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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   34226 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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How do you think the Puerto Rico joke will affect the election?

What "Puerto Rico joke", and why would anyone think it would effect the election?

One of the speakers at Trump’s MSG rally was talking shit about Puerto Rico.

It’d be a campaign-ending breach of decorum for any other candidate, but for Trump, it was Sunday. Not much chance it swings the election.

I think those remarks have low potential upside for Trump's campaign and high potential downside. I doubt that the number of people who would decide to go out and vote for Trump because a comedian at his event said Puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage is as large as the number of people who would decide to come out and vote against Trump because of it. So it was careless for Trump's campaign to allow it to happen. It's another unforced error, following on the heels of when Tucker Carlson, a few days ago in a public speech, made a long political metaphor involving spanking one's daughter. These are the kinds of things that make me wonder, did Trump's campaign people start smoking meth the last few days or something? It's just stupid, stupid shit that might endanger an election that might well be decided by a few tens of thousands of votes, especially given that the Democrats have spent the last week putting a lot of media energy into trying to make the Madison Square Garden rally seem like a Nazi rally. Like come on, Trump campaign people, just shut up and go do more McDonalds type photo ops and talk about crime and immigration and shit. There's a time and a place for crude, controversial jokes. A week before the election and at a highly publicized rally at a major venue where most of your main people appear is probably not the right time and place.

If the joke had been about Haiti I could see it being a boost for Trump, following the pattern where he dog-whistles racism shortly before elections in order to get racists to vote for him, even though he doesn't end up implementing any of the policies they support. But Puerto Rico was a non sequitur because nobody had been making a campaign issue out of anything related to Puerto Rico. I don't see it having any effect IMO.

I don't know who that guy is, maybe he's totally out of the loop and using stale lines? Or not generally political and falling back on stuff from last time PR was politically relevant?

These guys need an SNL writers room feeding them topical lines. Just more missing cultural infrastructure.

He is the host of the largest live podcast in the world. I could see the joke doing fine at his normal events.

You can see that he is getting a bad audience reception and gets nervous and it makes everything worse (he even does the risky thing about commenting on the cold reception). Allegedly, there’s some background about the islands trash collection being bad or something, but I watched the set and it just comes off as mean and punching down (plus even if that was the connection it’s not well enough known to make for a good joke). As do about half the jokes overall. Just bad vibes all around. It doesn’t even have any lead in!

Making jokes at a political rally is always a little dicey (especially since on possible pillar of comedy is an element of transgression) but there’s absolutely such a thing as being too mean and he was absolutely in that zone, to my judgement. I only chucked once.

Judging by the massive surge in DJT stock this morning, or prediction markets, not at all.

unchanged:

https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024?tid=1730135416810

It won't

So far the outrage seems to be localized in people that have never entertained voting for trump as a thought. And I do hope that the blue collars will pass the IQ test of "comedians telling jokes and landing flat" that the punditry class seems to have failed.

Agree. It's been this way since 2016: "OMG Trump did or said bad thing , I am going to vote for Hillary/Biden/Harris" said probably no one.

Please put more effort into top level posts

Young Latinos love KillTony and older Latinos from Puero Rico are probably critical of their home country. I doubt it changes their vote.

Reuters article to flesh out this low-effort comment

Political leaders from both sides of the aisle and Puerto Rican celebrities bashed comments at a major Donald Trump event in New York by a comedian who called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."

Speaking before the Republican presidential candidate at a rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, comedian and podcast host Tony Hinchcliffe added that Latinos "love making babies" and that they do not "pull out," comments that leaned into a racist trope that Latinos are preoccupied with childbearing and averse to birth control.

"There's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now," Hinchcliffe said. "I think it's called Puerto Rico."

The presidential campaign of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats, several prominent Puerto Rican celebrities and some congressional Republicans denounced the comments, which were widely panned as racist.

The Trump campaign itself said the comments do not "reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign." Trump himself has not commented on Hinchcliffe's performance.

podcast host Tony Hinchcliffe added that Latinos "love making babies" and that they do not "pull out," comments that leaned into a racist trope that Latinos are preoccupied with childbearing and averse to birth control.

The irony is that the age of the big Catholic family in Latin America is over. Mexico has a lower birth rate than the USA. Puerto Rico's TFR is lower than Singapore!

This was an example of an unforced error, albeit a tiny one in the grand schemes of things. It makes me wonder why anyone would book a comedian at all. Politics is very much scripted; comedians by trade are not.

Probably tiny. The problem is that, if the polls are accurate, this is a ludicrously close race and tiny errors can have huge effects.

The Hispanics in the US have a birthrate identical to republicans and in actual Latin American countries it’s, like in Latin European countries, lower than America.

While I don’t think contraception is good, ‘Hispanics have a lot of kids because the Catholic Church tells them to’ is mostly not true, see also, the percentage of those births out of wedlock(very high).

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