In the digital world there are so many choices that we are able to focus on the television programs, the books, the magazines, the movies, and social events that we think we will enjoy. These actions polarize us by building on the views that we already hold, and hence they reinforce our biases. Conservatives become more conservative, and liberals become more liberal. But humor has the opposite effect, because one of the important features of humor is double vision. A person whose mind is not capable of holding two opposing views at the same time will not catch on to jokes, irony, parody, satire, paradox, or sarcasm, because all of these genres require double vision.
Such humor theories as Script Model Grammar, Incongruity and Incongruity Resolution, the Rule of Three, The Tension and Relief Theory, the Superiority Theory, and the MICH theory also require double vision. Another way of saying this is that in terms of politics, it is up to humor to save the world from the single vision of extremists – whether they are extreme conservatives or extreme progressives.
Effective politicians often try to soften the hard problems they face by inserting a little humor. For example, when Abraham Lincoln (President 1861–1865) wanted to urge Civil War General George McClellan to move a little faster with his attack on Richmond, Virginia, he used a subtle kind of humor by writing: “Dear General, if you do not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it for a few days.”
During the 1930s, prior to World War II, many Americans were isolationists, and did not want fellow Americans to even know or think about what was going on in Europe and Asia. They were afraid that if Americans knew what was happening, they would want to join the Allied efforts. This resulted in a kind of informal censorship in America, but on January 19, 1940, almost two years before the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Three Stooges released a movie entitled You Nazi Spy. Because it was considered “just slapstick comedy,” critics and politicians paid little attention to it, but thousands of Americans saw it. And nine months later these same viewers, plus thousands more, went to see Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. These comic films subconsciously influenced people and helped prepare them for entering the war effort after the December 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor.
In 1956, Senator William Langer wanted to be the Republican nominee for US President, but another man already had the job. The other man was Dwight D. Eisenhower (President 1953–1961), who had already served one successful term. Eisenhower was in his late sixties, and during his first term had suffered a heart attack and also undergone intestinal surgery. The urgency of Senator Langer's desire to become President inspired him to come up with a speech in which he declared, “I deserve the nomination more than Eisenhower does. I'm older. I'm sicker. And I need the rest more than he does.” This statement resulted in Senator Langer getting a big laugh, but not the nomination. Probably no one could have beaten General Eisenhower because he was given the credit for bringing World War II to an end. But at least Senator Langer had the feeling that his speech had been a success.
In 1960, the young and handsome John F. Kennedy was elected to fill the position of President. During the campaign, many of his critics felt that he had an unfair advantage because of his family's wealth. So during one speech, he pulled from his chest pocket a wrinkled telegram that he said had just come from his father. He read it aloud: “Don't buy one vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'll pay for a landslide.”
Cartoonist Mike Peters gained national attention with a cartoon that managed to insult three different US Presidents. The cartoon showed George Washington (President 1789–1797) saying “I cannot tell a lie,” Richard Nixon (President 1969–1974) saying “I cannot tell the truth,” and Jimmy Carter (President 1977–1981), saying “I cannot tell the difference.”
In 1974, Gerald Ford was unexpectedly appointed as Vice President because Spiro Agnew had been forced to resign. Then when President Nixon was also forced to resign, Gerald Ford suddenly became President. One of his best jokes was that he had become “America's first instant Vice President, and then I became America's first instant President.” Then he added that the Marine Corps band was so confused that they don't know whether to play, “Hail to the Chief,” or “You've Come a Long Way, Baby.”
Comedian Chevy Chase used to do a popular parody of Gerald Ford, including his tripping on the stairs of Air Force One. In 1986, a few years after his presidency had ended, Ford hosted a “Humor and the Presidency” symposium at the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Chevy Chase was invited to speak at the symposium. Ford turned the tables on the comedian by tripping Chevy Chase.
In 1979, Bud Clark, the owner of a popular bar in Portland, Oregon, agreed to be the live model in a poster designed as a fundraiser for a fine arts group. The picture was taken from behind him, and he was wearing only his shoes and socks and an oversized trench coat. He was facing the statue of a beautiful nude woman, and he was holding his trench coat open. The caption said only “Expose Yourself to Art.” Half a million copies were sold to benefit the arts group, and Clark became so famous that in 1982 he was elected mayor of Portland, a job that he held until 1992.
