At the Washiungton Free Beacon, columnist Andrew Stiles writes,
Jack Schlossberg, the sentient boat shoe and semi-employed TikTok user, is running for Congress in New York. It was bound to happen. The 32-year-old Democrat belongs to the Kennedy dynasty—that inexplicably beloved menagerie of goon-faced Habsburgian freaks, Nantucket douche bros, chronic alcoholics, and bloated sex pests. Schlossberg, a mentally deranged internet addict who cracks jokes about guzzling “Jew blood” and “male jizz,” has sought to inject the storied Kennedy brand with Gen Z flare.
That anti-Kennedy invective made me laugh out loud more than once. But is it fair commentary to mix in so much ad hominem invective in an opinion column if it is genuinely funny, at least to a substantial number of readers (or listeners)?
Famous (or infamous) journalist-pundit H.L. Mencken (1880-1956, above) excelled at this sort of thing; he may have even invented it. Here is part of his “obituary” for three-time (losing) Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan after he died shortly after he faced off against Clarence Darrow in Dayton, Tennessee in Tennessee v. Scopes aka, “Monkey Trial”:
“…It is the national custom to sentimentalize the dead, as it is to sentimentalize men about to be hanged. Perhaps I fall into that weakness here. The Bryan I shall remember is the Bryan of his last weeks on earth — broken, furious, and infinitely pathetic. It was impossible to meet his hatred with hatred to match it…But what of his life? Did he accomplish any useful thing? Was he, in his day, of any dignity as a man, and of any value to his fellow-men? I doubt it. Bryan, at his best, was simply a magnificent job-seeker. The issues that he bawled about usually meant nothing to him…. In his last great battle there was only a baleful and ridiculous malignancy. If he was pathetic, he was also disgusting.
…Bryan was a vulgar and common man, a cad undiluted. He was ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, blatant and dishonest. His career brought him in contact with the first men of his time; he preferred the company of rustic ignoramuses. It was hard to believe, watching him at Dayton, that he had traveled, that he had been received in civilized societies, that he had been a high officer of state. He seemed only a poor clod like those around him, deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things. He was a peasant come home to the dung-pile. Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not.”
Nice! One can easily imagine a Trump-hating pundit (I could name one, but there are thousands) writing similarly about the President if he choked to death on a chicken bone or something. Is such hateful, if funny (Actually Styles is funnier attacking the Kennedys than Mencken savaging Bryan, though “He was a peasant come home to the dung-pile” and “If he was pathetic, he was also disgusting” made me smile.)
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Ethics Alarms 
I think this kind of stuff is simply sui generis. Done well, it’s a high art form. Questioning whether it’s ethical or not is like asking the same of trapeze performances. I think they’re both simply breathtaking. Mencken, Dorothy Parker. It’s simply what they did. This guy’s good, he got you to laugh. Mission accomplished.
Probably not in the latter context. Spewing hate about someone right after he has died is poor form and frankly cowardly, because bashing someone when he can no longer defend himself is cowardly, and adding to what’s almost certainly a grieving family is a straight-up golden rule violation. Spew all the invective that you want at someone who’s alive, but you better be able to take what comes back. I include myself here, I’ve engaged in my share of abuse when I’ve gotten angry, and what did it change? Nothing.
That said, spewing what’s frankly abuse at someone else, even if it is (semi-) based on fact is just doing more of making this a nation of assholes. I’ve tried it myself, and it really doesn’t accomplish much other than making you embarrassed when you cool down and reread it. It’s also probably excessive pride. The fact is that none of us are that important that our opinions or who we choose to call names really matters.
Truth be told, my lengthy post about Jimmy Carter started off as just invective, and then I found that I’m not very good at it, so I switched to substance, and there was a LOT of substance to work with.
There are a few people in this nation that have made spewing hate into a profitable business. Michael Moore, Dan Savage, Bill Maher, are some. Sarah Silverman’s now dead dad Donald wasted several column inches spewing hate at a rabbi who wasted his own time criticizing Sarah (because none of any of that was going to change a damn thing). Honestly, is that the kind of company you want to be counted among? Are you writing to make people think, or to make people laugh the same way a seventh grader might at a nasty insult that wasn’t directed at him?
