2. You're never "just joking." Nobody is ever "just joking." Humor is a social act that performs a social function (always).
— Jason P. Steed (@5thCircAppeals) August 9, 2016
Jason P. Steed is getting some deserved attention for his series of tweets on Trump’s “Second Amendment remedies” *joke*. Excerpts here, stripped, for those of you whose refined sensibilities can’t deal with Twitter:
… 4. Which is to say, humor is a way we construct identity – who we are in relation to others. We use humor to form groups…
5. …and to find our individual place in or out of those groups. In short, joking/humor is one tool by which we assimilate or alienate.
6. IOW, we use humor to bring people into – or keep them out of – our social groups. This is what humor *does.* What it’s for.
******
9. This is why, e.g., racist “jokes” are bad. Not just because they serve to alienate certain people, but also because…
10. …they serve to assimilate the idea of racism (the idea of alienating people based on their race). And so we come to Trump.
11. A racist joke sends a message to the in-group that racism is acceptable. (If you don’t find it acceptable, you’re in the out-group.)
12. The racist joke teller might say “just joking” – but this is a *defense* to the out-group. He doesn’t have to say this to the in-group.
13. This is why we’re never “just joking.” To the in-group, no defense of the joke is needed; the idea conveyed is accepted/acceptable.
14. So, when Trump jokes about assassination or armed revolt, he’s asking the in-group to assimilate/accept that idea. That’s what jokes do.
15. And when he says “just joking,” that’s a defense offered to the out-group who was never meant to assimilate the idea in the first place.
*****
22. But I think it’s pretty clear Trump was not engaging in some complex satirical form of humor. He was “just joking.” In the worst sense.
23. Bottom line: don’t accept “just joking” as excuse for what Trump said today. The in-group for that joke should be tiny. Like his hands.
Vox‘s Zack Beauchamp posts the whole tweetstream, adding:
… This is a broader problem with Trump’s candidacy. Even if he never makes it into the White House, it’s not clear how much damage his penchant for shattering norms against explicit racism and calls for violence is doing to American politics…
Major Major Major Major
Tweetstorms are stupid. Write a damn blog post.
OT: I saw this and it’s the best thing ever: a poster for “The Dems”, an indie rock band composed of young Barack, young Hillary, young Tim, and young Bernie.
Trentrunner
Except Trump wasn’t even joking.
He just retreats behind the “I was joking!” dodge when called on his outrageousness.
Remember when an MP was murdered right before Brexit? Remember Rabin? King? Kennedy?
Remember the rising rhetoric of violence that precedes nearly every fucking assassination?
Mai.naem.mobile
After Trump makes the ‘i don’t know what the 2nd amendent’ people can do’ he says.’and that will be a horrible day.’ What did Trump mean by that?
amk
@Major Major Major Major:
trump = tweet.
hence, best to push back in the same ‘social media’ to drive him and his nutters over the edge.
? Martin
@Mai.naem.mobile: Necessary evil. It’s terrible all of those Iraqi civilians had to die, but what can you do?
akryan
Making this an Olympic open thread, I think I just saw the most dominant team in any sport in history. The American women’s gymnastic team was amazing!
Mary G
He has let a mass of evil and ugliness out of its box that will poison our society for years whether he wins or loses.
@Major Major Major Major: I couldn’t agree more. Tweetstorms. So annoying. People retweet a few numbers a zillion times and some numbers disappear down a black hole. And it’s apparently an excuse for lousy writing.
Bobby Thomson
Over a year ago, while most people were predicting Trump would get bored, or that he didn’t really want to be president, or that the RNC would somehow outfox him, I predicted he would win the nomination and lose the general fairly easily, but that along the way he would mainstream some very ugly stuff. It’s going to take more than a crushing electoral defeat to clean that up. Hell, we killed hundreds of thousands of confederates and that effected only very temporary change.
jl
@Bobby Thomson: The GOP primary base will still be there, feeling very angry and cheated if, i hope when, Trump loses, or GOP takes him off the ticket (which I read today in the news that they can, even though it is an onerous process).
Best hope that enough of saner people peel off from GOP so it evolves into a minor party full of ignorant bigoted kooks that can’t win presidency and wins fewer and fewer Congressional seats. I think it is past the point that reasonable GOPer voters can save it. And hell, the more presentable scum like Ryan and McConnell aren’t really interested in saner GOPer voters anyway. They are interested in loons that they foolishly and wrongly believe can be fooled and conned forever. (Edit: obviously so. both are right now foolishly trying to con sane GOpers with their endorsement of some anonymous nominee act, which won’t work)
A sickening and dangerous situation. Fortunately, all the GOpers I know around where I live are either sitting out president, or voting for HRC or Johnson, so I don’t have to deal with the loons on a personal level on a daily basis. But then there are Trumpists in the teabagger wing of my family. I try to be civil and reason with them.
Calming Influence
I’m not exactly sure how to evaluate this type of hypothetical, but would the world be a safer place right now if Donald Trump had gotten a penis extension rather than hair extensions?
opiejeanne
@akryan: They were amazing, and so were our swimmers. Phelps’s death stare while Le Clos was dancing around, that was hilarious.