In 1980, Mort Sahl said that people did not vote FOR Ronald Reagan (President 1981–1989) so much as they voted AGAINST Jimmy Carter. Sahl concluded, “If Reagan had been unopposed, he would have lost.” In an attempt to inject some life into the 2008 Presidential campaign, John McCain ran an ad mocking Barack Obama's celebrity status by comparing him with Hollywood stars Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Hilton responded by posing in a swimming suit by the side of a pool and solemnly announcing that she would be happy to be considered for the Vice Presidency.
In 1981, when President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley and was taken into the operating room of George Washington Hospital for emergency treatment, he quipped, “Please assure me that you are all Republicans.” The world relaxed at this evidence that Reagan was still in control of his sense of humor, which meant that he most likely was going to recover.
In 1985 when Ronald Reagan, who was already the country's oldest President, was running for re-election, he looked for ways to make voters laugh about his age. At a Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, DC, he noted that the club had been founded in 1885, and lamented that he was not invited to their first dinner. He pulled almost the same joke on the Washington Press Club when he mentioned that it was founded in 1919, and then added wistfully, “It seems like only yesterday.” However, his most famous treatment of the issue came during a televised debate with his opponent, Walter Mondale. Of course both candidates knew that one of the questions would be about Reagan's age, so he came prepared. When the question came up, Reagan with a twinkle in his eye declared, “I will not exploit, for political purposes, the youth and inexperience of my opponent.” This is so famous that you might still be able find it on the Internet. Mondale laughed, along with the rest of the country, but he later said that in his heart, he knew at that moment he had lost the election. And indeed he had. Reagan received 325 votes from the Electoral College, while Mondale received only the 13 votes from his home state of Minnesota.
In 1992, the first President Bush (President 1989–1993) became ill at a televised state dinner in Tokyo. He vomited on the Japanese Prime Minister and then fainted. The dinner guests were both horrified and frightened, especially when First Lady Barbara Bush stood up and said that the incident was the fault of Emperor Akihito and Crown Prince Naruhito, who that afternoon had beaten George in tennis. Then she explained, “We Bushes aren't used to losing!” At this point, everyone realized that she was telling a joke, and on the televised account of the event, the audience could be seen taking a collective sigh of relief. They knew she would not have made a joke if she thought the President were in real danger.
In the early 1990s, Richard Zoglin wrote in TIME magazine that political correctness started out as the province of a small band of liberal reformers. But he says that it has now become an establishment orthodoxy. But there is an irony here, because the fact that political correctness has become such an established norm makes it an acceptable target for satire and parody. Zoglin concludes that “It is now politically correct to make fun of political correctness.”
One of the problems that politicians have in the digital age is that they can say something appropriate to a particular audience, but what they say is recorded and presented to a different audience, for whom it is not appropriate. After a newsreel filming when the cameras were turned off, President Reagan made a joke about “bombing Russia.” Everyone in the room knew it was a joke and did not worry about it because Reagan had an agreement with the film crew that they would not record anything except when the camera lights were on. However, he had not made any such agreement with the newspaper and magazine reporters in the room, and so they wrote the joke down and published the news in the next day's morning newspapers. There had to be a lot of backtracking.
Something similar happened to George W. Bush when he was first running for the Presidency, and he and Dick Cheney were in a televised debate against Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro. Ferraro was the first woman to be included in the final four of a Presidential election. The next day when a reporter complimented George W. Bush on how well he had done, he happily bragged, “We tried to kick a little ass last night.” A generous interpretation is that he was speaking in general terms, but the reporters on the set applied it specifically to how he thought he had beaten Geraldine Ferraro. This was not helpful to the Bush campaign, but nevertheless he was the final winner.
In the 2012 election, Mitt Romney was attending a private luncheon with a group of wealthy donors where no reporters were allowed. He made what has come to be known as the “47 percent remark,” in which he said that 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. His implication was that nearly half the country was just taking a “free ride” that the rest of us were paying for. Someone – a dishwasher was suspected – recorded the speech and when it was later circulated to the general public, it may have cost Romney the election.
