Monday, September 18, 2017

Trump is a clown

In comments at other sites to any article about Trump, there is always, alway, always some dope who says, "Orange Man," or "Cheetos Head" absolutely stuck on their one 5th Grade epithet, the only thing they can muster to toss out, the diggiest dig they can dig, the pooiest poo they can fling, not even worth the trouble of entering a password to comment, but that is the best they can do. "Trump is a clown" bothered me in the past because it is so vacuous in the same way. What are other commenters going to do, argue with that? Why bother? It would be like picking up an argument with a resolutely disturbed child. And disturbing the status quo is why Trump was hired in the first place.

Then the film "It" comes out and clowns are menacing all over again.

What kind of clown would Trump be then, a circus clown, a Stephen King clown, a birthday party clown, a singing Puddles Pity Party clown, an SNL comedian, a Jerry Lewis? No. Commenters cannot have any of those in mind. Trump does not fit any of those. A Bob Hope one-liner clown? No.

Trump is a Twitter 140 character or less clown.

And he's funny as hell.

But only if you're in a mental place to be tickled. Nobody else should even bother reading Trump's tweets. Or else they're looking to be offended.

If not in the mental place to be tickled, to expect any moment a clown, then there is no way that Trump can be funny. If not, then there is no way that one can glean humor from his Tweets. If you hate Trump then you're looking for everything he does to offend you, and offense you will receive. In abundance.

But not everybody is like that. Trump's observable recorded behavior  reminds me of too many businessmen that I know, when they are drunk. But Trump doesn't drink. While he's in that place where they get where silly things tickle them and they share. I'll always remember Bill M. telling me before he died, that before his own father died he carried around in his shirt pocket to show people a one-panel cartoon that I sent to Bill. Bill thought it was funny and he knew that his dad would like it, and he did like it. But that he would carry it around really surprised me. I forgot about the whole thing. It was just a panel I cut out and sent through the mail. It was the common Easter joke of two chocolate bunnies, one asks the other how his Easter went and the other answers, "What?" His ears bitten off. Now, imagine the retired head anesthesiologist at Cedars Sinai, LA walking around with a cartoon in his pocket everyday and showing it to people conversationally. I felt strangely honored. Offhand I can think of a dozen people like this. Trump is like this. This is his clownishness. He shares what he thinks is funny, and usually the more stupid, the sillier, the better. He shares his ridiculous humor. And it is funny, precisely because of from where it comes. Now, the tippy-top, the president of the United States, and something ridiculous is made automatically hilarious because it was relayed by Trump.

The same reason that Trump haters hate it.

And that makes it even more funny.

Knowing it's going to be hated. The double whammy is built in.

1) Rocket Man.


This is so funny I can hardly write.

I'm disabled laughing at this. A surface reading it's stupid. PeeWee Herman disparages, "That's so funny I forgot to laugh." While all things considered it's unspeakably hilarious. This is the president of the United States diminishing the greatest threat to world peace, presently, prosaically as possible. With zero soaring oration or burnished gilded language as you'd expect. 

And that invites ridicule. It sets out the mat for satirists. It fuels their own imaginations. This one absurd tweet opens the floodgates for further ridicule. Which will run both ways, against Trump's target and against Trump himself by Trump's detractors, but they're going to have to be as funny or they will fail. They will be simply scolds. And scolds are not fun. People are attracted to humor, align with goofballs, and turn from scolds. Trump has already been scolded for his tweets, and harshly, but he keeps tweeting because they work. His humor works. Scolding does not. In fact, scolding Trump works for Trump too.   

Go ahead and search on YouTube [kim jong un, rocket man] and observe in real time the number of videos grow. There are already several. Here is my favorite so far.

I like this guy's voice. It's perfectly imperfect. He hits the high notes effortlessly, mispronounces excellently, out of tune barely. But it's way too short. I want more. Everyone who listens and likes it wants more. If you choose to listen, and if you hang on then the next video cues up automatically of Scott Adams made helpless with laughter at Trump's tweets, eventually explaining better than I do, and at indulgent length, exactly why Trump is so funny to people like us, and dismissively, not funny to people who already detest him. 

This is beautiful.


There must be more to this.

Scott Adams is laughing at video shown below on Trump's Twitter account in gif format. It's silly. A clip of Trump teeing off paired with a clip of Hillary falling as she enters her borrowed campaign jet with a golf ball inserted to make it look like Trump knocked down Hillary. Funny for its rudeness. You don't do this to ladies, or even think it. But this lady is quite rude herself. 

Scolds despise this humor and they make their own videos, their own news items about it, and that makes it even funnier than it is. People like Scott Adams finding this hilarious make this mashup funnier than it is on its own. People getting worked up and bent out of shape over something so absurd, being serious about running it down, automatically elevate it to heights of humor unspeakably hilarious. Literally unspeakably, at least momentarily, Scott Adams is unable to speak. Eventually he does and he goes on for thirty seven minutes. 

