Fuck Tony

There’s a political rally currently underway at New York’s Madison Square Garden featuring a line-up of MAGA acolytes, grifters, wannabes, and the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe. If you didn’t catch any of Tony’s remarks, here’s a sample:

“I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

And this:

“And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.”

For those who don’t know, Tony is the host of the “Kill Tony” podcast, in which comics perform sets in front of Tony and guests, who rip the comedian apart. It’s great format for a show and it’s an extremely popular show.

Tony Hinchcliffe knocking ‘em dead at the Trump rally.

The problem is when you try to take a roast format and bring it to a MAGA rally. One of the tenets of the roast format is that it’s all in good fun. Host and guests make fun of each other, no holds barred, and everybody walks away shaking hands and maybe making out. (Probably not making out.) What makes the roast work is that it’s, ironically, a safe space. Nobody gets bent out of shape because everybody understands the format.

Not so much at a MAGA rally, where harm is very much intended. Tony’s racist jokes, by themselves, are whatever. Kind of hacky but who cares? In the context of one of Trump’s hate-a-thons, though, they cease being jokes and start being just some more wallpaper with which to decorate the Eagle’s Nest.

Consider the comments by Syd Rosenberg, longtime New York sports radio announcer and former Imus sidekick who once said that “Venus and Serena Williams would be better off in National Geographic than Playboy.”

(If you don’t wish to click on the link, the article is entitled: “Sports Radio Personality Sid Rosenberg Arrested For DUI After Cops Found Him In The Fetal Position Covered In His Own Vomit.”)

Here was Sid’s contribution to the MSG rally. “She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton. What a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking party. A bunch of degenerates. Lowlives, Jew-haters, and lowlives. Every one of 'em. Every one of 'em.”

The whole fucking party is Jew-haters, degenerates and low lives? Even Hillary Clinton only called a small percentage of Trump’s supporters “deplorable,” and they dined on that for the last decade. I mean, I’m a degenerate and a lowlife, but unlike Sid, at least this Jew didn’t accumulate over $100,000 in gambling debt and subsequently ry to get out of the debt by stealing money from the South Florida radio station he was working at by attempting a “plugola” scheme in which he would promote products in exchange for cash without his station’s knowledge.

But I digress. Back to Tony. When I questioned his “joke” on Twitter, I received the expected pushback from Trump supporters, like a fellow who said to me: “It's called a joke, Michael. Remember comedy? You used to do it before you sold your soul for a few likes on your gay tweets.”

First of all, my gay tweets are private, dude. Second, believe it or not, I did understand the joke. But, apparently, he did not. When I followed up by asking him to explain the joke to me, he said, “The entire place is trash, dummy. Not the people. Good god, you know exactly what he means yet act outraged just to fit in with these fake liberal lunatics. It's a JOKE.”

In other words, he’s claiming that it’s not about the people. Instead, it’s a geography joke, I guess. Good one.

One of the defining hallmarks of the Trump era has been the resurgence and celebration of public cruelty. When somebody says to me that I don’t “get” it, they’re right. I don’t. I don’t understand how obnoxiousness, boorishness, and racism became “comedy.” As I said, in another setting, I don’t give a shit. When the speaker is, in some way, meant to reflect the views of the candidate they’re at the rally to support, I have a big fucking problem with it.

Jokes can work a lot of different ways, but one of the ways I find most destructive is their ability to grant moral license. When a comedian stands up at a political rally and says horrible shit about a race or ethnicity, it has the effect of granting everybody watching moral license to do the same, wrapping themselves in the security blanket of “it’s just a joke.”

Excuse the redundancy, but it’s not just a joke. Not when the candidate you’re supporting has been blasting people of Hispanic heritage for ten years, when he blamed San Juan’s mayor for the nation’s lackluster response, even holding up $20bn in federal aid to the island. He also, allegedly, asked a former Homeland Security chief of staff if he could trade the “dirty” island. So when Hinchcliffe gets on stage at a Trump rally and calls Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” are we supposed to laugh or, as I suspect, are we supposed to agree?

Yeah, I’m a comedy scold because I hate the regressive trend in comedy that seeks to elevate crass shittiness in the name of “freedom of speech.” Yeah, you can say it, but why would you in this setting? Why would you attack a people who live in higher rates of poverty than most other Americans? Who are just a faceless garbage blob in your joke?  Why get up there just to be a dick?

I get it. That’s his schtick. Maybe it’s silly to think he would do anything other than be dick. So if we remove Tony from the equation because he’s just going to do what he does, what does it say about the politician that hired him? What does it say about MAGA? What does it say about a movement that decries “identity politics,” but demeans people according to their identities? They’ve been doing it for a decade. They’re going to keep doing it. I don’t want to kill Tony. And I certainly don’t want to marry him. That leave me with one option: fuck him.