… rather than as ‘a callous statement made in earnest’?
I refer, of cause, to White House staffer Kelly Sadler’s statement ‘It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway’ in the context of McCain’s opposition to Gina Haspel’s nomination for CIA director.
US reports seem to invariably categorize it as ‘a joke’, which I don’t quite understand.
Gallow’s humor is still humor. There’s a long tradition of it in the US and I assumed in other countries as well. Wasn’t it St. Lawrence who while being roasted alive for his faith said something to the effect that, “I’m well-done on this side, why don’t you turn me over and eat me?” Then to compound the humor the church made him the patron saint of chefs? This could certainly be a statement that plays on similar types of humor. It might be tasteless, but it’s certainly possible it was made with the intent of getting a laugh. Whether it did or not is probably something for the audience to decide.
Gina Haspel’s nomination will be decided soon, and McCain’s death, though not likely to be far in the future, is by no means so certainly imminent that it’s inevitability justifies dismissing the impact of McCain’s opposition. So people assume that’s not what Ms. Sadler was doing.
Now it is of course possible, considering the quality of what President Trump promised, and keeps promising, would be the “best people”, she’s that dumb, but all things considered it seems more likely to be a morbid quip.
You are incorrect.
Media reports have quoted the Trump camp saying it was a joke, but have not “invariably” or even commonly accepted that explanation.
I don’t think anybody means “joke, haha”, they mean “joke” as in not intended to be taken seriously.
It’s exactly the same thing that happened when Trump said he likes heroes who aren’t captured. He wasn’t originally being serious, but when challenged on it, Trump didn’t apologize, he doubled down on it.
Similar disjunct over the recent Press Corps dinner. A comedian made jokes about Sara Huckabee-Sanders. The administration expressed outrage. Yet when Trump or his minions say something tasteless or disrespectful, they claim the offended parties need to develop a sense of humor.
I’ve not followed it closely, but I’ve not seen the McCain remark described as a joke. Instead, the issue I saw reported was whether an apology was warranted and, if so, what form that apology should take. I thought the general consensus was that the remark was - at the least - in poor taste and disrespectful. Which is pretty much how I view it. Not as big a deal as some folk are trying to make it out to be. Of course, I never thought McCain was the unblemished national hero he is often presented as. His record as a POW is only a fraction of his life’s work.
I think a better question is not why people consider it a joke, which I can understand, but rather why does it being a joke make it more acceptable? For instance, if I tell a joke that implies that a random racial group is lazy or stupid, I don’t get a pass because it’s a joke. We recognize that telling that kind of joke is normalizing thinking of that group as lazy or stupid. We would rightly consider such a ‘joke’ to be inappropriate and indicative of a racist attitude.
So if this is actually a ‘joke’, it seems to tell us that Sadler finds it funny to contemplate the death of someone that disagrees with their position. That’s not a particularly good thing. Generally we call people who find the deaths of their opponents to be amusing ‘fascists’ and it’s not behaviour we as a society should be dismissing or encouraging.
I’ve heard the comment described as “a tasteless remark”, which seems adequate and accurate.
I think you are mistaking what the Trump Administration says to spin the comment with ‘US reports’, which I assume you mean US media. Basically, whether someone thinks it’s a joke or not depends on whether they are a Trump supporter or not…which is usually the case with things like this. One side spins it as a ‘joke’, the other side pretends (or not) outrage. The mistake is thinking that the US is some sort of monolith or in lockstep on…well, on anything. That is never, ever the case.
That’s my experience, too. No one in the media knows whether it was a joke or not. It may have been, or it may not have been.
The callous statement was not a joke, and no normal human thinks it was. Only a psychopath could intend such a remark as funny.
We live in a time that the U.S. Administration communicates mostly with bald-faced lies. Some Americans believe the lies; many more realize that they are lies, but admire a team so adept at lying — surely it is lies that we need to Make America Great Again.