Anne Laurie
@Mary G:
When people started writing stuff down, it destroyed all future generations’ ability to retain vital information by memorizing it. When moveable type made literacy available outside the clerical caste, it led to the destruction of the Holy Roman Empire. When some evil genius invented the moving picture — not to mention, shudder, television — people lost the ability to form pictures in their minds while reading, and became passive consumers of content.
I’m pretty sure the first cave artists were deplored as vandals who were busy destroying The Youth by distracting them from important jobs like hunting, gathering, and memorizing the epic sagas that contained all human knowledge.
The media changes, the complaints stay the same. People use Twitter, among the other many social media, because sometimes fast and easily shared beats slow and rigorous. Sure, the knowledgeable people ‘wasting their time’ tweeting could be producing long articles, or at least blog posts — but mostly those ideas would never get shared, because even if the producers found the time to shape & post them, it would be a lot harder for an audience to find.
At its best, Twitter alerts “us” to interesting people whose longform thoughts we can then hunt down. At its worst, Twitter is… well, Donald Trump. Who’s done a masterful job of demonstrating what a bloviating narcissist douchecanoe he really is, in all those 140-character tweets. Sure, he’s been a known quantity to the few hundred thousand people who’ve had to deal with him personally any time since the 1970s, but in a less media-intensive world, it was a lot easier to keep aspiring world leaders’ worst thoughts and traits hidden from voters until it was too late.
SFAW
In news that will destroy Hitlary’s candidacy, Judicial Watch has released e-mails from Hitlary’s State Department, showing that something something something, and that Huma Abedin was perhaps Osama bin Wombat’s right-hand something something, and that the Clinton Foundation either did something or didn’t regarding a former employee of someone, and either hired him or didn’t, thus putting Western Civilization on the Road to Destruction because reasons.
Or something.
This campaign can’t be over soon enough. Especially if it allows Deadbeat Donnie to file for personal bankruptcy and maybe gets him sent to debtor’s prison.
Calming Influence
@Anne Laurie: shorter Anne Laurie: Arc of the human intellect – grunts; Shakespeare; grunts in 140 characters. ;-)
Anne Laurie
@Calming Influence: Oh, ‘magpie’ scripter and hack-for-hire Shakespeare would’ve loved Twitter! Imagine all the up-to-the-moment jokes and imagery he could’ve… borrowed. Not to mention its value as a performance advertising tool…you think it’s funny when a couple of rappers trade disses, and then every fan/infotainment follower has to chip in, but at least it’s less dangerous than dueling…
Patricia Kayden
@Trentrunner: Only a fool would buy into Trump’s excuse that he was joking. As commenters at LGF have pointed out, many White Supremacists and Men’s Rights Activists didn’t take it as a joke. They have correctly understood that Trump was telling them to use violence if President Clinton appoints Judges who don’t share their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
hellslittlestangel
@Anne Laurie: …
HAMLET Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
Where’s your father?
OPHELIA (Looks up from phone): Sorry, what?
Betty Cracker
@Anne Laurie: I was a Twitter hater early on but have warmed to the medium because of its immediacy; it’s particularly useful for real-time information sharing. That said, I agree with the Tweetstorm haters. I wish folks would either get a blog or type out their thoughts in longer form and attach it to the tweet as an image. /cloudshout
Elizabelle
@hellslittlestangel: brilliant.
Good morning all. Left gorgeous Barcelona late last week, hanging out in Southern France and Italy (first visit ever; love it). Back to US of Cray Cray late next week.
Trump and the stench of Republican chicken-vultures coming home to roost does not look any less serious across an ocean. Yesterday’s 2nd amendment quip probably peeled off more Trump curious types. But what a Pandora’s box.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: Exactly, it’s something my dad taught me early on; use the right tool for the job. A hammer is great for driving nails, not so useful for driving screws.
Elizabelle
Incidentally, the Jason Steed tweets are excellent and memorable enough to share w the Trump curious.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle:
Did you see Mika? Joe says she hangs out there all the time.
otmar
I just started a two week vacation on Mallorca. It’s surprisingly cool and windy. Perfect.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Lucky ducky — sounds fabulous! Bet you’ve been on the receiving end of many questions about U.S. politics from baffled Europeans!
Elizabelle
@?BillinGlendaleCA: no, thank dog. I think I would throw something.
Ps. Love the paws.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: Heh. Thanks, they match the tat on my right ankle.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: I think many of us are baffled as well.
Darkrose
@Anne Laurie: Shakespeare’s Twitter feed would be dick jokes, puns, and ongoing beef with Marlowe. It would be amazing.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: yeah like “what are you people thinking?” And even some frantic speechifying against The Donald. Especially in Spain.
Wondering if there might be less of that in Italy, since they’ve elected their own crazy ass gazillionaire to an office for which he was unsuitable.
One Dutch guy in Spain told me how appalling he’d found CNN US (“it was all about this missing girl, even once she was found, and not anything like European news”). He also thought it was dangerous that we get to vote without getting any European/world news. That the US president has such outsized influence.
