American comedian Tony Hinchcliffe caused a scandal a few days before the presidential election by making a joke at Donald Trump's rally in New York's Madison Square Garden. Opening the event, which the New York Times called a "carnival of insults," Hinchcliffe insulted Puerto Rico ("a floating island of garbage"), Latin Americans ("too many" like to "make babies"), blacks ("watermelon eaters"), Palestinians (" stone throwers”), to name a few.
Many, and not only liberals and minorities, were outraged. And they've even decided that this kind of intolerance will reduce Trump's chances of winning - of course, all Latinos will now vote for Kamala Harris. They were wrong. Hinchcliffe-style humor helped Trump, or at least didn't hurt him: 46% of Hispanic voters voted for him.
Hinchcliffe (40) grew up in rough Ohio and now lives in Texas and likes to shock. Its genre is the so-called "comedy of insults". Making fun of famous people and the audience is the main ingredient of his humor.
This genre has a rich tradition in the United States. Hinchcliffe admires the late Jewish comedian Don Rickles, who was called "the poison dealer". Rickles insulted everyone - Italians, Poles, blacks, Jews - as well as his famous friends, including Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, and even himself. But his winks and slips caused few people to take serious offense.
A much more edgy and controversial artist than Rickles was Lenny Bruce. The stand-up comedian cursed and used profanity specifically to expose the hypocrisy of a society that insisted on verbal decency but tolerated racial discrimination, police violence and political corruption. In 1961, Bruce was arrested for using "obscene" language in his speeches. Although he was acquitted, he was no longer allowed to be on television, and the police pursued him until his death five years later.
For Bruce, the main thing was freedom of speech. According to him, the comedian's task was to expand the boundaries of good taste and generally accepted social norms. Hinchcliffe agrees. "My view is that comedians should never apologize for their jokes, they should never stop doing their job even if everyone turns against them, and they should never slow down," he explained in an interview in April .
But there is an important difference between Bruce and Hinchcliffe. Bruce was a hipster inspired by free jazz, immersed in the world of counterculture poets, black music and sexual revolution. It was supported by artists and intellectuals who considered themselves part of the "progressive" avant-garde.
And Hinchcliffe was cracking jokes at a Republican Party rally. The people who welcomed him there cannot be called progressives. Instead, they unabashedly support Trump, who calls immigrants "criminals" and "rapists," repeats stories of Haitians eating pets, and promises to imprison opponents and crack down on critics. Like other media figures in Trump's world, Hinchcliffe wants freedom to be intolerant, a far cry from Bruce's calls for more tolerance.
However, the point is not that Bruce is a progressive and Hinchcliffe is a conservative. Hinchcliffe, like Trump, is not a conservative. He rails against the suffocating establishment, very much like Bruce, who mocked powerful men, businessmen, puritans, conservatives. This also applies to some extent to Hinchcliffe, who is a nuisance to the elite that dominates American universities, the press, publishing houses, museums, foundations and non-governmental organizations.
Trump voters generally feel alienated and despised by all these privileged urban professionals. They are "pathetic," to borrow Hillary Clinton's infamous phrase. They do not share the views on gender, race and social justice that are popular in the country's institutions alienated from the people. And they are tired of lectures, instructions and condescending attitudes.
Trump's victory is not a triumph of conservatism, but quite the opposite. It is a rebellion of the culturally marginalized who feel politically empowered by a self-styled outsider who promises radical change. This includes those Hispanic men who do not want to be called the gender neutral “Latinx” and also a significant number of African American men.
Trump himself is something of an insult comedian. The crudeness of the jokes is what many people love about him. And the more the New York Times and other parts of the cultural establishment resented his antics, the greater his appeal.
Many liberals who are rightly upset by Trump's election victory may be tempted to attribute that victory to racism and bigotry among voters. However, this is a grave mistake. If they remain the party of the elite, the Democrats will not be able to regain the trust of many Americans who live outside the metropolises and university towns. And if they don't have the support of people without college degrees, as well as evangelicals and rural residents, the Democrats are doomed to lose.
Liberals need to pay more attention to issues of class rather than the politics of race, gender or sexuality. The culture wars may attract urban voters, but they will not have a significant impact on national politics. There are signs that Kamala Harris understood this. She did not emphasize the subject of her origin and tried to stick to essential, existential themes.
All this, however, was "too little too late". Her very appearance in the race—a woman of color, a last-minute replacement—intensified the rebellion against the cultural establishment. Hinchcliffe's humor is truly pathetic. But it is more useful not to be bitter, but to understand why he manages to make people laugh.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024. (translation: NR)
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