The language of politics is filled with political spin. For example, George Carlin did a “comic” analysis of the changes in the words used to talk about soldiers suffering from their experiences. During World War I, we used the expression “shell shock” – two syllables, simple, honest, direct language. During World War II, the expression had changed to “battle fatigue” – four syllables, plus “fatigue” is a nicer word than “shock.” During the Korean War, the expression had changed to “Operational Exhaustion” – eight syllables now and the humanity has been squeezed out; it's now totally sterile. During the Vietnam War we had “Traumatic Stress-Disorder” – still eight syllables, plus a hyphen. The pain is now buried under the jargon.
The Jokes that Impeached a Governor: A Case Study in Local Political Humor from 1986–7
In March of 2017, a letter to the editor of our local newspaper, the Arizona Republic, asked “Is it going to be Mecham all over again?” The writer was referring to how the jokes currently being made about America's newly elected President, Donald Trump, were similar to the jokes that long-time Arizona residents remembered from the late 1980s when they contributed to the impeachment of Evan Mecham as the Governor of Arizona. We are writing about this particular incident because it is one that we lived through and in which we participated, and while at the time we thought it was unique, we now see that many of the same ideas and techniques are still being used throughout the United States, and perhaps in other countries as well.
Evan Mecham was a white middle-aged businessman, who in 1986 was elected to a four-year term as Governor of Arizona. He was impeached in 1988. He was an ultra-conservative Republican, who had been a successful Pontiac car dealer in a suburb of Phoenix. We heard our first joke about him on the evening of the November 1986 election when we were standing in line waiting to buy movie tickets. An acquaintance walked by and stopped to chat about the election. His comment regarding the newly elected governor was “What a pity to waste a $400 toupee on a two-bit head.”
We smiled at the witticism, but the people standing behind us laughed out loud. We later realized that this was just the beginning of a humor epidemic that would build over the next seventeen months until the Governor was impeached. One reason it took so long for Evan Mecham to be impeached is that Arizona has a law protecting newly elected officials. They must have a chance to “prove themselves” by serving in office for six months before they can be considered for impeachment.
Governor Mecham got off to a bad start because as soon as he was elected in November, almost two months before he would be inaugurated in January, he announced that he was cancelling the State holiday scheduled by the previous Governor to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King (1929–1968). King had been an African-American civil rights leader who, much to the horror of many Americans, was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The February holiday is now mandated by the Federal Government, but at the time it was just an idea that many states had optioned to support as a token of respect for the work that Dr. King had done in trying to bring justice to African-Americans throughout the country.
Mecham believed that the previous Governor did not have the legal right to declare a State holiday, and so he was canceling it. He thought people would be grateful for the way he was taking a stand, but actually many people in Arizona did want to honor Martin Luther King and they were embarrassed that their new Governor was being so blatantly racist. Also Mecham had forgotten that he had not won the election through a majority vote. Usually in Arizona there would have been only two candidates for Governor: one Republican and one Democrat. But because of a complicated health issue in the family of one of the Democratic candidates, he was allowed to enter the contest after the primary election had already been held. This irritated feminists in the state, who suspected that the decision to let him enter late had something to do with misogynist fears of Arizona having its first female governor. Anyway, when the votes were counted, no candidate had received a majority, but Evan Mecham had received about 40 percent of the vote and so he was declared the winner.
Historically, people who serve in public positions without having received a majority of the vote often have a hard time gaining popularity. However, Governor Mecham seemed totally unaware of the fact that he would need to “court” Arizona voters if he wanted a majority of them on “his side.” Instead, he dove in at full strength by declaring that the Martin Luther King holiday had to be cancelled. He was immediately charged with racism. A December 18, 1986, cartoon by Steve Benson for the Arizona Republic showed Mecham sitting on Santa's knee “dreaming of a White Christmas.” The next month, the local Tribune newspaper carried a Gary Markstein cartoon showing a portrait of King saying, “I have a dream!” juxtaposed with a portrait of a villainous Mecham saying, “Dream on!” (January 18, 1987).
