The Harris-Walz Campaign Has Become The Butt Of Jokes

Here's an example of the pickle Tim Walz is in. Via ABC News, Republicans want voters to think Walz lied about his dog. False GOP claims could cause real damage:

Republicans turned Tim Walz’s outing at a dog park nearly three years ago into an attack on the Democratic vice presidential nominee this week, working on a false online narrative to paint Walz as a liar.

The intended takeaway was that Walz somehow lied about the identity of his dog, Scout, by describing two different dogs as his beloved pet in separate X posts. Social media users shared screenshots of the posts as alleged proof that the Minnesota governor exhibits a pattern of deceit, garnering thousands of likes, shares and reactions across platforms.

In one post, from June 2022, Walz is pictured hugging a black dog. The caption reads, “Sending a special birthday shoutout to our favorite pup, Scout.” The other, posted in October 2022, showed Walz beside a brown and white dog with the caption: “Couldn’t think of a better way to spend a beautiful fall day than at the dog park. I know Scout enjoyed it.”

In response, Walz supporters shared posts on social media showing that Walz was simply playing with someone else's dog while mentioning Scout in the caption.

The seemingly innocuous post was not the only fodder that has been used against Walz in recent days. A joke he cracked in a campaign video with Vice President Kamala Harris about eating “white guy tacos” was used to accuse him of lying about how much he seasons his food. Opponents have also taken issue with Walz describing himself as a former high school football coach, pointing out that he was the defensive coordinator.

Those dastardly Republicans! But all this does is add to the list of Walz's fabrications and embroiderings that have come to light since Kamala named him as her running mate. The most recent one surfaced Friday:

Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) has long described the moment in 2004 that inspired him to run for public office. In Walz’s telling, the “folksy” high school teacher and two of his students attended a campaign rally for President George W. Bush as an educational experience. However, Walz says, all three of them were denied entry upon event staffers noticing a John Kerry sticker on one of the students’ wallets — an exchange that the Atlantic dubbed a “KGB-style interrogation.”

There’s just one problem: This version of the political origin story for the Democratic vice presidential nominee, who is already facing “stolen valor” accusations over claims about his military service from combat veterans, contains significant inaccuracies.

For one, Walz was admitted into the Bush rally, according to a source familiar, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the August 2004 event. The two teenagers Walz arrived with, Matt Klaber and Nick Burkhart, were not his students, the Washington Examiner confirmed.

Moreover, the teenagers were barred from the event after a confrontation that made local news earlier in the week — leading to them initially being denied tickets.

Here's what makes all these stories good standup material. What makes a joke funny?

1. “The presence of some sort of norm violation, be it a moral norm violation (robbing a retirement home), social norm violation (breaking up with a long-term boyfriend via text message), or physical norm violation (purposefully sneezing directly on a child).
2. A ‘benign’ or ‘safe’ context in which the violation takes place (this can take many forms).
3. The interpretation of the first two points simultaneously. In other words, one must view, read, or otherwise interpret a violation as relatively harmless.”

. . . The structure of a joke varies, but the general format includes setup, which introduces the characters, settings, and situation; and punch line, which delivers the plot twist or benign violation. Jokes also have narrative elements: character(s), story arc, conflict, and resolution.

If you want to write a longer joke, consider peppering the entire anecdote with smaller joke clusters: mini setups and punch lines within the larger structure of the story. These “jab lines” incorporate humor throughout the entire joke-text.

Tim Walz is turning into a perfect standup routine: he's a bloviating politician, complete with cheap suits and cheesy affect. He commits repeated and predictable norm violations -- he tells lies about himself, but these are safe and more or less harmless, although some involve circumstances that can be construed as shirking duty and pretending he didn't. Each of these more or less harmless lies is resolved with a predictable but safe humiliation that still leaves him deflated.

By the way, the ABC story at the link says the Republican claims about Walz and a dog could cause "real damage" -- to whom? The comic context here is that this is "safe". Someone can't understand a joke.

But now we add another joke to the set:

In April, Harris appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show, where she was asked if she worked at the fast food restaurant.

'I did. Yes, I did work at McDonald's,' the vice president said. 'When I was at school...I did fries. And then I did the cashier.'

. . . Speaking to workers at a labor rally in Las Vegas in 2019, the future vice president first referred to her time at the Golden Arches.

'I worked in McDonald's,' she said to the crowd. 'I was a student when I was working at McDonald's.'

Trump himself, the ultimate foil, popped this particular balloon:

Trump was speaking at the Moms for Liberty convention in Washington on Friday when he expressed skepticism over this piece of Harris's biography, which she has used to proclaim her ordinary background.

'She also said, "I worked at McDonald's.'' Turned out she didn't work at McDonalds," the former president mentioned to the audience.

'Did anyone see that?' he continued. 'After an exhaustive study that took about 20 minutes, they found out she never worked there.'

Yes -- as soon as I heard about her McDonald's claim, I realized that if she'd worked there, they would have deducted her Social Security payment from her check, and they (as well as Social Security) would, or in this case wouldn't, have a record. (As far as I can see, this also wouldn't be a violation of confidentiality, because in this case, McDonald's would simply be confirming that there is not an employment record, which could otherwise be confidential.)

Several points are worth noting here. All these stories make up a single comedy set, and they fit the definition, which includes the requirement that they be "safe"-- they are politicians predictably telling harmless lies about themselves. There are resolutions -- the truth is revealed, and in one case, it's revealed by Trump, who is himself an acknowledged master of standup. But the revelation, especially in Walz's case, reopeatedly makes him a buffoon, and indeed a buffoonish sidekick to an annoying bossgirl-wannabe who tells the same sort of lies.

But what's telling is that even if each of these resolutions is "safe", they nevertheless trivialize both Walz and Harris, and each iteration of the routine trivializes them a little more. It isn't good for a candidate to become the butt of jokes. Think of Gerald Ford in a pratfall that became comedy gold on SNL, Jimmy Carter and the killer rabbit, Mike Dukakis riding a tank, or John Kerry windsurfing. If history is any guide, I don't see a good outcme here. I continue to think Trump is in controi of the subliminal campaign.