suitably horrified<\/a> by Trump\u2019s election. But she grasps his appeal better than most. He won by being a better stand-up comic and shrugging off criticism by claiming he was just joking:<\/p>\n\u201cTrump was a hot comic, a classic Howard Stern guest. He was the insult comic, the stadium act, the ratings-obsessed headliner who shouted down hecklers. His rallies boiled with rage and laughter, which were hard to tell apart. You didn\u2019t have to think that Trump himself was funny to see this effect: I found him repulsive, and yet I could hear those comedy rhythms everywhere, from the Rodney Dangerfield \u2018I don\u2019t get no respect\u2019 routine to the gleeful insult-comic slams of Don Rickles (for \u2018hockey puck,\u2019 substitute \u2018Pocahontas\u2019) to Andrew Dice Clay, whose lighten-up-it\u2019s-a-joke, it\u2019s-not-him-it\u2019s-a-persona brand of misogyny dominated the late nineteen-eighties. . . . Trump was that hostile-jaunty guy in the big flappy suit, with the vaudeville hair, the pursed lips, and the glare. There\u2019s always been an audience for that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s most talked-about gaffes had the structure and rhythm of jokes. He suggested that Russia send over Hilary\u2019s emails. Nussbaum writes that it\u2019s a classic form: \u201cTake two stories, then combine them: as any late-night writer knows, that\u2019s the go-to algorithm when you\u2019re on deadline. . . . He claimed that his imitation of the disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski was a slapstick take on the reporter \u2018grovelling because he wrote a good story\u2019 . . . He did it when he said that Megyn Kelly had \u2018blood coming out of her wherever\u2019 a joke, he insisted, and he actually meant her nose. \u2018I like people who weren\u2019t captured,\u2019 about John McCain: that had the shape of a joke, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nussbaum pinpoints the problem: Whether you support or oppose him, how do you deal with a leader who always leaves open an \u201cI was joking\u201d escape route?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like all right-thinking Americans, Emily Nussbaum is suitably horrified by Trump\u2019s election. But she grasps his appeal better than most. He won by being a better stand-up comic and shrugging off criticism by claiming he was just joking: \u201cTrump was a hot comic, a classic Howard Stern guest. He was the insult comic, the stadium […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,1349],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump","category-humor"],"yoast_head":"\n
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