While most Arizonans – at least those we associated with at the University – agreed that it is unfair to joke about disabled people, or about people of “other” ethnicities, we were surprised at how many of our friends, whom we had always considered to be “people of goodwill,” threw off their self-constraints when they saw that the new Governor was “Hell-bent” on abolishing the tribute to Martin Luther King. This was before cable television, and the existing television and radio stations, all of which had to be licensed by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), were hesitant to broadcast the jokes for fear of losing their FCC licenses. However, when people called into talk-shows or made requests of disc jockeys, they often managed to slip in sly jokes. Monday mornings were more fun at work because people came with new Mecham jokes that they had heard over the weekend. Schoolchildren, even if they didn't understand the jokes, took them home to their parents, and once when Alleen called a government office in Washington DC to check on a detail related to a grant that she had, the woman who answered the phone, said, “Wait! Let me tell you the joke I just heard about your Governor!” Here are a few examples:
Did you hear that Mecham ordered the U. of A. School of Agriculture to develop chickens with only right wings and all-white meat?
Why did Mecham cancel Easter? He heard the eggs were going to be colored.
What do Mecham's political appointees have in common? Parole officers.
An Arizona journalist, John Kolbe from the Phoenix Gazette, became famous when Governor Mecham first forbade him to attend press conferences, and then on reconsideration said he could attend but that he was a “nonperson” and his questions wouldn't be acknowledged. This inspired dozens of comments and jokes about “nonpersons.” The following letter to the editor from Richard Lucero was published in the Arizona Republic on March 14, 1987: “I was wondering, since Gov. Evan Mecham has declared John Kolbe a non-person, and Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday a non-holiday, could he make me a non-minority?”
A few months after Mecham's inauguration, a KZZP disc jockey amused his listeners with a funny “Mr. Ev” parody of the theme song from television's show about the talking horse, Mr. Ed. A month later, he did a parody based on the rock group Dead or Alive's hit song, “What I really need to do is find a brand-new lover.” The parody went “What we really need to do is find a brand-new governor.” On February 12, Toni Stanton started her daily radio show in Tucson by referring to Ev Mecham as “the Fred Astaire of Hoof and Mouth Disease.” On March 28, KTAR in Phoenix took advantage of Mecham's complaint that he wasn't getting a fair shake in the public media by inviting people to phone in and say something good about the Governor. Some listeners interpreted this as an invitation for humor. The funniest was the man who in a deadpan voice explained that he was a drug addict and was extremely grateful that Mecham was going to provide him with drugs. “How's that?” questioned the surprised host. “Why, haven't you heard his slogan?” responded the caller, “A Drug-Free Arizona.”
Mecham appointed as his Education Advisor a retired, conservative dairy farmer, who encouraged the State Education Committee to pass a bill requiring that creationism be taught alongside evolution in public schools. He was widely quoted for saying that teachers have “no business correcting students whose parents teach them the earth is flat” (TIME, March 9, 1987, p. 42). A KOY disc jockey asked callers to phone in suggestions about what he should put in Mecham-look-alike piñatas, which he was planning to sell for nine dollars. One caller suggested that he add a two-dollar charity tax to purchase flat globes for schools. That same day, College of Education faculty members at Arizona State University found in their mailboxes fake membership invitations from the Flat Earth Society.
In April of 1987, when Mecham had been in office for three months, our University co-sponsored with the Workshop Library on World Humor an April Fools’ Day Humor Conference. More than 500 scholars from the United States and thirty nations gathered on campus for a three-day meeting. Because the business of those attending was analyzing humor and its uses, we devoted one session of the conference to jokes about Governor Mecham. The session received considerable publicity, partly because the local newspapers, as well as television and radio stations, had been looking for ways to print some of the jokes without appearing to be taking sides, and now they could print them as “news” from the conference.
The most popular joke at the time was a story about a fire at the Governor's house that started in the library and burned both books – “And one hadn't even been colored in yet!” A conference attendee from Germany recognized the joke as having been told about the mayor of his town, while other participants remembered hearing similar jokes about controversial Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s and controversial Presidential Candidate George Wallace, who in 1972 was shot three times and spent the rest of his life paralyzed from the waist down. The joke about Wallace was:
What's the difference between George Wallace and Evan Mecham?
