May 26, 2019

It's called satire.


It's a humorous rephrasing of this, which is a real Trump tweet:

It is hard to parody Trump, when Trump does actual tweets like that. Stupid of journalists and congressmen to retweet it as an actual quote, but there's nothing wrong with "fabricating" it.

Are we so humor deaf that we're going to start denouncing comedians as liars?

(Bremmer isn't officially a comedian. He's a professor, but professors do humor. Sometimes with a straight face. You should always consider the possibility, when something sounds wrong, that it's a joke.)

93 comments:

David Begley said...

Sleepy Eye Chuck Todd went on and on about the Trump tweet with Sanders. Todd asserted that Trump was backing a murdering dictator over the sainted and infallible Biden.

Michael K said...

It looks like Patterico fell for the fake quote.

Narayanan said...

professors do humor...

Hit us with one, O Professora

Big Mike said...

You should always consider the possibility, when something sounds wrong, that it's a joke.

@Althouse, if one is sufficiently afflicted with TDS then it doesn’t sound wrong, does it?

BamaBadgOR said...

Bremmer used quotation marks.

Gk1 said...

It's hard to give the perpetually butt hurt the benefit of the doubt when Trump is involved. I have to presume he was just lying to hurt trump and then had to fall back on the feeble "Hey, I was only joking" when the blowback was too much for him to take. Although the press has been making up quotes and lying about trump for sometime now it barely merits a glance at this point.

Unknown said...

Fake but accurate!

Narayanan said...

Trump is now in collusion with Kim Jong Un.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

where was Snopes?

madAsHell said...

Trump is pissing off all the right people at exactly the right time, and they don't know it!!

Mary Beth said...

He deleted it. He also said the Pelosi video was doctored. Looking at the comment on the Pelosi video and other tweets, I'm less inclined to think the fake quotation was a joke.

Paul said...

Well hey, Rocketrunt may very well BE smarter than Buffoon Biden. So what's the problem?

fivewheels said...

"You should always consider the possibility, when something sounds wrong, that it's a joke."

They can use that out just as soon as they allow it to Trump.

Leland said...

I'm waiting for them to say Kim bankrolled Trump's 2016 election. They never do seem to understand humor.

richlb said...

This is the political equivalent of yelling fire in a theater. The teller can't just say "hey, it's a joke."

DanTheMan said...

>> You should always consider the possibility, when something sounds wrong, that it's a joke.

You should always consider the possibility, when something sounds wrong, that it's a lie.

traditionalguy said...

The Enemy of the People is so whipped by the master communicator that they risk doing total fabrications of fact that can be exposed in a few days for the thrill of taking counter shots at DJT or the DJT supporters in interviews.

Yesterday the CIA talking point was that Trump/Barr was going to expose our super secret double agent that works with Putin. Since that can never be investigated

Ken B said...

If it were satire he would have called it satire when challenged. Instead he took it down and did not call it satire.

Hagar said...

It is the age of "That's not funny!" so don't crack jokes in no man's land.

But seriously, the reportage is scarce to non-existent, but it looks to me like Trump, Xi, and Putin have agreed to give The Fat Kid kind words and sympathy, but no tea.

Josephbleau said...

In this blog the MSM was excoriated about the Charlottesville Good People lie, why wasn’t that labeled a joke? Jokes are just enemy action in politics. Jokes/ lies same same. All lies blameless, just humor.

Diogenes of Sinope said...

We have become humorless. It's a shame......

robother said...

That Christopher Steele dossier: pure comedic gold! The FISA Court took it seriously? The joke's on them!

Guildofcannonballs said...

It is hard to take Bremmer seriously after he admitted he "enjoyed raping puppy carcases while licking skunk asshole" while he was under oath.

Ken B said...

Richlb makes a really important point. A story about AOC on The Price Is Right guessing everything is free is satire, because even if you miss the satire all you get is a headscratcher. But if the Onion had done a story about Tlaib denying that concentration camp tattoos were real, that would have been really inflammatory had any irony been missed. If you want satire you have Trump say something like “Kim made me a shit sandwich, and you know I liked it.”

stonethrower said...

Way off on this one, @Althouse. Still, Trump should reply, "Fake news! I didn't say that. But if those two guys were running for President, I would hold my nose and vote for Sleepy Joe."

mandrewa said...

What a horrible idea! Giving people permission to rewrite what their enemies say and then "quote" them!

Agghh!


Narayanan said...

Why are we expected to get outre-aged when Kim blows up his inner circle on cannon?

stonethrower said...

Way off on this one, @Althouse. Still, Trump should reply, "Fake news! I never said that. But if those two guys were running for President, I would hold my nose and vote for Sleepy Joe.

Narayanan said...

I'm reading that Bremmer runs a political risk index.

Can he do such tweet on a market day?

chuck said...

So the argument is that Ian Bremmer made a funny? I'm not convinced. Are there other examples of his humor?

rcocean said...

Good for Trump. Tell Kim he's still trusted. But....

In the 1952 election, Truman compared the Republicans to Nazis. AND didn't attack Joe Stalin. So....

Narayanan said...

