Killjoy
The real name of the "comedian" (Tony Hinchcliffe)
Tony Hinchcliffe (“Kill Tony”, hereinafter, “Killjoy”) is not funny. He is in fascist lockstep.
Comedy is so central to our freedom and our morale, for a Fascist state or an Ayatollah has no patience or understanding for satire.
It is hard to satirize if one is in lockstep.
During the Third Reich the lockstep was called “Gleichschaltung!” Irmgard Keun was a writer who tongue-in-cheek pictured young women (18-22) lost in late-Weimar Berlin amidst the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats, Communists, and the increasing Nazi faction. Ms. Keun’s work was so hilarious in 1931 and 1932 (before the Nazi takeover) that her work was immediately translated in English and became best sellers in America in those early years.
To read Irmgard Keun’s work is to empathize with young women wanting to live like Hollywood actresses, or meet the love of their life, or to pursue a living, with all the baggage of an outmoded Prussian society, while Berlin was the center for Jazz-age music, sexual liberty, wild dancing, alcohol and drugs. Meanwhile there was the looming presence of the Nazis.
Once the Nazis took over, Irmgard Keun suffered under “Druckverbot” — her works could not be published.
But read her early work, “Gigi — Eine von Uns” (Gigi — One of Us) and “das kunstseidene Mädchen” (Artificial-Silk Girl), and it is harmless, benignly funny and cute, and definitely modern 1920s Jazz-Age in values, and with melancholy hopefulness for prospects of young women bumbling through youthful mistakes but growing in maturity. With a background of the ominous growing power of steely racists.
The Nazis could not even permit the mild-mannered satire of Irmgard Keun. Only the Nazis could have felt threatened by Ms. Keun’s innocent, cheerful satire.
The Nazis suppressed the writings of our satirist, Irmgard Keun, so she had to wait until her exile in 1937, in Oostende (Flanders, in Belgium) to publish her third novel, Nach Mitternacht (After Midnight), which played along similar themes, except for the first time, Ms. Keun satirized the Gestapo.
A barkeeper, who imbibes much from his own bar, painted a Swastika on the floor of the outhouse, so the sitter would realize, he got what he had voted for in 1932/33. When someone in the bar wondered out loud who had painted the Spider on the floor, the drunken barkeeper made no bones: You oughta see who you voted for.
The Gestapo picked up the barkeeper, who was not heard of again, except it was supposed he was sent to the “KZ” (KZ: “Konzentrationslager” — Concentration-Camp).
This novel was contemporaneous and described life in the Third Reich that Irmgard Keun had seen.
As a real fan of Irmgard Keun, I can tell you her work is masterfully comic, light-hearted, innocent, full of the life of the young, growing woman, puzzled in a world of macho-racism.
And that was too much for the Third Reich.
So in 1937 she went into exile with other great German writers in exile, not least, Stefan Zweig and Ms. Keun’s own lover, Joseph Roth.
So we hear Trump double down on the “Enemy Within.”
With Trump, people are afraid to speak out for the same reason as the punishment of the barkeeper in Ms. Keun’s novel (Nach Mitternacht).
Even if, as a dearly hope and believe, our Joyful Warrior, Kamala Harris, wins, we still face Ivy-League educated GOP leaders who thunder about Enemies within, for JD Vance and Ted Cruz are even more dangerous than Trump in their willingness to enflame the prairie fires of racial hatred.
There is a self-styled comedian who goes by the name “Kill Tony”, but whom I’ll dub “Killjoy,” who thundered fascist racism at Trump’s 1939-style Madison-Avenue rally:
While Fascist JD Vance rages about “Catwomen” (please forgive Armando who has loved every Catwoman, particularly Michelle Pfeiffer — please forgive a weakness), who rages against women who don’t bear kids — can you imagine, as we must, a MAN blasting women for not bearing children for their own highly personal factors (some medical factors; some personal, well-weighed decisions), all the while . . .
Killjoy spreads incendiary hatred against Latinos, because (as Killjoy puts it) they keep on having children and multiplying.
Is Killjoy playing upon the racial hatred of neo-Nazis who fear and shout, “They will not replace us”?
And to build to another climax . . .
Puerto Rico, which is a part of the United States, and its folk are U.S. Citizens, suffered terribly under hurricane during the Trump Administration, during which . . .
Trump took that moment to thunder about the supposed monetary debt — supposedly in the billions of dollars —
At the time that Trump made a show of throwing supplies to volunteers . . .
Trump emphasized that aid for rebuilding Puerto Rico would be contingent on handling the alleged billions in debt.
This was the first time in the life of this 76-year-old that I had heard anyone, much less the President of the United States, being so stingy with a community of our citizens on their knees from a natural catastrophe, and to demand, while they can hardly scrape food and water, to make amends on billions in debt.
Now, in this context, self-styled “comedian” Killjoy enflames the audience with “a floating island of garbage — Puerto Rico.”
America is living through a tragedy.