There are a few Trump supporters who might be bothered by such a lie, or such a callous statement, but it doesn’t matter: This despicable remark and the lie to justify it will soon be swept aside and buried underneath more lies and more despicable remarks. The Trump supporter is like Kurtz in the Joseph Conrad novel, reduced in the end to just croaking “Benghazi! Benghazi!”
HTH.
It’s very simple: normal people clearly don’t think remarks like this are a joke.
But the Trump Administration insists that it was a joke, so the Republican Party at all levels falls in line and agrees with him.
So now Dems say it wasn’t a joke, and Repubs say it was.
So now it’s a matter of partisan disagreement, so the media feels it has to report the matter in a way that is non-determinative, to report in a way that gives equal credence to the joke and the non-joke interpretations.
Welcome to our Bizarro World.
I don’t like the Trumpists either, but let’s get serious for a moment; of course it might have been a joke. Of course even psychopaths can joke and have a sense of humor. Even monsters can joke. In fact, they can be very funny. Don’t believe me? Bill Cosby.
A joke being disgusting or tasteless or unfunny does not mean it isn’t a joke.
Taken just by the words, the comment may or may not have been intended as a joke; we do not know the exact context or tone of voice, without which it is impossible to say.
Typically when some politician is caught making a racist or sexist comment, they say it was only a joke - and then they apologize to anyone who might have been offended. The controversy here is that the Trumpists are such big slime balls that they can’t even do that.
Not that the comment was a real joke, more snark.
And yet, an offhand if crassly ll-conceived comment recieved headline news treatment for the better part of a day. Meanwhile, Scott Pruitt is facing an even dozen investigations for finance and ethics violations, Trump’s vaunted ‘negotiation’ with North Korea is (predictably) collapsing like a punctured hot air balloon, and the decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem has resulted in the worst violence in the Gaza Strip in over a decade. It’s pretty easy to get outraged at Trump and his clown car of dime store collectible horror figurines from Steve Mnuchin to Betsy DeVos but news organizations need to focus on what is really important rather than running around like a bunch of gossiping middle school children about who said what about whom on a daily basis lest the substance of Trump’s manifest unsuitability and corrption be lost in the froth of general outrage.
Stranger
Trump just nakedly, openly accepted a massive bribe from China to favor a Chinese company in trade rules. I mean, he’s openly breaking the law and committing high crimes, and the Republicans don’t care.
Trump is finishing his term, and the GOP is going to the mattresses to get him re-elected. If you’re hoping for his removal from office, it’s not happening.
This is a tiny issue, albeit a symptom of a terrible disease.
Are none of these people normal (and that was just last week; there are plenty more where that came from)? You seriously think no normal person has ever made a tasteless joke about someone dying? Really?
What is “simple” is that none of us was in the room and none of us knows whether it was a joke or not. And frankly, I don’t think it matters. It was a completely unprofessional thing to say, joke or no joke.
Pretty much. It’s ironic, to me, that many people who dislike McCain and badmouthed him when he was running are now full of righteous anger and angst over this ‘joke’, while a lot of folks who voted for him or supported him in the past are just handwaving this away. It’s also why we get so much RO over various things that some think are funny while others are extremely offended by, and how this can switch back and forth depending on who is making the ‘joke’ and who is the butt of the supposed ‘joke’.
I think there is a lot to be really outraged over wrt the Trump administration. Hell, CNN did an article today just over real shit that went down this week (in the last 24 hours actually), and how we’ve become so immured to the various Trump outrages that many of them just aren’t getting much thought, despite the fact that in the past, any one of them would be a major headline and probably political firestorm in and of itself.
Americans being obsessed with the superficial predates Trump, though. It may be more consequential wrt Trump, but we’ve been like this for a long, long time.
Trump seems to exploit that to a degree unknown before him, though. But, yeah, it’s nothing really new. I don’t think it’s particularly American, either.