I’m watching America’s Got Talent when a 12-year-old girl arrives on stage. She says she’s a stand-up comedian, which usually means (at that age) that her parents are generally responsible for the content. So, as she begins the set, she starts making jokes about how funny it is that babysitters her age are trusted despite the fact that their primary qualification is that they used to be babies. She goes on to compare that to trusting people as doctors on the basis that they have been sick before.
Up to this point, the comedy works. It is observational, accessible, and genuinely clever. There is a natural rhythm to the logic, and the humor arises from genuine observation. It draws people in and allows them to laugh at the absurdities (as framed) of everyday life. This is the kind of comedy that succeeds without manipulation — it engages the audience, builds rapport, and rewards the listener with cleverness rather than coercion or divisive insults.
It turns out to be a very short set, and so before long it takes an unexpected turn, and not for the better. Continuing with the ‘comparison’ bit, she suddenly goes political by saying that it’s like thinking that you’re qualified for the presidency because you’ve been on reality television. That’s the punchline. That was her very last line, and it was not just low-hanging fruit for an easy laugh; it was obviously a political jab inserted or inspired by her parents, and it was ultimately lazy work (so typical of this segment of the population) for the fact that they clearly couldn’t come up with anything better.
Personally, I rather enjoyed the comedy before she went political, and it’s a bit of a betrayal when a comedian does this, especially when the audience is being especially graceful because the comedian is just a 12-year-old girl. It is manipulative because it takes advantage of this grace, and it exploits the sensibilities of people who don’t like it yet are sensible enough not to boo, while the rest of the audience gives a standing ovation. Humor, in this case, was weaponized, and circumstances as well as sensibilities were exploited to alienate and to band people together in a hostile posture against the people left to feel small, unapproved, and unaccepted. This is precisely the kind of subtle exploitation that alienates and excludes while the speaker and the approving members of the audience enjoy their laugh as part of the ‘in’ crowd — so much for ‘inclusivity’, I suppose. In this particular case, humor relies not only on cleverness but on a careful leveraging of audience perception — the grace extended to a child, the cultural cues about politics, and the applause that signals agreement. Those outside of the ‘in’ group are expected to swallow and shut up, or to pretend that they like it or otherwise risk showing hurt feelings or standing out from the crowd. It is a cruel trick indeed, and extremely manipulative.
After all, it is hard to know how many of the people in the audience are standing in applause just because it is a 12-year-old girl, or because they generally enjoyed the comedy (despite the political turn), or because they approve of the political message; either way, however, it looks like a crowd supporting the political message because it was the final remark before the applause. The ethical issue here is that the audience can be guided or used to appear to support something they might not truly endorse — a manipulation of perception that creates and perpetuates a kind of propaganda.
It’s a dishonest and manipulative way to open people up to poor logic and propaganda, and it is particularly manipulative of the parents who are (wittingly or otherwise) using their daughter (or allowing her to be used) to promote a particular political cause; in this case a kind of illogical condemnation of President Trump, and a kind of condemnation which strikes at not just Trump himself and not just his most loyal supporters, but the ideas and the country he represents (symbolically) to the people who’ve grown tired and leery of the establishment and the career politicians who, oddly enough, decide what (and how much of it) viewers see when they’re watching television — including this segment of America’s Got Talent, a show aired by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), one of the media giants in the Leftist propaganda machine.
Of course, another obvious irony coming out of this is that, among almost all modern American presidents, Donald Trump is among the most accomplished (and qualified, so far as any person can be qualified for such a job) men to have been president of the United States.
What’s ironic is that people often think that presidentiality and careers in politics make a person qualified to hold that office, but that experience makes a person a career politician knowledgeable about politics but not necessarily the affairs that actually matter to communities and constituents. Success in the free market, however, demands just this kind of knowledge, meaning that Donald Trump (as a successful businessman and media personality) at least has a demonstrated track record of making deals, negotiating in business, leading people and understanding society, markets, and business — this is more than can be said for any career politician who has virtually no track record at all outside of his electability.