Well, Wallace is paralyzed from the waist down.
When the conference delegates went home, they took the Mecham jokes with them, but they also left us with some of their own. The funniest joke we heard was from a man who told about a conflict in his country over honoring a retiring prime minister with a stamp. However, the idea was shelved when the man's enemies pointed out that “Everybody would spit on the wrong side.”
An Australian newspaper called our University to check on the spelling of Mecham's name (the New York Times was spelling it as Meacham.) The BBC called for an interview on Mecham jokes, and Mark Russell wrote to say that political satirists the world over were facing Arizona and bowing in gratitude for the wealth of new material. Undoubtedly, the most “scary” call was the one that was forwarded to us by the University President's office, which had received a call from the Governor's Office asking if any state funds had been used to support the conference. By this time, bumper stickers were sprouting like spring flowers:
Mecham for EX-governor.
Martin Luther King had a dream. Arizona has a nightmare.
Don't blame me. I voted for Carolyn. [Carolyn Warner had been the original Democratic candidate running for Governor.]
We'll all be gay when Mecham's recalled.
Impeacham!
I'll take a urine test if Mecham will take an IQ test.
Don't get mad! Get Evan!
Philosopher Henri Bergson, in a 1911 essay on “Laughter,” wrote that “Laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.” When people laughed at the Mecham jokes, they experienced a bonding with the joke-tellers against the Governor. This pleasant feeling of amusement and complicity – even if remembered only on a subconscious level – undoubtedly made people more likely to sign recall petitions, which some 350,000 Arizonans did between July and November of 1987.
Both the television shows, Sixty Minutes and Nightline, did features on the controversial nature of Mecham's governorship, while in 1987 Mark Siegal published a humorous book entitled The World According to Evan Mecham. Two Phoenix writers, Philip L. Harrison and Dan McGowan, also published a collection of Mecham jokes, but when they were asked in April of 1988 if they were going to do a follow-up book, they said “No,” and explained to the Metro Phoenix magazine that “the jokesters are becoming acerbic and the jokes full of invective.” They gave as an example of an “unfunny” new joke a story about Mecham opening a housing subdivision called Mecham Meadows. The Grand Opening prizes were free wigs for the first 500 adults and handguns for all the kids. They concluded that the “sense of bemused bewilderment” characterizing the early jokes was gone and so the jokes simply weren't “all that funny any more.”
A generous interpretation of the joking is that Arizonans were using it for what Henri Bergson described as a “social corrective” for the utilitarian aim of general improvement. Through ridicule, they were trying to teach the governor and like-minded people that certain behaviors and attitudes were inappropriate. A less generous interpretation is that liberal, educated Arizonans who for years had refrained from telling racist, ethnic, and sexist jokes were relieved to have a socially acceptable target for hostile humor, i.e. a white, arrogant male in a position of power – and so they pulled out all the stops and had great fun retooling and retelling old, hostile jokes.
At the 1987 Humor Conference, James Eiseman and Stephen Spangehl, from the Department of Communication at the University of Louisville, discussed “The Role of the Innocent in Television Situation Comedy Series.” Their comments related to Governor Mecham in some interesting ways. They talked about television's power to purvey the myths that reflect and influence American thinking and conjectured that sitcoms are popular because they “present and validate our underlying beliefs in ways that are otherwise rarely articulated or discussed.”
One of these myths centers around the “Innocent,” who is a character included in nearly every sitcom. The Innocent reinforces our desire to believe in the self-made individuals who succeed without education. Audiences are willing to place enormous trust in those who speak honestly and “from the heart.” Eiseman and Spangehl described these Innocents as being “naïve, simple, ingenuous, unsophisticated, natural, unaffected, guileless, and artless: as they exhibit few traces of formal education.” They also speak their minds “frankly and openly, and understand what is said solely on the literal level.”
This is almost a perfect description of the way many of the Arizonans who chuckled over Mecham jokes viewed their Governor. In the first few months of his term, Mecham served as a real-life icon for the kind of gentle fun usually associated with television sitcoms. He was like Lisa, the city slicker in Green Acres; like Radar, the Iowa farm boy in M*A*S*H; like Woody, the Indiana hick in Cheers, and like Mork the alien, in Mork and Mindy.