Didn’t have the heart to tell him we do get foreign news in the US. About how backward those Europeans are (ass backwards, once you see the clean cities w good services and without advertising everywhere; beautiful parks for people) and how dangerous the brown (Muslim) hordes.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve determined my next adventure will be The Hills. Not another hike to the local mountains(the kid expressed concern about me hiking up there alone), but to Beverly Hills and Century City. I took the Wilshire bus to LACMA(LA County Museum of Art) and it was much better that my last trip on the Wilshire bus 35 years ago. They have “Rapid buses” that have limited stops and a dedicated(sort of) bus lane and the buses are cleaner. It actually doesn’t remind me of Weird Al’s “Another One Rides the Bus” anymore.
Mary G
@Anne Laurie: Good point. I appreciate you curating Twitter for me; you’re more patient than I am. I find it overwhelming.
gene108
I have a rough idea for a political themed party game. It is based on my conclusion that all Republican solutions for domestic policy comes down to some use and/or combo of tax cuts, tax credits and/or vouchers. Edit: A fourth solution is deregulation. Just occurred to me.
For example:
Republican plan for “fixing” education is vouchers.
Their plan to “fix” healthcare is tax credits.
The game is an ad-lib game wherein party goers try to sound like right-wing pundits.
In one pile write out the three solutions on separate slips: tax cuts, tax credits, and vouchers.
In the other pile write down problems like infrastructure, healthcare, public schools, etc.
Pick one solution and one problem at random and try to ad-lib your best impression of a right-wing intellectual explaining how “vouchers” are a “serious” solution for “infrastructure” investment.
If someone on your party is very good, post it to YouTube, Twitter, etc.
I know the range of people, who would be interested is limited. But in the right partisan crowd it might be fun.
Drinking Game Option: Maybe you could incorporate a over used right-wing cliche like “person of faith” or “job creator” or “in the words of Ronald Reagan” and drink, when mentioned in the ad-lib.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Speaking as a carpenter with years of experience in these things, screws drive just as well as nails when properly hammered.
OzarkHillbilly
@otmar: If you get the chance, take the hike up to Castell d’ Alaro. You won’t be sorry. My wife is from Mallorca, been there a couple times, really seriously cool place with lots to see and do- Soller, Alcudia, Sa Colabra, Valldemossa… Screw the beaches, give me the mountains and that rocky north coast. Also if you are interested, take in a tour cave or 2. Mediterranean caves are other worldly.
JosieJ (not Josie)
@OzarkHillbilly:
Would that be the carpenter who’s hammered, or the screw? ?
Applejinx
Since when is people voting a horrible day?
I voted in the VT Dem primary yesterday, and it was far from horrible. The Republican candidate calling for my choice of President to be murdered is horrible.
Rule of law, my fucking ass. This is would-be Somalia. No way.
OzarkHillbilly
@JosieJ (not Josie): I can not tell a lie…. :-)
Applejinx
You know if the Republicans pull the nomination from Trump, they will immediately become the primary target.
This should scare the fuck out of them, and bear that in mind.
It’s one thing to be wanting to murder Hillary for what, decades, but if suddenly the establishment Republicans pull something and turn against Trump, that would be taken as grounds for really aggressive action against the ‘traitors’. When those ‘on your side’ turn coats, it’s an emergency way beyond resisting the ‘long term and known enemy’. And these Republicans don’t have anywhere near the Secret Service protection.
They literally can’t back down or creep away from Trump at this point. They’ll literally be killed by their own side… or those they’ve allowed to become their side. Being ‘RINO’ over this will be seen as worse and more dangerous than being Clinton.
Anne Laurie
@Mary G: I have ADD and (mild) OCD; combing through tweetstreams fits my natural skill set.
On the other hand, I *don’t* have a twitter account of my own, because I’m old enough to know that I can tweet or I can blog here. And I love you guys too much to abandon you. ;)
SFAW
@Anne Laurie:
Thanks?
Oh, I mean “Thanks!”
Joel
@Major Major Major Major: I would agree, except that these twitter grafs seem to reach a broader audience.
Paul T
“Tweetstreams” have jumped the shark. Enough.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: I love that poster!
I’m almost done with the “Eels” excerpt, btw.
Miss Bianca
@hellslittlestangel: love it! : )
AxelFoley
@akryan:
Missed the Dream Team in 1992?
Uncle Cosmo
@Applejinx:
Concur.
Promise the Talibangelicals to put the wimmiins back in their place, promise the ammosexuals their dog-given right to a home arsenal, promise the white herrenvolk to stop giving their tax $$$ away to “those people”…& once you get in office, ignore those promises in favor of the one you made to your 0.01% sugardaddies: Stuffing more of the U.S. Treasury into their pockets.
The Republican Party playbook has been one gigundous scam on their voters ever since St. Ronaldus the Unready. You know it, I know it, & if Rancid Pubis & his b’hoys manage to yank the nomination back from Trumpolini, the Talibangelicals & ammosexuals & white racists might just figure it out as well. And then…