PLANK SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
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“First things first, I’ll eat your brains.” It’s a Nicki Minaj line, and also an apt description of what this election cycle appears to have done to the political press’s grey matter, particularly the part of the brain that processes humor. The latest kerfuffle: Last evening, a new Lil’ Wayne mixtape hit the Internet, featuring a line in which Minaj raps, “I’m a Republican, voting for Mitt Romney/you lazy bitches is fucking up the economy.” Buzzfeed and others immediately seized on the line as “proof” that Minaj is actually a right-winger. Never mind that next line of the verse, “out in Miami, I’ll be chilling with a zombie” places the rap firmly in the magical realism realm where Minaj loves to dwell. Never mind that this description of the Mitt Romney voter is hilarious and trenchant and obviously critical. Nor that this isn’t even the first time in recent memory a rapper has made a barbed joke about Republicanism-as-status-symbol. (George W. Bush foil Kanye West, on 2011’s Watch the Throne: “And I’ll never let my son have an ego/He’ll be nice to everyone, wherever we go/I mean I might even make him be Republican/So everybody know he love white people.”)
Minaj is, as Ross Douthat pointed out this morning, in the same boat as David Brooks. (Did I just kill hip-hop by typing that sentence?) Brooks—who has a not insignificant body of work as a gentle satirist—attempted last week to write a column mocking the way the press has written critically about Mitt Romney; it was greeted with confusion from both the right and the left. His tongue was too firmly in cheek for this election cycle, apparently: Brooks told Daily Intel yesterday that “The lesson is never tell jokes about politics.”
Maybe it’s just don’t ever tell jokes about the way Mitt Romney is characterized. (Or, OK, tell funnier ones.) While Brooks’ effort was greeted with confusion, The National Review’s Kevin Williamson’s hilarious high-level satire of the gendered and class-obsessed storylines surrounding this campaign was received with anger. Intentionally ridiculous lines like “From an evolutionary point of view, Mitt Romney should get 100 percent of the female vote. All of it. He should get Michelle Obama’s vote” were greeted with not just straight faces, but grave, concerned ones.
I understand, sorta, why people are so quick to be upset. Plenty of the “jokes” politics have lobbed our way lately have been unfunny (I’m looking at you, Foster Friess). And plenty of the “real” policy discussion has been a joke. (Hey there, Todd Akin!) The National Review is not the Onion. But when someone (a non- Stewart/Colbert someone) wants to satirize precisely all that ridiculousness, are we so far gone through the earnest-outrage wormhole that we can’t even manage an appreciative chuckle?
5 comments
The problem with Romney/Ryan is that they're so reality challenged, any satire you attempt with them could easily become their next day's talking point. Sarcasm only works if the statement is close enough to what they could say, but outrageous enough they would never say it. There's very few statements so outrageous Romney or Ryan wouldn't say them. Well, okay, the Akin's "rape" statement was too outrageous, but then it wasn't funny either. It's also true that trying to make jokes about somebody who lies so egregiously, who's doing pretty well in the election, can be a difficult thing to do.
- AllanL5
September 4, 2012 at 12:02pm
I just read that Brooks article and if it is meant to be a satire on what Democrats think about Romney then how could he have come up with this line: Some have said that Romney’s lifestyle is overly privileged, pointing to the fact that he has an elevator for his cars in the garage of his San Diego home. This is not entirely fair. Romney owns many homes without garage elevators and the cars have to take the stairs. Or this: He had a pet rock, which ran away from home because it was starved of affection. Of course these two statements poke fun at Romney and not at Democrats so Brooks is being lame now.
- blackton
September 4, 2012 at 12:32pm
Brooks's problem was that it was not possible to tell whether he was satirizing the press or satirizing Romney. If anything it looked more like a satire on Romney, which is why, coming from Brooks, it was so puzzling. Speaking of David Brooks, I've been having great fun this election season experimenting with just how scathingly disdainful I can make my comments after his column and still get them past the Times moderators. The limit seems to be directly questioning Brooks's intelligence and/or morality. Yesterday, I tried to sneak one through by resorting to an archaism, asking Brooks whether he was a "dunce or a knave," but I probably ruined my test when by way of clarification and amplification I said that anyone who had read all the books Brooks claims to have read and still backed vandals like Paul Ryan had either to be "stupid or vicious." My comment didn't get through.
- AaronW
September 4, 2012 at 3:01pm
The Brooks article nailed Romney. That's why I didn't read it as satire. I was thinking, gee great piece - Brooks has finally come around and now sees the truth. LOL.
- Sophia
September 4, 2012 at 3:18pm
Yeah, blackie, that Brooks satire was mos def about Romney. The deal is that David Brooks is a stealth ideologue. Brooks's wicket, as roidubouloi has well noted on these boards, is packaging wingnuttery in such a way that it's palatable for older, moneyed, centrist, East Coast readers/voters/campaign contributors. My interpretation of his satire on Romney was that he had taken a look back at his recent run of overtly partisan columns and thought that maybe he'd let his mask of impartiality and moderation slip down a too far and reckoned that a harmless celebrity-roast-style piece on the GOP candidate could help him appear independent without doing any real damage to his man. The adverse reaction from Brooks's own Republican camp and his mealymouthed excuse that he was really going after the press was simply a reflection of how vulnerable Romney is to just this sort of attack--i.e. Brooks's satire wasn't has harmless as he had thought it would be--and also a reflection of the fact that David Brooks is himself nearly as clueless as the man at whom he sought to poke fun.
- AaronW
September 4, 2012 at 3:18pm