The most striking characteristic that Governor Mecham had in common with these fictional Innocents is the way that he interpreted language in only a literal sense. In September of 1987, Gary Trudeau drew a four-day vignette about Mecham for his Doonesbury comic strip. When a reporter from the Mesa Tribune interviewed Mecham, his response was “It's totally unfactual. There isn't any mirth in it.” Two weeks later, Mecham was criticized for telling a group of tourists that when Japanese visitors hear that Arizona has over 200 golf courses, “their eyes get round.” He defended himself by saying that he “hadn't insulted anyone” because some Japanese, even in their own country, are having plastic surgery to get round-shaped eyes.
This lack of understanding about language change and connotation is also what got him in trouble when he defended the use of the word pickaninny as an affectionate way of referring to the children of black people. He explained that when he was growing up, “blacks themselves referred to their children as pickaninnies.” This gave rise to the witticism, “Pickaninny: What we did for governor.”
Another characteristic of Innocents is that what at first appears to be stupidity becomes in time “a sort of non-linear logic.” Even after being made aware of how others perceive a situation, the Innocent will often turn the information to a laughable connection that surprises listeners. Mecham did this so often that people began conjecturing on whether someone – perhaps one of his children or a political ally – had taken him aside and tried to give him a quick lesson on “political correctness,” that is on how he needed to be more sensitive to the connotations of language.
He apparently got some idea of which words to be careful about, but he confused the details, as shown by the way he welcomed a Jewish group to a breakfast by talking about America being “a great Christian nation.” And if he had really understood, he would not have answered a charge of bigotry by saying that he had black friends and that at his car dealership he hired African-Americans not because they were black, but because they were the best people who applied “for the cotton-picking job.”
Phoenix was one of the scheduled stops for Pope John Paul's September 1987 visit. When Mecham was asked on his KTAR “Talk with the Governor” radio show what he was going to say to the Pope, he responded, “Golly, I don't know whether he speaks English or not.” This spawned the last joke that Arizonans truly laughed at:
Did you hear what the Governor said to the Pope?
“How's the little woman?”
This joke was printed in the May 1988 Washington Monthly, under the title “The Jokes that Impeached a Governor.” Other riddles included:
Why does Evan Mecham have to open his mouth? So he can change feet.
How do you spell relief? R-E-C-A-L-L.
What do Mechan and an untrained puppy have in common? They both cringe at the sight of a newspaper.
People even made up a joke to explain Mecham's eventual impeachment, which was based not on his insensitivity and prejudices, but on the fact that he had been dishonest by “loaning” $80,000 of the State's money that was set aside for his inauguration to his auto dealership. His brother, Willard Mecham, had been his financial advisor throughout his campaign, and so he got part of the blame, which resulted in the last joke to come from the eighteen-month ordeal: “Willard did it!” Over the next several months, this simple sentence was used as an all-around excuse for whatever misfortune happened without an obvious perpetrator. After his impeachment, Evan Mecham lived another twenty years, but he did not return to his car dealership. Instead, he spent his time writing a self-published book, Wrongful Impeachment, and trying unsuccessfully to create a public newspaper to give a voice to the people in Arizona who he thought were unfairly silenced. He lived the last four years of his life in the Arizona State Veterans’ Home where he suffered from dementia.
Political Humor on Late-Night Television
In January of 2018, President Donald Trump bragged that his State of the Union address viewership – 45.6 million – was “the highest number in history.” But in fact, both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had more viewers for their addresses. So, on Late Night, Stephen Colbert concluded, “Nielsen only counts American viewers, but we're confident plenty of Russians were tuning in, too.” Colbert said that men in trench coats were counted incorrectly as they were actually “three small people stacked on each other's shoulders.” Trump's figures could also have been increased by counting people possessed by demons, time travelers, and aliens who will watch the broadcast in the future.
