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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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Puerto Rico also literally has a trash problem (because its government is not just corrupt but incompetent)

True, but I have about as much faith that Tony Hinchcliffe was joking about a legitimate solid waste management problem (which is, at best, only really only funny to an audience familiar with its existence) as I do in the administration's apostrophe in the Biden transcript.

Do you know Tony Hinchcliffe? He goes for obscure refences all the time. Sometimes he verges on "too online" with his comedy he goes with references so niche. The first part of the joke is in fact a reference to the fact that there is a literal giant island of trash in the ocean. Why wouldn't the punchline be about Puerto Rico's notoriously dysfunctional waste management?

Because it's a joke that's been done many times with different islands as the punchline. I've heard the same joke with Australia or the UK as the punchline.

Yeah - the point of the joke is to clown on an island you don't like. The reason it was a gaffe isn't that Hinchcliffe told a rude joke (Trump being happy to say worse things than that is long since priced in) - it is that he read the room at a Trump rally and thought that Puerto Rico was the right island to clown on.