’s COVID infection that happened shortly after. To me, this sounded like giving his routine the appearance of a roast, at least for a short moment, so that it could be defended as, ‘Oh look, he said something negative about Trump, it was a roast,’ but it wasn’t. It was just using the appearance of it in an otherwise marginally humorous, racist rant.
Q: In the resulting criticism, Hinchcliffes remarks have been likened to the kind of statements made during a 1939 Nazi rally, that it turned the event into a hate rally, and that its a reflection of how these groups can expect to be treated under another Trump administration (the Trump campaign has said that Hinchcliffes joke doesnt represent the candidate or the campaign). Are you able to talk about the history of the kinds of jokes made by the dominant culture to ridicule or mock members of minority groups? What are the effects of these kinds of jokes?
Becker: Theres been research, historically, on disparagement humor. It tends to suggest that you have greater license to make fun of your own identity group than you do have to others. Theres some research, depending on how much you like the group thats being made fun of, or dislike, that impacts how you receive the humor. I think the most interesting thing to come out of this is that some of the folks, like Bad Bunny and others who have now spoken out about this, have such a broad reach on social media. To me, thats interesting that people who might not have said something on social media, or made an endorsement or things like that, are now entering the political conversation. To me, thats the most interesting thing thats come out of it, but there is a long history going back to the 1950s about making fun of different groups, minority groups, with disparaging humor and that kind of thing. When we see that kind of humor in politics, it tends to be making fun of the other (political) party, rather than making fun of particular groups that might vote for one party or another. This is different.
Hempelmann: Thats exactly along the lines of my research and along the lines of an important strand in humor studies that looks at exactly that question. Before I get into that, I think making the parallel to the (German American) Bund rally in the late 30s, thats a far stretch. Also, the Bund rally did not use any humor and it was just an embarrassing German Nazi event that happened to also have been in the United States. I dont think thats a type of criticism thats successful because the parallel breaks down. As far as I know, the event in the 30s wasnt an election event. To some degree, both are trolling. They are doing something outrageous that will get the other side rallied up, but something that, in itself, has very little substance.
To your question, there is a bunch of people who come largely from sociology and they use the term critical humor theory for what theyre currently doing. You see the parallel to critical race theory, obviously. Their argument, which I find not always fully convincing, sort of goes back to classical humor theories that state that all humor is aggressive, all humor needs a target, and all humor, sort of in a Freudian sense, comes from us wanting to put down others. I dont agree with that, but it is a fair assessment of much of what is going on in humor now, in terms of group dynamics. Humor can definitely play a role in group affirmation, but also othering an out-group and marking them as inferior in certain sort of scripted ways-as dirty, as stupid, as oversexed, and stereotypes that are indeed being used in whats called ethnic humor. The debate in research is around the question of whether all ethnic humor is indeed racist humor. I would say that thats not the case, although it can and is the case in certain contexts. With a certain counter position, famously ascribed to the late researcher Christie Davies, he famously wrote about how ethnic humor is sort of universal. You find it in all constellations of majorities versus minorities, in all cultures, and it is usually the central, urban majorities making fun of the periphery. The periphery is not necessarily geographic, it is periphery in minority, in a matter of power structure. You are, by way of class or race, on the fringe of how the society works. His main point was that it is, in most cases, playing with these stereotypes. It is not actual aggression and those who are the targets of those jokes about themselves because the stereotypes of dirtiness and stupidity and so on, are understood by all participants as fictional. They are just enjoyed for the sake of the humor, so this is sort of one of the radical positions on one end of the spectrum where humor is all fun and games and at the most, theres a little bit of a corrective in there where the minorities are reminded that you shouldnt be stupid and you shouldnt be dirty.
The current, more dominant position among humor researchers is trending toward the opposite where they say, No, its not fictional and we can point to many contexts in which the dominant group uses this type of ethnic humor as racist humor that doesnt just tell you that the targeted group is the other group, but is also the group that we, as the tellers, feel is inferior and maybe even dangerous. Again, my position is that there are contexts for that. You need to have external evidence to ascribe the racist position to the teller of the jokes. If you dont have that additional evidence, the teller could indeed just be playing with the jokes, or actually even parodying the racist position as a ludicrous position. In the case that were talking about, a Trump rally where Trump uses racism as a clear marker of how they think they can get voters, the use of such humor is in a context that is clearly marked as letting us call these jokes racist jokes because we know the sentiment of the speakers is a racist sentiment.
Q: Can you talk about the role of humor in shaping political discourse?
Becker: I think its really important that politicians can take a joke, and can make a joke and engage in humor and be funny. This has been written about, historically, about Richard Nixons 1968, four-second appearance on (Rowan & Martins) Laugh-In. He doesnt do a particularly good job, but this willingness to start to engage with entertainment like that wasnt the first time. (John F.) Kennedy was kind of the more entertaining president, but this idea that voters want to vote for someone who seems personable-funny and engaging and humorous-those non-traditional campaign appearances, like interviews on late night and political satire shows, allows them to talk about things that you dont talk about on a Sunday morning news show, or in a press conference. So, I think those venues are really important to having a more personable, conversational appearance.
Also, the people who watch late night comedy or who look at those clips online, on social media, are very different from those who are watching the Sunday morning news programs. Late night comedy shows have a broader audience; were there for the entertainment. The politics is kind of secondary, and the information learned is secondary. So, I think theyre really important in reaching a much broader segment of the viewing public, and I think thats why people do them. A late night interview is still an important get in a political campaign, and its why you see a lot of the podcast interviews and the kind of non-traditional media outlets being a part of this in their media push because I think thats how you reach people. Going on The View, thats a really important audience that you might not be capturing or getting through other more traditional, standard news outlets.