In his 2018 State of the Union speech, Donald Trump attempted to expand the term “Dreamers,” by saying that we're all “dreamers.” On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah accused Trump of pulling an “All Lives Matter” on the DREAMers. Noah said that Fox News praised Trump's speech because Trump had used the word “America” a whopping eighty-two times in a ninety-minute address. But according to Noah, the people who loved his speech the most of all had the last name of Trump. Donald Trump Jr. told about how his “legs got a workout” from standing again and again, and Eric Trump said his hands were “sore from clapping.” Noah said that Trump's speech was all about celebrating President Trump, but Trump actually did “reach across the aisle – and not just to grope someone, but to try to get things done.” Noah also took a dig at the Democrats at Trump's speech. Noah said that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi looked like “Trump had cheated on them with Stormy Daniels” (Stormy Daniels is the film star who allegedly had an affair with Trump).
After Trump's State of the Union address, Seth Meyers said, “Congrats to Logan Paul for no longer being the worst thing on YouTube.” Jimmy Fallon remarked that Trump had read off a teleprompter during his entire address, even though he had earlier slammed Hillary Clinton for using teleprompters, and at one time had bragged that he didn't use them. Fallon said that Trump was so untrained in using teleprompters that “his staff had a little Mickey Mouse head over the words like a singalong song.” Jimmy Kimmel also zinged Trump for using a teleprompter, and then remarked that a number of Democrats had brought immigrants with them to Trump's speech, but not just Democrats. The President had also brought an immigrant as a guest – his wife, Melania. Kimmel also said that at the State of the Union address, “there was more forced applause than at a Kim Jong-un birthday parade.” Commenting on the dour expressions on the faces of the black caucus, Kimmel noted that Trump's taking credit for low unemployment among black people “is like Ryan Seacrest taking credit for the new year.” Even James Corden had something to say about Trump's State of the Union speech. Corden mocked the fact that Trump's team planned to broadcast the name of anyone who made donations to his re-election efforts by saying, “I hope viewers at the livestream enjoyed my donation on behalf of Penis von Penisface.” Referring to Betsy Devos, Trump's pick for the Secretary of Education, Corden said, “If you donated $200 million, you could be Trump's Secretary of Education.”
More than once, Donald Trump has said that he is the least racist person the interviewer has ever met, so Bill Maher made a list of all of the black people that Donald Trump has picked a fight with: Colin Kaepernick, LaVar Ball, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, the war widow from the failed raid in Niger, the war widow's congresswoman, the Central Park Five, Steph Curry, the UCLA basketball players arrested in China, Whoopi Goldberg, April Ryan, the entire NFL, the cast of Hamilton, the cities of Atlanta and Chicago, Nigeria, Haiti, and the entire continent of Africa.
On Saturday Night Live, Alec Baldwin played Donald Trump. In December of 2017, Baldwin's Saturday Night Live sketch was inspired by Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In this sketch, Trump was visited by the ghost of Michael Flynn in chains, representing Jacob Marley (“the ghost of witness flipped”), and by the ghosts of Christmas past (Billy Bush, of Access Hollywood fame), present (Vladimir Putin) and future (Hillary Clinton).
Melissa McCarthy's impression of Sean Spicer may have been one of the reasons that he resigned. When interviewed, Spicer said that he could see some of the humor in McCarthy's “Spicey” impression, but he felt it went overboard. It also made him uncomfortable that he was being portrayed by a woman. Most people thought that her portrayal of the press secretary was both hysterical and outrageously realistic. Melissa McCarthy and her aggressive podium attacked the Saturday Night Live crew, and was also taken on to the streets of New York to playfully attack New York drivers and pedestrians. After Spicer resigned as Trump's Press Secretary, Aidy Bryant began playing the role of the current spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
1. If you live in an area where political leaders are voted into office, try to collect a couple of examples of anecdotes or jokes told by either a successful or an unsuccessful politician. If you have a hard time remembering such election-year talk, interview someone older than you and see if they can remember an example. Bring at least one example to class for discussion and comparison with what your classmates discover. Did it work for the politician? If so, how and why?