Blogger stonethrower said...
. But if those two guys were running for President, I would hold my nose and vote for Sleepy Joe...

Why do you believe Kim will be Republican nominee?

Crazy Bernie more likely to be Kim temperamental.

Ambrose said...

I always take Ian Bremmer seriously but not literally.

gadfly said...

Somewhere in the Trump quote that he has confidence that the North Korean dictator will keep a promise to Trump Almighty, there must be satire - because no sane person would ever believe the words of man who slaughters and starves his subjects.

Michael K said...

While we are the subject of jokes, how about this one ?

China is funding the New Zealand Labour Party.

They are one of the "Five Eyes" intell group.

An influential United States Congress hearing has been told "one of the major fundraisers for Jacinda Ardern's party" is linked to the Chinese Communist Party and it showed China had penetrated New Zealand's political networks.

As a result, US lawmakers needed to consider whether New Zealand should be kicked out of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance because of problems at its "political core".

The bombshell testimony included claims from a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst that "anything on China that was briefed to Bill English was briefed to Mr Yang Jian", the National MP revealed last year as having trained spies for China.


Pretty funny, eh ?

rcocean said...

Biden would make a piss poor President - whether Kim would be better is a possibility.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

@robother said...
That Christopher Steele dossier: pure comedic gold! The FISA Court took it seriously? The joke's on them!


once Trump declassifies and exposes all their shit, they will scoff at how 'thin-skinned' and petty he is being.
"Put your 'big-boy' pants on, Mr. President-- this is how politics works!"

traditionalguy said...

DJT still has space weapons to wipe out The norks.

Rory said...

I don't think what Bremmer said was even arguably a rephrasing of what Trump said.

readering said...

Chuck: Google Ian Bremmer twitter. A lot of his stuff is humorous. He's into puppets. I don't really think of him as a professor as he runs a large consulting business. He was a regular on Charlie Rose back in the day.

Rabel said...

More hoax than satire. He saw a chance to do Trump a small harm with a fake quote which he knew would spread virally before it was corrected and he jumped on it.

It was a dick move by a scumbag.

bleh said...

Um, no. It’s purely distilled fake news. And Bremmer’s explanation was extremely weak sauce. I have no doubt he was joking around, but he caused a lot of consternation and gnashing.

All he had to do was quote tweet Trump and everyone would’ve understood it was satire.

stephen cooper said...

Rabel -leaving aside your vulgar phrasing, you are right

rehajm said...

If you are going represent yourself as an intellectual both personally and professionally your humor should reflect that. A level of prowess in the development of your humor as if you had an inkling of what you are doing.

Also your humor shouldn’t look exactly like a lie a deranged fuck leftie professor would try to pass off as true under an appeal to authority fallacy.

Fernandinande said...

Swampman Joe Biden

Excuse me, shouldn't that be "Wetlandman Jow Biden"?

rcocean said...

Nancy Pelosi: Raúl Castro would make a better President than Trump.

Satire? Or what she really thinks?

rhhardin said...

The right wing mobs are no smarter than the left wing mobs.

Ed Driscoll click-baits them all the time on Insty.

rhhardin said...

Trump would not have said that because he's always taking Kim as a trusted and respected leader, as a framing. He wouldn't undermine that by using Kim as a standard of badness.

rhhardin said...

In fact the attribution to Trump spoils the carefully set up framing between Trump and Kim. Thanks dems.

Far from being a Trump-horror story it's undermining a negotiation, when Kim hears it attributed to Trump.

stephen cooper said...

rhhradin = it is late May and those of us not on remote Pacific Islands but back in CONUS are thinking maybe tonight is the first night of this year where we see fireflies, would we be right?

Sebastian said...

(Bremmer isn't officially a comedian. He's a professor, but professors do humor. Sometimes with a straight face. You should always consider the possibility, when something sounds wrong, that it's a joke.)

OK, I considered the possibility. But, considering that he gets Trump's tone wrong and is an NYU prof and his fellow progs happily retweeted his "joke," I reject the possibility. Do you have any evidence for considering this humor? Or is it just another instance of trying to be "interesting" by suggesting a nonobvious rationalization?

narciso said...

He runs a pro Islamist thinktank set up by Robert Malley hamas gia egyptian boko haram its

narciso said...

Egyptian Islamic jihad, pretty much the mouthpiece for the moslem brotherhood everywhere

cubanbob said...

stonethrower said...
Way off on this one, @Althouse. Still, Trump should reply, "Fake news! I never said that. But if those two guys were running for President, I would hold my nose and vote for Sleepy Joe."

Yes do tell us how you are going to vote Sleepy Slow Plugs the Plagiarist Joe, a man so stupid that Obama chose him as VP as life insurance seeing that no one would be dumb enough to kill Obama and make Joe President.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

It's a straw clown masquerading as a straw man that persists as a political myth.

Ken B said...

You know, I remember numerous occasions of Althouse angrily *demanding* apologies for what she thought were misquotations or misstatements of what she said. Not every misrepresentation is satire I guess.

