Jason Zinoman, Kamala Harris’s Laugh Is a Campaign Issue. Our Comedy Critic Weighs in. NYTimes, July 28, 2024.
Plato warned against a love of laughter, suggesting it indicates a loss of control. Ever alert to the theater of power, Trump rarely laughs, dating back to long before he was in politics. Recounting his season appearing on “The Apprentice,” the magician Penn Jillette marveled at how he would regularly spend hours watching Trump talk and never notice the slightest chuckle.
Watching interviews with both candidates, it’s clear that there’s a sizable disparity in laughter. Trump scoffs and occasionally smirks, which can be a crowd-pleaser. But chuckling isn’t his thing. On talk shows, Harris does it to deflect and connect, to establish intimacy, but also to underline the absurdity of something. At its most effusive, her laugh can draw attention to itself, and taken out of context, it can seem as if she’s the only one in on the joke.
Harris has said she got her guffaw from her mother. But that’s not her only laugh. In her debut campaign speech, she even got a big response from muffling a snicker after saying that in the past, “I have taken on perpetrators of all kinds.”
This hint of a laugh sets up her most successful stump line so far: “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
The case against laughing is that it makes a leader come off as less serious. This rests on a common misunderstanding that laughter is primarily a response to something funny. Research over the past few decades has backed up what philosophers have said for over a century, which is that laughter is inherently social, more about relationships and communication than jokes.
Later:
Bill Clinton connected with people by biting his lip and making eye contact. He famously felt your pain. With her biggest laughs, the ones that she does with her whole body, Harris projects something else: joy.
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