Why Joe Biden’s Laugh is the Most Devastating Political Weapon of the 2012 Election

From Juli Weiner at Vanity Fair:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/10/Why-Joe-Bidens-Laugh-is-the-Most-Devastating-Political-Weapon-of-the-2012-Election

Joe Biden is earning rave reviews for his electricfying performance in last night’s vice-presidential debate. Vanity Fair’s own Todd Purdum wrote that Biden “was priest to Paul Ryan’s flummoxed altar boy, Scoutmaster to Ryan’s nervous, tongue-tied knot-tier. His smile veered—yes—between amused and condescending, depending on the honey or vinegar with which he referred to Ryan as ‘my friend.’” But can you blame Ryan for being so off his game? Self-satisfied smirking was sort of his Thing!

But the smirking was but a prelude to the snickering. Basically every time that Ryan said something, about anything, Biden looked down and giggled to himself, sometimes simultaneously scribbling down notes (“<-- hate u paul”), sometimes not. New York magazine has a fine summary of the controversy surrounding the chuckle: “On Twitter Piers Morgan deemed Biden's laugh ‘infectious,’ and after weathering the last week many liberals seemed happy to have something to smile about. Unsurprisingly, right-leaning Tweeters weren’t amused by Biden’s suggestion that everything Paul Ryan said in the debate was absurd.”

But this particular style of laughing—i.e., its specific aesthetic qualities—was what made it so universally, perhaps even subconsciously, persuasive. We think New York is correct that it is an implicit suggestion “that everything Paul Ryan said in the debate was absurd,” but the laugh was equal parts bemusement as it was conspiratorial. It was a laugh that also implicitly suggested that the audience—the intelligent, informed, rational, beautiful, amazing-taste-in-music-having, weight-losing audience—was in on the joke. It was not an arrogant laugh; at no point did Biden seem condescending to anyone but Paul Ryan. It makes sense that Morgan called it “infectious.” Every laugh was an audience-participation question: “Can you believe this guy?”

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