Harris has last laugh

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/09/2024 (749 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Personally, I loved that she laughed at him.

When United States Vice-President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris squared off against “this (long pause) former president” and Republican nominee Donald Trump in Tuesday’s debate, she dispensed with the politician’s poker face and laughed, openly, at her opponent’s frequent absurdity. And it was glorious.

Who on earth hears unhinged rantings and ravings about how “in Springfield, they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats,” referring to an Ohio city with a large Haitian population, and how Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” and thinks, “Yes, this is a normal, reasonable man who is good at thinking and talking; let’s give him the nuclear codes”?

So, yes, you could say Trump’s debate performance was a joke, which isn’t the same thing as saying it was funny. The things he was spewing — or, more accurately, attempting to spew — are decidedly not funny.

Ask Haitian kids in Springfield, Ohio, what this week at school has been like all because the former president of the country they are growing up in, the country their parents decided would be better for them, decided to bring a deeply racist trope to a widely watched televised debate.

No, Harris laughed at Trump because he is laughable. And it was a canny rhetorical device.

Many times while watching the debate, I thought of Margaret Atwood’s famous quote: “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

That quote has been buffed and polished into a tidy soundbite over the years, but it comes from Writing the Male Character, a 1982 essay Atwood originally delivered as a Hagey Lecture at the University of Waterloo.

In it, Atwood recounts asking a male friend why men feel threatened by women:

“‘I mean,’ I said, ‘men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.’

“‘They’re afraid women will laugh at them,’” he said. ‘Undercut their worldview.’”

That’s precisely what Harris was doing. She was undercutting Trump’s worldview, which is deeply egocentric. And not just with her incredulous laughter, but with her face. Let’s just say Harris doesn’t need a live mic to tell us exactly what she’s thinking.

The raised “please be serious” eyebrows, chin angled down as though she was peering over invisible sunglasses. The squint and chin stroke. The dismissive smirk. Every woman recognizes and understands Harris’s facial expressions because every woman has made Harris’s facial expressions.

Put four stills of Harris together and they are worthy of a Warholian lithograph titled Competent Woman Listening To Unqualified Man.

Of course, not everyone agrees.

“If she wants to win, Harris needs to train her face not to respond,” GOP pollster Frank Luntz posted on X during the debate.

“It feeds into a female stereotype and, more importantly, risks offending undecided voters.”

Which female stereotype? The one where women have faces? Don’t tell me it’s the “women are hysterical” one because, respectfully, Harris was not the one practically shrieking about being the goodest boy with the biggest, bestest rallies.

Her face was, in no way, betraying her on Tuesday. It was serving her. Harris found Trump’s Achilles’ heel. Calling him a racist doesn’t bother him. Calling him a misogynist doesn’t bother him.

You know what bothers him? Calling his rallies boring and laughing at him.

And when it was her turn to answer the moderators’ questions, her responses had substance (or, at the very least, were complete and cogent thoughts). On abortion, where Trump had incoherent assertions about babies being killed after they are born — which was thankfully met with a truly withering fact check from ABC moderator Linsey Davis — Harris had women’s interests at heart.

In their closing arguments, where he doubled down on America being a failing nation, she presented a vision for the future rooted in hope.

Harris went for his overinflated ego to tremendous effect. Trump, meanwhile, couldn’t even look her in the eye.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com