This is not an endorsement of Donald Trump, but rather an identification of yet another in a sea of double standards; an identification of the hypocrisy where criticisms and aspersions are (without as much as a second thought) cast toward Trump while sparing each of his Democrat predecessors who were lacking far more of the qualities (and faculties) that any reasonable person and critical thinker would expect of a viable presidential candidate. Of course, this ‘sparing’ of Democrat presidents and presidential candidates is not necessarily for a failure to consistently apply the logic. After all, it’s not the logic that drives or supports the conclusions. They ‘spare’ the Democrats simply because they are told to support, accept, or excuse them — because, they are told, it is the Democrats who are on the side of the underdogs, the marginalized, and the victims. Again, this is merely what they are told. This tendency to ‘spare’ the Democrats has been shown to be true in various ways, one of them being polls conducted where the ideas of Donald Trump or other Republicans are presented as if they belong to a Democrat, or vice versa. Whatever the case, the Democrat is predisposed to favoring or excusing the ideas when they are presented as belonging to a Democrat or the Democratic Party, whereas those which are presented as originating with Trump or the Republican Party are questioned, met with apprehension, or rejected outright.
Oddly enough, Donald Trump used to be held in high regard all across the United States, and the many people who publicly celebrated and associated with him, or who privately did so or benefitted from an association with him, changed their tune only at the time when he decided to make a serious run for public office. That is the irony — a man once held in high regard so suddenly reviled when he decides to run for office; a man of superlative qualities and accomplishments who so suddenly became a ‘villain’ when he switched from being a Democrat to being a Republican.
The irony is in all of this and in the fact that most of the people deriding Donald Trump found him interesting, if not likable, in decades prior, but changed their minds when directed to do so. The irony here is that it is because of television that they have changed their minds. So, whereas Donald Trump was indeed a reality television star, he was also much more than that; yet, with those who followed the instructions posted on social media or uttered on television, they believe themselves to be experts for having been glued to their screens — and on that basis they fancy themselves legitimate as voters, and they believe that their opinions count for the same reasons; they fancy themselves smarter not for thinking carefully through the issues, but for arriving at the ‘correct’ and certified conclusions. They may not justify or present their legitimacy in this way — being so honest would doubtless undermine their cause — and they may, in some cases, even succeed in convincing themselves that this isn’t true; however, this has no bearing on its being true. Regardless, this demonstrates just how media shapes beliefs: audiences are not passive, but they are being guided, often unknowingly, by cues embedded in entertainment, and they are often made to laugh for the sake of getting them to bring their guards down so that they will be more susceptible to the message.
The irony is that there is one guy (Donald Trump) who worked in television and understands it, and who routinely calls it out as “fake news”, whereas the viewers specialize in sitting there and watching — and, miraculously, in this context, they take themselves to be experts because they watched it, and — get this! — they are ‘experts’ because they watched and listened to other people on — get this! — TV who also fancy themselves ‘experts’. But the latter ‘experts’ have yet another reason to believe that their ideas are more than mere opinions: they get paid extraordinary sums to voice them into microphones that broadcast them far and wide.
As for these self-appointed ‘experts’, had their views been developed by other material means beyond television, reality TV, or social media, we might be able to more charitably assess them, but in their dismissal of Donald Trump (where they yet champion Joe Rogan, a less accomplished reality TV host), they reveal themselves as hypocrites unaware of the irony and of just how easily they were groomed into hating somebody they don’t know — and somebody whom they (or others like them) were once just as easily groomed to like or find interesting.
The joke, as it seems, is not just that their views are the consequence of television programming, but that they are actively contributing to that programming on yet another television show — America’s Got Talent.
Ultimately, the purpose of comedy is to make people laugh and to bring them together; it is to allow people to relax and to find humor in the odd or mundane things around us. Political commentary doesn’t accomplish that — particularly the kind that is partisan, misleading and obviously fallacious. Political commentary of this kind divides and insults people, especially where more than half of American voters supported the man being criticized (and indecently so); especially where it is the man, not even any of his ideas, that is being written off wholesale because of a fallacious and misleading ‘joke’; especially when that man has already been used up as the popular punching bag; and especially when you make that ‘joke’ on a program called America’s Got Talent, where proud Americans who voted for Trump want to support the Americans on stage but are instead insulted and made to feel alone and afraid while others are left standing in applause. Smart and well-intentioned parents understand this, and such parents never would have allowed their 12-year-old daughter to make such fools of her family in public; but, as it turns out, her parents are not that type, but rather the kind who engender those thoughts and encourage their daughter to disguise them as ‘comedy’.
It is precisely these kinds of antics that are so cruel, and coming from the people (typically Democrats/Leftists) who fancy themselves ‘progressive’ and ‘inclusive’ and ‘tolerant’, they constitute the most abject form of hypocrisy. In the end, the punchline took what was otherwise a good set and made it no longer funny. It did just as President Trump says wokeism does to everything it touches: put delicately, it quickly turned to crap. And, in this case, it became the butt of its own joke — unintentional self-satire and a messy caricature of the people who are ruining comedy when they’re not otherwise canceling it.
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