[ad_1]
Cruz uses a lacerating wit to skewer O'Rourke. To a Longview crowd, he suggests he'd won the two men's two debates. O'Rourke "seemed kind of shook up," he said.
O'Rourke's commercial TVs also come in for scorn.
"Have you seen all the attackers he's running where he's staring at the camera and sweats and looks like it's a hostage video?" Cruz said to laughter.
O'Rourke's humor is never about Cruz. It's more about giving audiences a break from the Democrat's moral earnestness. When O'Rourke recently grew up, midspeech, in Lufkin, press secretary Chris Evans rushed to his side with a bottle of water.
O'Rourke responded with a line, however goofy, that made listeners applaud even louder:
"Let's hear it for water!"
Texas A & M's Merierca said the Senate hopefuls' lighter side buttresses more serious aims.
"Beto has the right to be an earnest and good-natured antidote to the divisive politics of the nation, and Cruz has gotten himself as the voice of Texas conservative wisdom," she said.
One expert unimpressed
Political columnist Walter Shapiro of the online publication Roll Call said he was unimpressed with the Samples of Cruz and O'Rourke humor he reviewed.
Shapiro said that, yes, their audiences lapped it up.
"Nothing or candidate said made me smile, let alone laugh," he said.
Shapiro, who covered 10 presidential campaigns and spent 10 years as a stand-up comic in New York City's "minor clubs," said no modern politicians have been nearly as funny as the late U.S. Rep. Morris Udall, an Arizona Democrat, and Kansas presidential trainer and GOP presidential hopeful Bob Dole.
Shapiro pointed to what he called humor that's mediocre at best.
In one, O'Rourke tells rallygoers an elaborate story about his daughter Molly's blind squirrel. The punch line comes when O'Rourke says the squirrel Tessie's vision has been restored. He said he told Molly, 10, that it might be time to travel back to its original habitat in East Texas.
"And she said, 'Dad, I'd like to, but have a life to live,'" O'Rourke recounted.
"Mildly amusing," Shapiro said.
But the joke "fits into the larger category of 'Form B of Self Deprecating Humor,'" he said. "'If you can not be self-deprecating about yourself, use your children as foils.'"
A Cruz aside about pistol-packing Texans also fails to sparkle, Shapiro said.
In Longview recently, after mentioning gun rights, Cruz said, "By the way, I appreciate, when I mention the Second Amendment, y'all not pulling out your guns and shootin '' em in the air. Trouble if you hit a hole in the ceiling. Thank you for your restraint. "
Shapiro invoked 92-year-old Las Vegas comedian Shecky Greene to flunk the comic Cruz.
"I'm sorry, I just do not think it's worth laughing Jerry Seinfeld to joke about not shooting up the ceiling," he said. "Maybe I want to see you again" But I just do not see Shecky Cruz getting away with this!
[ad_2]
Source link
