Joke from Tony Hinchcliffe apparently bombed when he told it on Saturday night, a day before New York rally
The podcaster who provoked an angry backlash against Donald Trump’s campaign with a racist joke about Puerto Rico reportedly tested out the gags at a comedy club the night before delivering them at Sunday’s televised rally at Madison Square Garden.
Tony Hinchcliffe, whose 11-minute set has thrown Trump’s team into damage limitation mode a week before the presidential election, made the same quip, calling the territory “a floating island of garbage”, at the Stand club in New York on Saturday, according to NBC.
The joke bombed, drawing just a few awkward chuckles, NBC said, citing one of its own producers and three audience members.
I don’t know. There’s a type of joke that is funny simply because of how ridiculously offensive it is, provided you know the teller doesn’t mean it. People think Sam Kinison was funny and he just yelled and swore a lot. Lots of things can be funny for fairly stupid reasons.
I still think the main problem here is that he told a really offensive joke in the wrong context. If Hinchcliff really is racist then that’s obviously a problem, but I don’t think the joke itself is the issue. If you’re going to take issue with it on its own then you’re treading into the Offense Olympic waters.
I think context is key here. If you tell a Jewish joke at a Bar Mitzvah or comedy club it comes across entirely differently than if you tell it at a Skin Head or Proud Boys rally.
He told the this joke at a Trump rally where accusations of racism and facism abound. He was probably trying to be ironic but it just comes off far more serious than just a joke.
Fundamentally a rally should bring people together. The Trump team knew what they were getting when they hired this guy. Whatever this comedians intentions were, the Trump team is ultimately responsible for their message and to refuse to have Trump repudiate him publicly and immediately peaks volumes.
If this guy genuinely went to this rally and was trying to make fun of this sort of racism by telling that joke (i.e., the joke is how stupid it is to believe that), then you would have a point. But I don’t see any reason to believe that because he agreed to speak at a Trump rally. Context goes both ways.
I’m not personally familiar with Hinchcliff or his comedy, but what little I’ve seen from fans of his online seems to indicate that this is just his normal shtick. As such, I’m not sure I agree that he went out there to wave a Nazi flag at his fellow Nazis. It would make more sense to me that he took the gig because it paid well and offered him a ton of publicity. The irony is that he’s certainly gotten publicity, but probably not the type he wants.