Mencken’s assessment of Bryan was filtered through Mencken’s anti-religious biases. When he wrote that he would remembered Bryan in his last days – Bryan died literally days after the end of the Scopes Trial and it is to the lasting detriment of our cultural awareness that he is most remembered for his ill-advised attempt to take the witness stand as an expert on Creationism. I’ve written this before and I will do so again: his job was to demonstrate that Scopes had violated Tennessee law, not to defend Christianity against what was considered settled science. The judge should never have allowed it.
But I digress…
Mencken’s bias against Bryan’s personal beliefs informed his paragraphs above, reducing Bryan’s populist appeal (populist has only recently been turned into a dirty word because, ya know, Trump) and his advocacy for the common man into a Quixotic quest to elevate such a man to the same tier as his social, economic and educated betters. Mencken’s hatred for this underclass of religious believers drips off the page. It’s snide, condescending and elitist. Not speaking ill of the dead is something those rustic inferiors he so viciously and obviously despised understood. Then again, those so-called ignoramuses would never have thought writing very special and precious things in order to be feted by one’s peers was all that important to life.
But, of course, I am biased against attitudes like Mencken’s. Nevertheless, it’s unethical to take potshots at a public figure just deceased. Except Hitler. Hitler is always the tipping point. (“There are worse things”)
That being said, I am not unbiased here either. I have far more regard for Bryan (silver issue, notwithstanding) than I do for Mencken.
Stiles is not eulogizing someone (even satirically), though. He is assessing the qualifications of a candidate. Not quite the same thing, though his critique of Schlossberg is indeed funny. His assessment of the Kennedys is right on the mark and is also funny. Is it ethical, though?
I suppose if Stiles wants the WFB to be taken seriously as a news source, he might be persuaded to tone down his own visceral (but funny!) hatred of the Kennedys. The Kennedys he is referring to – at least the ones the public at large thinks of – are long dead. They have been ethics corrupters for decades, adversely affecting the way Americans see candidates for office in a way that Bryan never could. Then again, I’m also not unbiased when it comes to the Kennedys. (“My guy wasn’t great, your guy is worse”)
Still, both Mencken and Stiles were writing to specific audiences – those who could be expected to agree with and appreciate their respective attacks while nodding their heads like mannerless bobbleheads with no sense of civility. If they were sharing their thoughts with like-minded people in their own circles rather than in the public forum disguised as news or serious commentary, it might be acceptable, if somewhat icky.
So, I’m leaning on the side of unethical because we’re dealing with public forums which require a certain amount of maturity and fairness when disseminating news and opinions in order to maintain a minimum level of decorum in public discourse.
But, then again, I am clouded by too many biases to really make a fair assessment which the examples given.
I see all of this as clown nose off, clown nose on. Are you trying to make substantive commentary or make us laugh?
Please pick one. One you’ve picked one, make it clear which one you’ve picked by keeping the other to a minimum.
Otherwise, unethical.
–Dwayne
Then, there is John Cleese eulogizing Graham Chapman:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAukBZcpFY8/?igsh=MTJrdmVhcmZtY2ppZg==
jvb
One of the funniest things I ever saw was the troupe bringing Chapman’s alleged ashes in an urn to a talk show and accidentally knocking them over, bringing out a dustbuster to sweep them up…
Of course, these segments were done with love, not out of malice.
Is ad hominem allowed?
No need to ask here. Pitzker’s principles and policies are bad for Illinois, but, set that aside. From a recent prompt:
His face reminds me of The Bambino’s face
this guy would give Shemp Howard, who once advertised himself as the ugliest man in the world, a run for his money
he’s from one of those families that plaster their kids’ prep schools’, colleges’, and likely even grad schools’ decals on the back windshields of their Volvos
I love the freedom to comment on this site; I think some commenters would do themselves a favor by recalling that freedom necessarily includes responsibilities, such as a responsibility to address the issue at hand.
Ya think?
The political satirist Gutfeld has an interesting approach – an insult hierarchy. For those who regularly call him (or conservatives) Nazi, Fascist, Hitler, etc., all bets are off and personal attacks in the service of humor are defensible. Unlike the recently elected attorney general, Gutfeld says he will not cross the line of wishing people or their children dead.