In this 76-year-old’s life, these are vivid, living memories:
The vibrant, living presence of America’s greatest Statesman, Eleanor Roosevelt, who had authored the International Declaration of Human Rights;
The brave people of Budapest had stood with bottles and stones against the Soviet tanks during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution;
The necessity to use the National Guard for mere compliance with court orders to integrate the schools of Little Rock;
The promise of a New Frontier through the charismatic orator, JFK;
The entire Civil Rights Movement, and the great Statesmen, the Persons with high principle — Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, the young John Lewis, Shirley Chisolm, so many more luminaries of humanity and great human culture;
September 15, 1963, with the heartbreak over the church-bombing in Birmingham with the killing of four, and maiming of a fifth wonderful young woman, each with inner spirituality and culture, each with beautiful hopes for the future;
The marches: Selma, Memphis, Washington DC;
MLK: I have a Dream; I have been to the Mountaintop;
The killing of hope through the murder of our beautiful, liberal leaders: JFK, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, RFK.
In 1968: The twenty-year-old lost hope in June, when RFK, the last of the foregoing was killed in the prime of his life, in despair that they had finally answered civil rights and liberalism through the assassination, the brutal murder of our best civil rights and political-liberal leaders. Armando felt despair.
What followed was Dick Nixon.
How could we have lived through these lessons of the past, the inspiration through the Civil Rights Movement — The Great Moral Movement of Our Time — through the hope of dignity and equal rights to each person, with the hope that each worker could support a household, earn sufficient nourishment, receive life-sustaining and adequate medical care, and receive a life-sustaining retirement.
Armando grew up in heavily industrialized LA County in California, and the heavy industries were unionized, and the workers received a living wage with good fringe benefits — including medical coverage and defined benefit pension plans.
But with Reagan came union busting through Wisconsin’s GOP Governor Scott Walker.
Now the wage gap between the executive like Elon Musk and his workers (who suffer hazardous working conditions at the Tesla and SpaceX plants) is a deep, ponderous chasm, and many are underinsured medically and do not have the prospect of a secure retirement.
In the midst of union busting, now today’s GOP, spearheaded by Ivy-League leaders — JD Vance, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley — are on the team that speaks of a whole territory of United States Citizens, Puerto Rico, as a “floating island of garbage” and speaks of our Latino citizens and immigrants as breeding ceaselessly — even as JD Vance rhapsodizes about the need for women to bear children — is a party of Elites who despise American people so much as to spread fecal, incendiary racist slurs against a very large populace in our country.
Every culture in America has contributed to the beauty that is our nation.
We all benefit from the beautiful Black history in America with a rich cultural heritage in the sciences, in our armed forces, in so many fields of music and in the arts — a mere example: the Migration Series of Jacob Lawrence, the writings of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Jasmyn Ward (“Sing, Unburied, Sing”), Amanda Gorman —
And one could rhapsodize about the contributions of Latinos and all diverse heritage.
How can there be any chance that a rhetoric of hatred is persuasive to so many Americans?
How is it that we suffer Jim-Crow, just to mention representative states, in Texas, Alabama and Florida.
Anyone who reads my spontaneous posts will be tremendously enriched by CellyBlue — I do know this” as in these posts:
And one of my favorites is CellyBlue with her sister:
Armando always recommends CellyBlue — I do know this! — For her columns are very historically informed and she writes of core values.
Even with a victory for Kamala Harris, the long-term struggle for Civil Rights will continue, until women and girls can be safe in their own informed healthcare and other choices, and until we smash all forces of racism.
After Trump was elected in 2016, some Latinas recounted to me the outrages they experienced even in my beloved Tucson resulting from his race-baiting.
I would talk in compassion with each Latina; condemn the insults; assure them of the beauty and richness of the Hispanic culture and the goodness of Latino people.
That is not enough, but it is what I could immediately give.
We love our neighbor, no matter her culture or background, and the chief requirement of a polity, such as a state government or the United States, is the Welfare and Safety of all inhabitants — citizens and immigrants.
Take time to nourish your heart and mind with the arts — Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series; the works of James Baldwin through Jasmyn Ward, the music of Wynton Marsalis — her work is that of an artist with words. This is our Spiritual life. These arts nourish the Spirit.
Take time to love each person around you and to help them meet their genuine needs.
Make America Hate Again
This wasn’t an accident. It was the point. It’s what MAGA was built on—a message to the white, the bitter, and the fearful that their ginned up anger is a rallying cry, a political stance, and a weapon. It's a promise that America belongs to them and no one else. It’s why Trump’s rallies don’t even try to reach beyond his hardcore base. The sad part is that, for as many reasonably-minded people as he'll lose because of this abomination, he'll gain just as many who want nothing more than a fourth Reich.
An Open Letter to Your Friend or Relative Planning to Vote for Trump: Your Vote for Trump Is an Endorsement of Bigotry, Cruelty, and the Erosion of Rights—No Matter the Reason You Give.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-150725410?r=4d7sow&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
"Killjoy" ha! Talk about dying on stage, yuck.
TIL what "punching down" means from someone on Twitter, who said that a good rubric for measuring whether a joke is in good taste or not is if the joke is "punching down."
All of Hinchcliffe's material was punching down.
"When a comedian crosses a line, you may hear someone argue that jokes should only “punch up, not down.” They mean to say you should only ridicule or imitate people who are regarded as powerful. The problem is, you can only say a joke “punches down” if you place the subject of that joke below the person telling it. You’re essentially trying to protect someone from offense by arguing they aren’t worthy of it, if they were more privileged and successful, sure, but not now, not in this lowly condition (poor, disabled, black, a woman)."