2. During Ronald Reagan's first term, he suffered a few “senior moments” as when, at a 1981 meeting of city mayors at the White House, he greeted Samuel Pierce, his own Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, as “Mr. Mayor,” and in one address to the public, solemnly explained that his administration was working to get “unemployment to go up.” A particularly nasty joke from the period was a story about “Ronnie and Nancy” (his wife) having lunch. Nancy ordered her main dish, and when the waiter asked “… and the vegetable?” she responded, “Oh, he'll just have the same as I'm having.” A benign reading of the joke is simply that the petite little Nancy is out to lunch with the President of the United States, and she has put herself “in charge.” However, a malicious interpretation of this joke is that the President is so debilitated that Nancy thinks of him as “a vegetable.” Tell how this joke is so nasty that it breaks the “humane humor rules” of not targeting the victim and of not joking about things that the person cannot change. Tell which jokes in this chapter break one or more of the humane humor rules. Does this make the jokes better (more edgy) or worse (more confrontational)?
3. An especially good book that we recommend to people interested in humor and wit at the highest level of the American system of government is Joseph Cummins’ 2007 (updated in 2015) Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in US Presidential Campaigns. In his introduction, Cummins explained that the reason there is so much vitriol, disguised as humor, in presidential elections is that if people sincerely believe that they have a better candidate with “a superior life philosophy,” then they are “more willing to pull out all the stops” to ensure their party's win. Find a couple of examples of how “fake news” was used in the past, and also of a couple of especially vicious “tricks” pulled by early politicians.
4. One of the “new” techniques in the 2016 Presidential campaign was for people to do exaggerated imitations of important figures. See what you can find out about this by searching online for an example. Names you might look under are Tina Fey and Sarah Palin, Amy Poehler and Hillary Clinton, Melissa McCartney and Sean Spicer, Julianne Moore and Sarah Palin, and Alec Baldwin and Donald Trump. Come to class ready to share information or to show examples that may still be online. Do you know of other examples?
5. It is harder for politicians who happen to have an unpleasant name to change it than it is for people aspiring to go into show business or to write under a pen name. One reason is that most people do not go into politics until they are well established and well known. They have to be elected by people who know and trust them, and when an adult changes his or her name, it seems suspicious. Are they trying to hide something? Plus, giving yourself a new name means not being recognized by the people you have known your whole life and have influenced. Also, today most of us know many more people than our grandparents knew, and it's hard to remember the “real” names of all of our acquaintances, much less new names they have given themselves.
6. In our last local election, we had a man named David Schmuck running for the Arizona State Senate. He tried to make a joke about his name by printing billboards that said in big letters “SCHMUCK … That's Right! Frank Schmuck.”
Here is a letter to the editor of the Arizona Republic from a man named Alvin Stein who wrote to say: “I see that Frank Schmuck is having fun with his name in running for the Arizona Senate. I'd just like to reassure him that if elected in this very right-wing conservative state, he will be surrounded by a large number of Schmucks, so he'll feel right at home.”
Do you think this letter helped or hurt Mr. Schmuck's chances? It might be a good learning experience for you as a class to make a list of ten names of people recently elected to positions of authority in your local area. Try putting them in a list from top to bottom, based on how “memorable” and “inspiring” you think their names are. It will be interesting to see if you and your fellow students agree or disagree about the names. Frank Schmuck won the election, which apparently means that the technique of calling attention to his family name served its purpose of helping him stand out from the four other candidates who were running to be the Republican representative in the final election. It is now two years later and he is running for re-election, but this time he is not calling special attention to his name.
7. James Comey, the head of America's FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), decided to hold a press conference and announce that he had further information about Hillary Clinton that he thought he should report. He did not indicate what the information was, but said that the FBI had found it on a computer owned by Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner. News accounts kept stressing Anthony Weiner as the owner of the computer, with some reporters even using the name of Huma Abedin Weiner, a name which she has never gone by. Comey did not say what the information was. However, TV comedy show host Bill Maher has conjectured that it was invitations to Chelsea's wedding. There was enough talk about the matter to make some people think that the incident harmed Hillary's reputation just enough to make her lose the election. In April of 2017, Comey apologized, even saying that it made him “slightly nauseous” to think that his actions might have influenced the election. A few days later, President Trump fired Mr. Comey from his job as FBI Director. His action has made for a whole new round of suspicions and innuendos. Using Comey as an example, discuss the concepts of “innuendo,” “double-entendre,” “suggestion,” “implication,” and “inference.”
