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The thing that made Kamala’s cackle so irritating was that she’d do it when nobody else in the room was laughing. “I know, right? It’s hilarious, RIGHT? Guh-GLACK-guh-GLACKLE!” but nobody else was with her on the joke.

From a comedy perspective, it’s fine to laugh at a joke that the audience didn’t appreciate. Dennis Miller did that to perfection on Weekend Update, often smiling and proffering a dismissive “ha-haaaa” when a joke bombed, as if to say, “Hey, I thought it was a good gag even if you didn’t.”

What you can’t do, what kills the room, is if you try to strong-arm audience members into laughing at something they found unworthy of laughter. Stopping your set cold to go, “It’s funny, right? I mean, it’s hilarious, right? LET’S LAUGH NOW, RIGHT?”

Kamala reminds me of a character I created during my improv days: the comedian who’s all crowdwork and no jokes. Just pointing at the front row and going, “He knows what I’m talking about, amiright? She’s like, ‘Nuh-uh,’ but he’s like, ‘Oh yeah,’” and that’s the entire routine.

Komedy Kamala needs to believe that the room is laughing with her even when it isn’t. Whereas skilled comics, from Norm Macdonald to David Letterman to Johnny Carson, understood that you should never be in denial when a joke bombs—embrace it, forge a new joke from the failure—Kamala has to believe that she’s always killing it.

What else would you expect from an empty pantsuit who got where she is by giving out blowjobs? Kamala has a history of going to dinner with horny powerful men who pretend to like her jokes because that’s the easiest way to bed a bimbo.

Flatter her. Make her think she’s funny. Because if you don’t, the bimbo might say, “Wait, you don’t think I’m brilliantly hilarious? Hold on…are you just buying me dinner because you want the BJ?”

Kamala, having been humored throughout her life, can never accept that the room is not laughing along. She’s not psychologically capable of that epiphany. It would destroy her. Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, but she grudgingly accepts that many people dislike her. Hell, she’s thrived on that knowledge; adversarialism excites her. And that’s because her marriage is adversarial. She knows what her hillbilly whoremonger husband is all about, and that combative dynamic informs her actions.

But Kamala really does think the entire room is joining her laughter, even if there’s not a sound but her own guh-glackle-huh-GLACKLE!

To again relate this to comedy, Paul F. Tompkins is a leftist comedian who mercilessly patrols his colleagues to prevent any offense to trannies or other “protected” groups (Tompkins claims that censorship improves comedy). Tompkins is a talented guy; for me, Mr. Show is, along with SCTV, one of those “I know every routine by heart” iconoclastic examples of sketch work at its best. But Tompkins doesn’t want you to make fun of trannies. When the ugly dude in a dress wrecks the GameStop while screaming, “CALL ME MA’AM,” Tompkins needs to make sure that you know there’s no comedy gold to be mined. And he’ll fuck you up bad if you disagree.

Problem is, Tompkins, good leftist that he is, can’t think of himself as a bully or a censor.

Because good leftists are supposed to be against such things.

So, when he gives interviews on why jokes about trannies must not be allowed, he disingenuously phrases the matter as, “The audience has evolved. They don’t like jokes about our delicate transgender flowers. Therefore the absence of tranny jokes at comedy clubs has nothing to do with me or anyone else forcing that situation; the audience as a whole has moved beyond wanting to hear ‘hateful’ comedy.”

That’s bullshit, of course. As Dave Chappelle and others have ably demonstrated, there’s definitely an audience for tranny jokes. But like Kamala, Tompkins cannot face the reality that he’s browbeating, cudgeling the audience. He can only sleep at night thinking that the audience is with him.

This is the sickness. Reversed, but the same. Kamala forcing an audience that doesn’t want to laugh to laugh, Tompkins forcing an audience that wants to laugh to not laugh. And both delusionals are unwilling to admit that they’re ascribing organicity to something they themselves are artificially effectuating.

Which brings us to Newsom.

In June 2019, Newsom gave an online “state of the state” address. I wrote about it at the time. Because it was, what’s that word I compulsively overuse? Oh, right—“instructive.”

The gist of the address was that California in 2019 is no longer the California of the 1990s, the California that passed the tough-on-crime Three Strikes ballot proposition in a landslide (72 percent to 28 percent), the anti-illegal immigration Proposition 187 in a landslide (60 percent to 40 percent), and an Affirmative Action ban (not as much of a landslide—55 percent/45 percent—but there were a lot more blacks in CA in the ’90s).

In his address, Newsom declared that California has evolved from those days. Just like how comedy audiences no longer like humor at the expense of trannies, and how that happened organically and not because of bullies like Paul Tompkins forcing the change. Californians, Newsom cheerfully informed us, had moved past the “tough on crime, tough on Affirmative Action” days of the 1990s, and it happened completely on its own, and not because of engineering by the party that controls this one-party state and the verminous media that skews the information flow.