That is of course right, and those misrepresentations which are in fact satire are usually recognizable as satire and defended as satire. Neither is true of this fake quote.

iowan2 said...

Clown nose off...Clown nose on.

stevew said...

Yes, too many have lost whatever sense of humor they once had.

Humperdink said...

The internet is riddled with satire directed at AOC (D-Clueless). It is not difficult to discern the ridicule. Lies attributed to Trump? Apparently not so much.

Gahrie said...

Althouse is very gentle with Ian Bremmer.

Big Mike said...

He's a professor, but professors do humor.

I've been thinking about this point for a while. Some do, most can't. I don't think Bremmer is the kind who can.

Ergo, he was lying.

Christopher said...

Yeah the Green New Deal was satire. Eventually.

Michael K said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Narayanan said...

With non-STEM academics , in some sense, their entire shtick career could be a private joke and a vicious lie. As in " I can't believe I'm getting paid for the stupid stuff I get to say "

Birkel said...

Does Althouse countenance liars?

Ken B said...

Gahrie
Nice.

Michael McNeil said...

DJT still has space weapons to wipe out The norks.

No, he — and we — don't. What we do have are nuclear weapons — thousands of them.

The Gipper Lives said...

Joe Biden would make a good Speedo salesman.

If only he would wear one.

walter said...

"Bremmer isn't officially a comedian. He's a professor, but professors do humor. Sometimes with a straight face."
Now THAT is funny.
Good luck with that.

walter said...

Meanwhile,self identified parody accounts are being deplatformed...

Yancey Ward said...

I thought the entire event was hilarious- it shows you what twits today's journalist class truly are. They should all probably go to Oxford for a PhD. Naomi can show them how it is done.

readering said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gospace said...

I still know people who believe Palin said she could see Russia from her porch.

Fen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fen said...

Time Magazine columnist Ian Bremmer on Sunday tweeted a quote from President Donald Trump about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that quickly went viral — but it wasn’t real. “President Trump in Tokyo: ‘Kim Jong Un is smarter and would make a better President than Sleepy Joe Biden.’” Bremmer wrote on Twitter.

While Trump did praise the North Korean dictator’s insult of former Vice President Joe Biden, the president never said what Bremmer quoted him saying — because Bremmer made it up. Bremmer left the false post up for several hours before conceding he made up the quote and deleting the tweet, which he defended as “plausible.”


You're wrong again, Althouse. This wasn't satire. Your judgement is off again, like that night about battery capacity of solar/wind generation.

Qwinn said...

No, it wasn't an attempt at humor or satire.

1. He used quotation marks.
2. He used "sleepy" in an attempt to actually sound like Trump, not to lampoon him.
3. He deleted it rather than stick to any "it was a joke" defense.
4. He claimed Trump tweeted a doctored version of Pelosi's speech, which we know is a lie.

Everything listed suggests he should be denied the benefit of the doubt, not bending over backwards to grant it.

Amadeus 48 said...

Ohhhhhh....he’s a professor. That explains it. I’m glad to know that. It will really make a difference when a difference needs to be made. A pro-FESSOR. That’s like being an “artist”, right. You get to fool around all day and call it your “art”.

Bremmer will be reading the Declaration of Independence backwards on Tuesday, for those interested. Tickets available through Eventbrite.

rehajm said...

It’s a prof making a satirical comment about a prof’s satirical comment. It’s meta humor. We just don’t get it.

tim maguire said...

TDS detector. Any sane person would have sensed it probably wasn't real.

That “it’s plausible” is truly sleazy by Bremmer. Make something up about your opponent and then try to hang them with it anyway.

tim maguire said...

The actual malice standard is met on this one.

Qwinn said...

I also totally dispute the idea that what he tweeted is simply a "rephrasing" of what Trump said. Not even close.

Unknown said...

Professor in the prestigious "4chan" seat

Swede said...

Clown nose on, clown nose off.

Words in quotations mean things.

You'd think a college professor would know that.

SweatBee said...

Question: how many of his fellow travelers understood it as an audition for The Onion when they retweeted it?

Henry said...

Trump's actual tweet really is bizarre. But that's normal. So not great material.

Browndog said...

This take by Althouse is pretty much hot garbage...in my opinion.

I subscribe to Byron York's school of thought:

It appears @ianbremmer made up a Trump quote, presented it as real, watched as it spread through Twitter, and then, when called on his fabrication, defended himself by saying the quote was 'plausible.' Now, he seems to be enjoying the brouhaha...

narciso said...



there's a lot of that going around:

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/jews-anti-semitism-europe-east-west/

GatorNavy said...

Saul Alinsky made the new rules and Trump and all the little Trumpers are assiduously following them.

BamaBadgOR said...

Scott Adams: https://www.pscp.tv/w/1YqKDBbXrQwJV?t=24

dreams said...
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Jeff said...

Has it occurred to anyone yet that Althouse's post is itself satire?

Jim at said...

Somewhere in the Trump quote that he has confidence that the North Korean dictator will keep a promise to Trump Almighty, there must be satire...

And if Trump would've called out Kim saying he didn't trust him, assholes like you would be screaming he shouldn't provoke him like that.