One big danger of political humor is that some folks just don’t get the joke. You say something outrageous and they don’t get that you were exaggerating, but think you were lying, or ignorant, or worse yet they take you at your word, and think you were telling the truth.

Daniel Boone liked to claim things that were not true; he claimed he jumped the Mississippi and that he lassoed a tornado and that he killed a bear (with his bear hands) when he was three. The joke was on anyone who took him seriously, and I’m sure there were those who did: “Why that’s not true!” “You’re a liar!” or worse yet “Wow, how did you do that!” It’s a sort of brag-joke that, today is called “trolling.”

But there is a bigger danger with political jokes, and that happens when you’re not quite making a joke and folks realize you are telling the truth, or at least that there is a dagger of threat thats being passed off within a joke, or as part of an exaggeration. Basically, they realize that this joke was no joke at all.

A recent case in point, two weeks ago Trump was speaking to Jewish businessmen, and told them about his troubles building the US embassy in Jerusalem (read the whole speech here), but within the funny story is a hook:

“And I called David Friedman.  I said, “David, I need some help.  I just approved an embassy, and they want to spend $2 billion to build the embassy.  And I know what that means: You’re never going to get it built.  It’ll take years and years.”  I said, “You know what’s going on here? …. So we’re going to spend 2 billion, and one of them was going to buy a lousy location.  A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well.  You’re brutal killers.  (Laughter.)  Not nice people at all.  But you have to vote for me; you have no choice.  You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that.  (Laughter and applause.)  You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax.  “Yeah, let’s take 100 percent of your wealth away.”  No, no.  Even if you don’t like me; some of you don’t.  Some of you I don’t like at all, actually.  (Laughter.)  And you’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes, if they get it.  So I don’t have to spend a lot of time on that. But David calls me back and he goes, “Sir” — he always used to call me “Donald.”

The press claimed the above was vile and anti-semitic. It almost sounds otherwise when quoted in context, but they are not totally off. There is truth inside that jest. Such truths lose the humor, but they do get the message across. A lot has to do with the delivery. Ideally the folks that you want to get the point will, and the rest will think you mean nothing by it. It’s a hard act.

Robert Buxbaum December 23, 2019.