A Comedy Critic Weighs In on Kamala Harris’s Laugh

Kamala Harris has an easy laugh. To the campaign running against her, this appears to be a vulnerability to exploit.

Donald J. Trump jumped on it when unveiling a nickname for her on Saturday: “Laffin’ Kamala Harris,” adding that “You can tell a lot by a laugh.” Compilations of her guffawing circulated online this week. Opposition research from the National Republican Senatorial Committee included her “inappropriate laughter” under the subject heading: Weird.

The first thing to be said about this is simply: LOL.

Far from a liability, her laugh is one of her most effective weapons.

Only in an era when everything gets politicized would a campaign come out aggressively against boisterous laughter. What next? Running against puppies and ice cream? Laughter transcends party politics, and it’s helped the messaging of everyone from Ronald Reagan to John F. Kennedy. And yet, in his bluntly insinuating style, Trump is tapping into something, that the traditional image of leadership is more of a stoic face than a happy convulsion.

We’ve been here before, the last time a woman led a presidential ticket. Hillary Clinton’s laugh was criticized, and also called weird. There was a suggestion that it made her seem inauthentic, which was a bizarre point, since genuine laughter is, if not involuntary, then very hard to fake. Lenny Bruce once dared a crowd to try it four times in an hour.

Calling women overly emotional or hysterical is a sexist trope, and there’s a long history of positioning laughter in opposition to reason. Plato warned against a love of laughter, suggesting it indicates a loss of control. Ever alert to the theater of power, Trump rarely laughs, dating back to long before he was in politics. Recounting his season appearing on “The Apprentice,” the magician Penn Jillette marveled at how he would regularly spend hours watching Trump talk and never notice the slightest chuckle.

Watching interviews with both candidates, it’s clear that there’s a sizable disparity in laughter. Trump scoffs and occasionally smirks, which can be a crowd-pleaser. But chuckling isn’t his thing. On talk shows, Harris does it to deflect and connect, to establish intimacy, but also to underline the absurdity of something. At its most effusive, her laugh can draw attention to itself, and taken out of context, it can seem as if she’s the only one in on the joke.

Harris has said she got her guffaw from her mother. But that’s not her only laugh. In her debut campaign speech, she even got a big response from muffling a snicker after saying that in the past, “I have taken on perpetrators of all kinds.”

This hint of a laugh sets up her most successful stump line so far: “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

The case against laughing is that it makes a leader come off as less serious. This rests on a common misunderstanding that laughter is primarily a response to something funny. Research over the past few decades has backed up what philosophers have said for over a century, which is that laughter is inherently social, more about relationships and communication than jokes. Try to recall the last time you laughed alone.

Shakespeare was fascinated by the performance of leadership, and in one of his most insightful plays on the subject, “Henry IV, Part 1,” the title character warns his son, Prince Hal, that frivolity can destroy his sense of authority, pointing to Richard II, who, in a Trumpian turn of phrase, he mocks as “the skipping King.” Among his errors are laughing with friends in public, which comes at a cost of reputation.

But Shakespeare contrasted King Henry’s thoughts with another of the prince’s mentors, the libertine John Falstaff, who taught him more populist lessons. “If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host I know is damned,” he tells Prince Hal.

If Falstaff got a job as a pundit on CNN, he might say that laughing makes you more relatable. That can come in handy for a politician, especially in our less royal times.

Properly utilized, laughter, a wildly flexible form of communication, can do more than any argument. People cite Ronald Reagan saying “There you go again” to Jimmy Carter as a memorable moment in their second presidential debate in 1980, but what they mention less often is that he introduces the line with a chuckle.

Harris does something similar in her now-viral line quoting her mother saying, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” Imagine her saying that without following it up with a booming laugh. The line becomes harsher. In letting loose a guffaw, she displays affection mixed with a wry ribbing.

Bill Clinton connected with people by biting his lip and making eye contact. He famously felt your pain. With her biggest laughs, the ones that she does with her whole body, Harris projects something else: joy.

President Biden provides a contrast. What people saw in the debate was not just that he was less articulate or coherent than he was four years ago. There was a rigidity to his verbal combat, a lack of charm or nimbleness that makes it difficult to massage arguments into fighting shape. Laughter helps.

Comedians understand this. Many laugh at their own jokes not just because something is funny. It’s to make a difficult idea more palatable or to transition from one idea to another. Laughing is a social lubricant. Look at how Harris and her sister talk about the strangeness of calling your sibling the attorney general. Sisters make fun of each other. And there can be real issues underneath gibes. But you can see them finding common ground in their laughing, how it builds and then explodes in unison.

Movies often emphasize the sinister side of laughter. The Joker laughs. Batman doesn’t. Martin Scorsese has made the laughter of mobsters look alluring and grotesque in the same shot. And is there a more haunting maternal warning than “They’re all going to laugh at you” from “Carrie?”

But most laughter in the real world is not callous but connective, not exclusionary but unifying. Laughter can communicate nervousness, but it can also calm it.

The traditional image of a leader might not be mouth agape. But we do not live in conventional times. Donald Trump is evidence. Whatever you think about Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan at the Republican convention, their appearances are a testament to the importance of a good time in politics. Democrats have often ceded this territory in recent years, and that can carry a cost as much as not appearing presidential.

What does a laugh say about a person? That he or she is human. In a divided country, it’s something we all do and enjoy. And as anyone who has hung out with friends late into the night knows, it’s contagious. That’s a powerful political tool. As the poet Ella Wilcox wrote, “Laugh and the world laughs with you.”