The Guide #163: Insult comedy and the right wing’s budding bromance
In this week’s newsletter: The roast can be brilliant – but as Tony Hinchcliffe found out when he insulted Puerto Rico, a political rally really isn’t the place for slinging slurs• Don’t get the Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up to get the full article hereIt was the “joke” heard around the world, one that some are speculating – a little too optimistically, perhaps – might help swing the US election. Last Sunday, US insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” while standing at a podium emblazoned with “Trump Vance 2024”, in New York’s Madison Square Garden. It prompted a huge backlash among Puerto Ricans, including some very famous members of the community, as well as that rarest of things: contrition from the usually unapologetic Trump campaign, which said that Hinchcliffe’s comments did not reflect the (famously moderate) views of Donald Trump himself.I should stop here to apologise to anyone who has come to The Guide for a break from the oxygen-hogging, 24/7 carnival that is the US election. Normal service will resume next week, I promise – but this is a political story that is, at its very least, culture-adjacent. And it prompts an interesting question: how did Hinchcliffe, a shock comic whose routines would make even the crowd at Late ‘n’ Live retreat to their fainting couches, end up as the opening act at a major political rally? The answer has a lot to do with the growing bromance between insult comedy and the right wing. Continue reading...
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In this week’s newsletter: The roast can be brilliant – but as Tony Hinchcliffe found out when he insulted Puerto Rico, a political rally really isn’t the place for slinging slurs
• Don’t get the Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up to get the full article here
It was the “joke” heard around the world, one that some are speculating – a little too optimistically, perhaps – might help swing the US election. Last Sunday, US insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” while standing at a podium emblazoned with “Trump Vance 2024”, in New York’s Madison Square Garden. It prompted a huge backlash among Puerto Ricans, including some very famous members of the community, as well as that rarest of things: contrition from the usually unapologetic Trump campaign, which said that Hinchcliffe’s comments did not reflect the (famously moderate) views of Donald Trump himself.
I should stop here to apologise to anyone who has come to The Guide for a break from the oxygen-hogging, 24/7 carnival that is the US election. Normal service will resume next week, I promise – but this is a political story that is, at its very least, culture-adjacent. And it prompts an interesting question: how did Hinchcliffe, a shock comic whose routines would make even the crowd at Late ‘n’ Live retreat to their fainting couches, end up as the opening act at a major political rally? The answer has a lot to do with the growing bromance between insult comedy and the right wing.
Continue reading...
