Tony Hinchcliffe, comedy, and racist jokes
At Trump's nazi-fest in Madison Square Garden tonight, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe said:
It's worth watching his delivery. Click through and have a look if you haven't seen it.
It's a form that's often done in standup comedy, and he gets the element of surprise in there as he names the "floating island of garbage". Up to that point, listeners would have thought of an actual garbage patch. But even on the surface, Hinchcliffe's attempt at deadpan doesn't work very well.
Hinchcliffe's joke fails in another interesting way too – it fails as a racist joke. There are two types of racist jokes – three if you count "jokes" that just consist of calling people names. One form of racist joke just substitutes a ethnic group for "stupid" - like "How can the [ethnic group] pilot tell that he has landed the plane with the landing gear up, again? When he has to use full throttle to taxi to the gate." Who you insert is incidental – you could just as well use these kinds of jokes to punch up.
The other type of racist humour relies being so outrageous and offensive that it's funny (at least to the in group). These jokes rely on being shockingly offensive, and they also rely on "generally accepted" (at least by racists) tropes about the target group.
This is where Hinchcliffe fails so badly. It wasn't just that the joke wasn't funny, it was that it required listeners to pretend to believe that Puerto Rico was "an island of garbage". Puerto Rico is beautiful. It deserves the nickname "La Isla del Encanto". And everyone knows it.
You want to punch down at Puerto Rico or Puerto Ricans? There was plenty of fodder for Hinchcliffe (although, granted, that might have required him to do some research, and it would have sailed past his listeners). You want to tell an offensive joke? If you want it to land, you need to say something so outrageous it shocks your listeners. Hinchcliffe wasn't offensive enough to shock an audience of racists, and his joke failed as a racist joke. It also failed as a joke, but that's not surprising.
The one place he might have succeeded was in hurting the GOP's chances with Puerto Rican voters on the eave of the election. If we have to tolerate unfunny racist, at least let them hurt their own cause.