Newsom was cackling, and he thought the room was with him.

How many times have I hectored you people about the dangers of reality detachment? You don’t listen to me when I criticize rightists for doing it, but maybe you’ll get the point when I give you some leftist examples. Harris had convinced herself that the world was laughing with her, and where is she now?

Blowing Anthony Weiner in a Walmart parking lot (just a guess).

And Newsom? His 2019 “We’ve evolved from tough on crime/no Affirmative Action” fantasy has proved to be just that—a fantasy. In 2020 the Affirmative Action ban was renewed with overwhelming approval (a wider margin than in 1996—57 percent to 43 percent). San Francisco’s murderous Soros-backed DA was booted in 2022; L.A. and Alameda County’s murderous Soros-backed DAs were booted this month. The entire state voted to end Soros’ Proposition 47, the measure that decriminalized theft, in a landslide (the Prop. 47 reversal won 71 percent to 29 percent, carrying every county in the state…unheard of).

Even among California’s beans, Trump won 43 percent, as he did nationally.

May I put that in context for you? Eisenhower in 1952 got a mere 36 percent of the Jewish vote. More beans voted for a guy who they were told will put them in camps than Jews voted for a guy who for real got them out of camps.

Instructive, no?

In his arrogant 2019 address, Newsom was wrong on two counts. First, the tough-on-crime and anti–Affirmative Action voters are still here. Hated by the press, hated by the party in charge, but California has not “evolved,” any more than audiences have “evolved” to where they think Sam Brinton isn’t worthy of mockery.

Second, not only has the California electorate not “evolved,” but—from Newsom’s perspective—it’s gotten worse. Blacks have fled; the state’s down to 5 percent black (the California black vote for Trump was one. No, not one percent; one guy—Jimmy Walker, and that was only because Trump promised to make him Secretary of Dyn-o-Mite). Oygenflaygin Ashkenazis in L.A. County have been displaced by the virile and conservative Persians and the insane but right-leaning Orthodox.

And our beans? 43 percent for Trump isn’t bad, especially considering that there was zero local GOP outreach because our state GOP is run by imbeciles with the brainpower of Gilbert Grape’s brother and the dynamism of Gilbert Grape’s mother.

Newsom thought the room was laughing with him, but it wasn’t. Indeed, it had turned hostile, yet he remained detached from that reality. Conversely, there are a lot of Latinos who’d like to laugh along with the GOP, but the GOP is detached from reality too, in a different way. Newsom (like Kamala) is the comedian who thinks they’re killing when they’re not. The CA GOP is the comedian who has killer material but neither the confidence nor competence to make use of it.

When I hector the right, I get a lot of negative feedback. But the reason I hector is that you guys need to snap out of the bullshit that enthralls you. For example, have you ever asked yourselves, in 2014 when Soros enlisted Rand Paul and Newt Gingrich to lobby for the theft-decriminalization proposition, why he did that?

Why, in a blue state, did Soros have to hire Gingrich and Paul to be his bagmen?

Maybe some of you should stop obsessing over Alex Jones as he sleuths out the crisis-midgets Obama hired to fake Sandy Hook and spend a few minutes trying to sleuth out real-world mysteries.

Because the real world is actually super interesting if you give it a chance!

Soros partnered with Gingrich (a religious social conservative) and Paul (a libertarian conservative) because he realized that California had not “evolved” from the 1990s—the tough-on-crime mentality still existed—so he had to “take out” a demographic that could defeat his ballot measure.

Never call the Devil stupid.

Also, try to be as bright as the Devil if you want to defeat him.

Newsom got lost in reality detachment, wrongly thinking that his state no longer had the balls of thirty years ago. He also didn’t realize that, demographically, the state had moved past 1994 in a way that is very bad for his agenda (fewer blacks, fewer Woody Allen nebbishes, more Persians), while what he thought was good for his agenda (more beans) may not turn out to be so.

The defining moment of the 2024 election came two days before the 5th, when Harris was asked if she supported the reversal of Soros’ theft-decriminalization law.

And Harris refused to offer an opinion.

Harris, a Californian and the state’s former top lawwoman, wouldn’t offer an opinion on a defining matter of criminal justice.

Two days before the election, the illusion of the room laughing along failed. She froze on stage because she was confronted with a complexity: Her pollsters told her that the anti-Soros measure was going to win in a landslide…so support it. But her left flank—and Gingrich—told her that if she supported re-criminalizing crime, she’d lose the black vote (yes, “conservative” Gingrich advised Harris to side with Soros).

A simple question—do you support the re-criminalization of theft in your home state?—stymied Harris.

In her final 48 hours of public life, she finally came to terms with the fact that a joke either kills or bombs, and crowdwork alone can’t change that.

It was the day the cackle died.

Bye-bye, Miss Jamaican Mumbai.