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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   34224 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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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.

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