There’s a popular meme titled “Schrödinger’s Douchebag.” As much as I hate the word, I love the meme: “Schrödinger’s Douchebag: A guy who says offensive things and decides whether he was joking based on the reaction of people around him.” Note: it does not have to be a guy; women are capable of douchebaggery as well. Of course, the meme is based on the famous thought experiment by Erwin Schrödinger, an Austrian physicist (although the original idea is attributed to Albert Einstein), where two outcomes of a particular situation are equally possible, and, at any time before the outcome is known, both are equally true.
I was just kidding. Can’t you take a joke? Where’s your sense of humor? Why are you being so serious?
Comments such as these have been part of bullies’ arsenals forever. They say something mean or insulting or horrible in other ways (racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, etc.), and, when you react with surprise, anger, disgust, or anything other than a hearty, supportive guffaw, they hit you with one of the above or something similar. This kind of verbal bullying makes most people very angry. It may be right up there with “Calm down!” (which, in the history of calming down, has never calmed anyone down). Why is that? Why does something so innocuous make us so angry? I have a few ideas about that.
It can be, as I said, a tactic of bullying. The bully controls the conversation, both theme and tone, and any deviation or disagreement with that isn’t tolerated. Bullies prey on the introverted, the socially awkward, and social and economic inferiors, often people unable or unwilling to snap back easily with a witty or pointed rejoinder. Comments questioning the recipient’s ability to understand humor or even HAVE a sense of humor land easily and can bring about a questioning or reinforcing of one’s social position.
Bullies also tend to not be too bright, so bullying language such as this keep his or her upper hand in a situation. Not-too-bright bullies often do not have a next level, so keeping interlocutors on the defensive is their only tactic. You know who does this kind of thing a lot? Sure you do. Donald Trump, the current occupier of the White House, does this a lot. A bully? Yes. Not too bright? Check. We all know what the combination has loosed upon us and the rest of the world.
Trump is not smart. He also lacks tact and finesse. One of the biggest problems with him is that he wants the whole world to think he is smart (he will tell you any chance he gets that he is a smart guy. He has a great brain. He is obviously smart because he had an uncle who was smart once.) He also will not ever admit to being wrong. So it’s not surprising at all that Donald Trump says stupid and mean things and, when he’s called on it, his go-to response is that he was “being sarcastic” or that people just don’t understand sarcasm. His latest: “Doesn’t sarcasm work anymore?” Short answer, yes, it does work. When it occurs.
As catalogued in a recent article in Rolling Stone by Peter Wade, Trump has a long and odd history with the word, sarcasm. Way before his run for the presidency, while he was still a minor celebrity who no one really took very seriously, he made well-known, cringe-worthy comments about his daughter, Ivanka. In 2006, on the show, “The View,” he said that, if Ivanka were not his daughter, he might be dating her. Let’s get past the eeewww factor for the moment and see what happened after that. When later asked about the much talked- and written-about comment, Trump said that everyone was laughing at it when he said it. Everyone THERE got the joke. But, when it was reported, the laughter and, yes, SARCASM, just weren’t properly related. The incestuous comment was not the problem. The blame rested on the public and our collective gag reaction for being too stupid to appreciate his rapier-sharp wit.
The public’s inability to appreciate the sophisticated humor of the stable genius didn’t end there of course. In 2013, there is some Twitter documentation that shows Trump mocking and insulting a few random users who had criticised him. Their problem? Well, the “dummies” (his word, not mine) just didn’t understand sarcasm. In 2014, when booed by a crowd after he mocked Jeb Bush for saying that immigrants often cross the US’s southern border in an act of love for their families, Trump told Fox News that he was so surprised by the reaction because he was, after all, being “a little sarcastic.”
One of my favorites is also from 2014. In a CPAC speech, where his audience was entirely supportive, Trump referred to “the late, great Jimmy Carter.” Of course, President Carter is still alive today, and was very much so six years ago. When reminded later that Mr. Carter was, in fact, alive, Trump scoffed, saying, “Of course I don’t think Jimmy Carter is dead—saw him on TV. Just being sarcastic, but never thought he was alive as President, stiff.” Wow. Trump deconstructed: I’m not stupid. You’re stupid. And, by the way, he IS metaphorically dead, so I was serious.
The list goes on and on (I’m the chosen one; journalists receive the Noble Prize), culminating recently with “Dr.” Trump’s brilliant suggestion that, perhaps, since disinfectants are so useful in killing the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, all of those other people who call themselves immunologists and scientists might want to look into the possibility of, somehow, getting that stuff into the human body and knocking that pesky virus right out of there “in a minute.” After days of relentless (and well-deserved) public mocking, Trump turned it all around on the public. Oh! How simple we all were! He wasn’t serious! He was being SARCASTIC.
It’s bad enough that Trump (and other unintelligent bullies like him) can’t admit it when they say something wrong or make a slip of the tongue. It’s bad enough when these alphas turn it all around on their audience, blaming us for just not getting them. We’re just too simple. Too naïve. Not sophisticated enough. It’s worse when the world sees, hears, and knows the truth, and they STILL can’t bring themselves to admit any mistake or fault.
To add to this list of self-serving, dishonest, torment, there’s even more involved when it comes to Trump. He loves the word, sarcastic, and that is his go-to cover for his abhorrent behavior and general ignorance. BUT HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW THE CORRECT USAGE OF THE WORD! Oh, that’s too beautiful. The bully is just being “sarcastic,” and we, the public, just don’t get him. And he doesn’t use the word correctly.
Sarcasm is defined simply: “the use of irony to mock or convey contempt (Oxford).” It is, indeed, often used with humorous intent. It does, indeed, often state the opposite of what is intended. The key here is “intent.” Donald Trump is only “sarcastic” after the fact. After he’s called out on his stupidity, ignorance, racism, incest, whatever. Only THEN is he just being “sarcastic.” Only THEN are WE the comprehension-challenged for not having seen that originally.
An example of REAL sarcasm is what happened at the now-famous 2011 Correspondents’ Dinner where Barack Obama roasted his nemesis, birther-in-chief, Donald Trump. The dinner, as it happened, occurred the very same week that Hawaii released Mr. Obama’s long-form birth certificate, once and for all putting to rest the seeds of doubt regarding his citizenship sown by Trump and his cadre of followers. Mr. Obama, as only a true winner can, raked Trump over the coals and also used a bit of self-mocking, beginning his speech with “My FELLOW Americans, mahalo [emphasis his]” and following that with his “official” birth video (the birth scene from The Lion King). Self-mocking or self-deprecating is also often a part of true sarcasm. Donald Trump is constitutionally unable to do that. Many say that speech at that dinner was the real beginning of the travesty that is today’s US political situation—hatred and revenge toward a person who made HIM the joke of the evening. As the President spoke, moving seamlessly from self-mocking to Trump’s pettiness and materialism (saying, for example, that Trump can now turn his attention to REAL puzzles such as whether the moon landing really happened), the audience erupted in gales of genuine laughter. As the camera panned to Trump, anyone could see that he wasn’t laughing. Now, THAT’S ironic, isn’t it? Apparently, he can’t take a joke. Unfortunately, it looks like this joke is on all of us.
DOING LANGUAGE 