I have been writing here for eight years. By now, my readers know me pretty well. I have a sense of humor. Many have written comments on the web page and personal emails to me saying that I have a great sense of humor and should have done standup. Maybe, but I trekked a path less traveled. My point is: I can spot a joke and giggle or laugh; I am hardly humorless.
I opted to watch on TV from my West Coast venue the entire Trump campaign event held at Madison Square Garden. Born in Brooklyn, I had been to “The Garden” dozens of times — to root for Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, and Dick Barnett of the Knicks; Ed Giacomon, Rod Gilbert (pronounced “zhil-BEAR’”), and Jean Ratelle of the Rangers; and for Bruno Sammartino and Bobo Brazil of the World Wide Wrestling Federation. More recently, I have been enthralled by videos of Israel’s greatest and most spiritually soulful singer, Ishai Ribo, packing the Garden twice these past two years. I was not going to miss the Trump event.
The lineup supporting Trump would include Sid Rosenberg, the popular New York City radio host; Tulsi Gabbard; Rudy Giuliani, Dr. Phil, Hulk Hogan, Tucker Carlson, Rep. Elise Stefanik (who wiped the floor with the presidents of Penn, MIT, and Harvard — and later the president of my alma mater, Columbia — propelling three to resign their offices, i.e., to get fired and kicked out); Elon Musk; the Trump family; and many more. It was a massive kickoff to closing the last week of the presidential campaign, and it was just so great.
Of course, the media and the Democrats would tarnish the magnificent event’s aftermath with their usual toxic libel and slander. It was to be expected. But, as with Wall Street stock gains and losses the day after earnings reports, reactions on The Street usually do not gyrate much because The Market already has built in the quarterly or annual reports, having correctly anticipated those results for days in advance. In similar fashion, the adversarial reactions of Harris, Walz, and other Democrats and mainstream media (same thing) would not matter a whit.
So I turned to Fox News, settled in, heard the national anthem, and soon there was a comedian on stage. I guess he was there to to warm up the crowd. As if the Hulk, Giuliani, Musk, Tucker, Rudy, and Melania would not be adequate to warm up the crowd for a massive Trump audience of 20,000 in The Garden who were bursting to embrace Donald Trump. Thus the comedian.
I guess if the comedian were a top headliner, that could make sense. Instead, they got some podcaster named Tony Hinchcliffe. He specializes in insulting other people crudely, including fellow comedians. After a viciously anti-Asian slur in the past, his agent dropped him. He belittles other people, believing that to be just jolly. And not in the old good-natured style of Don Rickles whose “insults” actually induced celebrities, even President Ronald Reagan, to invite him to pick on them. This guy is genuinely vicious and hurtful.
So this horse’s rump goes on the stage of this critical closing-week campaign event in Blue State Central, aimed at boosting President Donald Trump just a bit more toward the finish line, and he starts mocking Hispanics and particularly Puerto Ricans. I was really surprised. Didn’t anybody vet this jackass before putting him on the stage? He spoke about carving watermelons with Black people, made a comment about Jews resisting letting go of paper, and he mocked Hispanics reproducing. As his top “joke,” he said there is a “floating island of garbage” out there — and it is called Puerto Rico.
My first reaction was not that I would like to punch him in the face but to punch in the kisser the moron who invited him. Here they are, struggling to win Pennsylvania and other swing states that are within a point’s difference, and they put on a horse’s rump who denigrates Puerto Ricans? In a year when Trump has been making all kinds of unprecedented Republican breakthroughs with Hispanics and Black men (and Jews, too, by the way)? What a slimeball!
He got criticized roundly by the Usual Suspects, but this time the Left was handed the red meat on a silver platter. A Trump spokesman rushed to tell the media that the vulgarian’s comments do not reflect the views of President Trump or his campaign. Sen. Rick Scott, in a competitive reelection race for U.S. Senator in heavily Hispanic Florida, blasted the lowlife. And yet Hinchcliffe responded to the outrage by saying that Democrats just don’t have a sense of humor.
It happens to be that this bastard is a bastard. His father was married to another woman, and Hinchcliffe’s mother was not she. He was reared by his single mom. The father’s actual wife was unaware that the kid existed. Hinchcliffe grew up falsely understanding that his father never was home because he traveled lots for business. Why do I go into this sordid garbage reminiscent of Doug Emhoff, our second gentleman, the role model for the Woke’s new kind of masculinity? For this reason:
As Hinchcliffe defends his obscene denigration of Puerto Ricans, saying that his critics lack a sense of humor, I’d love for someone to tell him this Hinchcliffe-inspired joke:
A married guy walks one day on the sidewalks of San Francisco, encountering homeless encampments, and sees urine, feces, and drug needles all over. As he crosses the street and approaches the next block of homeless addicts and vagrants, the man sees a larger pile of solid excrement. As he draws closer, he looks closer and says, “That’s not a large pile of excrement. That’s my bastard son.”
Get it? Or do you lack Hinchcliffe’s seasoned and refined sense of humor that defines the homeland of Puerto Ricans as a “floating island of garbage”?
I hope the Trump campaign further condemns what was said and that the person who invited Hinchcliffe publicly apologizes to Trump and MAGA country for his terrible failure in judgment.
Subscribe to Rav Fischer’s YouTube channel here at bit.ly/3REFTbk and follow him on X (Twitter) at @DovFischerRabbi to find his latest classes, interviews, speeches, and observations.
To be invited to attend any of his three weekly Zoom classes, send a request to rabbi@yioc.org
Rav Fischer’s latest 10-minute messages are up: (i) “There is No Palesine” (here) and (ii) “Jewish Campus Students Need to Stop Whining” (here)
