Humor Is Vital to Effective Protest, and the Democrats Suck at It
And yes, Trump is the unfunniest person alive. He has zero sense of humor. His funny gene was arrested at about age nine (which is roughly four years later than his empathy gene). His idea of funny is calling people names, which stopped being funny to most people in about tenth grade. In all the interviews I’ve seen with him, and they probably number in the thousands, only once—once—have I seen him emit an unforced laugh that looked genuine. It was to Larry King many years ago. I don’t even remember what it was about; it may even have been very mildly self-deprecating, which made it all the more shocking to see, because he never does that. But that’s it. The man does not laugh the way normal human beings do.
However—Republicans can be funny. They’re funnier than Democrats. Say what you will about Ted Cruz—and believe me, I’ve already said it. But choosing to read Green Eggs and Ham during that Obamacare filibuster was funny. If you go to a CPAC conference and inspect the merch, the buttons and bumper stickers and such, they’re almost all humorous. A lot of it is kind of offensive. But some of it is still pretty funny. Effective humor is offensive to somebody or another.
And that, I think, is why Democrats aren’t funny. The public language of liberalism has become so timid, so afraid to offend, that too many forms of humor are just out of bounds. Obviously, I’m not calling for sexist and racist humor, which isn’t funny anyway. I’m just saying Democrats are over-cautious and over-earnest in how they talk about almost everything.
