The New York Times sure has a weird sense of humor.
Early Friday morning, after an historic meeting between Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in, the paper published a tweet that read, “A lighthearted moment: Kim Jong-un apologized to South Korea’s leader for disturbing his sleep with the North’s missile tests.”
A lighthearted moment: Kim Jong-un apologized to South Korea’s leader for disturbing his sleep with the North’s missile tests https://t.co/xBua89iKvw
— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) April 27, 2018
I’m sorry, what?
The story began originally with these lines: “They traded invitations. One talked about not setting off missiles so the other could get some sleep. And they discussed how one country had bullet trains while the other had decrepit roads.”
The report was updated later to include this full anecdote [emphasis added]:
The humor here is obvious. It’s a funny (albeit macabre) line. But calling it “lighthearted” is a curious decision for a paper that is chronically incapable of seeing any humor in the U.S. president’s own dark jokes.
When President Trump goes off-script with a line designed to draw laughs or cheers from his supporters, the Times often responds with reporting and analysis suggesting his remarks are actually proof of far darker tendencies. The paper certainly doesn’t characterize such Trump quips as “lighthearted.”
In July 2017, for example, the Times wasn’t laughing when the president jokingly encouraged police officers to be a bit rougher when arresting members of the notoriously brutal MS-13 gang.
“Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, O.K.?” Trump told law enforcement officials in Long Island, N.Y.
The president’s audience laughed. The Times did not. The paper reported soon after the president’s speech that “Experts worried that his words could encourage the inappropriate use of force” and that his “words were particularly sensitive in Suffolk County,” which has been dealing with allegations of discrimination against Latinos. The Times also reported in a separate article that “critics said [his remarks] came too close to encouraging excessive force by the police.” That separate report also claimed “many in law enforcement took [him] seriously.”
Later, in February of this year, the Times’ was equally unamused when the president jokingly said of the members of Congress who didn’t cheer his State of the Union address: “Even on positive news — really positive news, like that — they were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said treasonous. Yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?”
The president’s audience laughed. The Times did not. The paper published an opinion piece skewering Trump for his comments, as well as a report that characterized his address as “an ambling, discursive speech … replete with political overtones.”
In March, Trump joked at a private fundraiser after China’s President Xi Jinping’s unprecedented move to make his rule permanent: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
The president’s audience laughed. The Times did not. In fact, these specific remarks prompted the paper to publish an entire editorial denouncing Trump’s supposedly authoritarian leanings.
“Trump just doesn’t get it,” they wrote, accusing him of heaping praise on the Chinese dictator. “There’s something in the man that impels him reflexively to celebrate the authoritarian model.”
The president does indeed flirt a lot with strongman rhetoric and ideas, and it’s good that the press keeps a close check on him. But how anyone can denounce Trump for joking about roughing up MS-13 suspects or becoming president for life, while also dismissing North Korea’s boy dictator’s gag about nuclear war as just a “lighthearted line,” is beyond me.