2) Trump golf ball Hillary



After the video plays, another video is cued up of a scold disparaging the original and missing its mark, harming itself, and not harming the original or Trump, rather, making the original even funnier.

Back to Kim Jung Un, here is another Kim Jung Un as Rocket Man video. These two are the best that I've seen so far. This one is longer and completed, a single frame displays while a radio show plays. Somebody rewrote the lyrics to Rocket Man to satirize Kim Jung and sings it in a faux Asian accent.  Funny, but not so funny as the first, too enthusiastically satire, not so much pure parody as the first one of someone singing ostensively sincerely as Kim Jung Un, and failing, that is hilarious for its presumed talent show earnestness, the first one is pretending not to be satire, it does not announce itself as satire, and that's funny. If Trump begins retweeting these as they continue to be generated it will confirm the space that he's working diminishing fearful foes as a cartoon in his pocket, provoking scolds, hilarious and charming to disinterested observers while intolerably clownishly orange face and unpresidential for his detractors. 

16 comments:

The Dude said...

Stephen Sondheim is 87 - who knew?

Chip Ahoy said...

Oh! I have it now. The first Rocket Man really is a genuine Karaoke type attempt. That's why it's so sweetly sincere sounding. There was no attempt at parody. Just William Hung singing. I found it easily. First result [rocket man cover, asian] Boom, there it is, a real guy really singing it. Beautiful. What an amazingly perfect satire. All the elements are right there to put it together. No special skills necessary. Just mix.

edutcher said...

Say what you will, The Donald lives rent-free in his enemies' heads.

deborah said...

Absolutely, Ed. William Shatner does a memorable Rocket Man.

AllenS said...

That video of Trump teeing off and the golf ball hitting Hillary and knocking her down is absolutely pure gold.

Chip Ahoy said...

Did you watch Scott Adams cracking up trying to explain it? Because that right there is funny. That was my exact reaction. It's not just the mashup, it's everything layered onto it.

MamaM said...

All the more fun because the shot comes in from behind while Hillary's focused elsewhere, showing the deplorables her back and tripping up all on her own. It's the perfect response to "What Happened".

Plus it showcases his vitality and flair, along with his skill in using a club, as he puts his "whole self in" hokey pokey style while wearing the white pants touted as her signature.

That's going to be a hard image to push aside down the road, which may account for the buzz of fury from those who were sure this was enough:
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/07/30/style/30OTR/30OTR-master768.jpg

Chip Ahoy said...

I didn't think of that. But it sured does. (I just now had another laughing fit) The Daily Mail featured some woman I never heard of before screeching how terrible it is and how it proves a poor disposition for being president etc., etc., etc., I skipped it actually, and went straight to comments that were 100% unkind toward Hillary.

Chip Ahoy said...

It's not the funniest thing I heard today, though.

I was listening to Ben Shapiro on YouTube, one led to another, and I was busy in a another room and couldn't turn it off, talking about himself shutting down Piers Morgan on the subject of Sandy Hook, and PIers Morgan going, "How dare you" a thing Shapiro says to be funny and here Morgan is doing it for real. Ben remarked, "We hear a British accent and automatically give 10 extra points for intelligence." And I'm al, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha oh, no, we most certainly don't, por contrario, Mario, on the contrary, Mary, we deduct 100 points for talking like rheeee-tards. Baby talk. That's what that is. The infantilization of an entire nation. A one-time empire gone to babbling baby talk. Honestly. I've become so anti-British accent for hearing so much of it, annoyed so terribly by it, I automatically reach for the remote. I'd much rather read subtitles. And THEN they automatically sound 10X smarter when they are speaking. On mute!

Just last night I watching a long video about trebuchets, Britain, naturally, kept muting them, the narrator is American, and the French guy speaks better English than the British do, who sound like idiots purposefully. While American speech is a breath of fresh air.

The Dude said...

While listening to the classical station I heard part of an interview with a pianist from England. Mind you, I pronounce the word "piano" with three distinct syllables - "Pee An Oh" - rhymes with the railroad.

This mook from blighty pronounced it with two syllables - I had never heard such a thing. "Pyah-nah". "Pyah" is not even a sound in English. I turned on the table saw so as to not hear anymore of his sad attempt to speak our language.

deborah said...

Debster's prefers pie-anny.

The Dude said...

The Doctor is in the house, avec le ventre de plomb.

MamaM said...

I've been soothing my September blues with John Hartford's picking and singing. While I know "Lorena" as LowRainAh, it's LoReenAh to him and I'm okey dokey with that, as long as he and I both agree on the sadness of the sun being low in the sky and frost gleaming where the flowers have been.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6KV7p32wE0

deborah said...

That's some good pianny.

MamaM said...

Good pickin' too!!!

MamaM said...

In the long run, it's knowin' what note, back or ball to hit and having the swing capable of making the delivery.

Especially so when black and white thinking or smarm is involved.