Like a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Cialis, the Al Smith Dinner typically has some trouble rising to its own occasion. It’s less of a roast than a lukewarm sous vide. Its humor is of a proud Catholic passive agressive stock — the stuff I was weaned and shamed on, less about jabs than wedgies and noogies. Class over crass. Thus, it’s usually boring as heaven.

On Thursday night, Donald Trump staged his first-ever bombing campaign at the podium of the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner , an annual white-tie charity fund-raiser and roast, held at New York’s Waldorf Astoria, named for the former New York governor (and first-ever Catholic to run for president). Each year, but especially during the full moons of election season, its dais groans under the weight of dozens of assembled eminences, honorables, press, pols, and, yes, lousy jokes.


This time was different. You could say Donald Trump made the Al Smith Dinner great again.

It all started out fine, familiar, and stiff. As usual, Trump’s asides scored better than whatever he or his staff drew up in advance. “Hi Chuck,” he coyly called to New York senator Chuck Schumer. “He used to love me when I was a Democrat, you know.” Chuck chuckled, everyone chuckled. It was true.

But these soft openers felt like the conversational niceties that immediately precede a colonoscopy. Like any respectable Catholic get-together, the Al Smith demands self-deprecation from its participants. “It’s been said that I share the politics of Alfred E. Smith, and the ears of Alfred E. Neuman,” cracked Obama in 2008. “It’s nice to finally relax and to wear what Ann and I wear around the house,” joked Romney in 2012.

To Trump, muttering a self-deprecating joke, even into one’s hands, is the rhetorical equivalent of scaling the Warped Wall on “American Ninja Warrior.” And everyone at the Waldorf just wanted to see if he could pull it off — if he could charge fearlessly into personal adversity and pull himself up. Especially with those hands.


That would be a no. Trump managed a predictable gag about how “many people tell me that modesty is perhaps my best quality” (the best part of that joke was the meta-echo of “many people” telling him everything he appears to know). Apart from that, it was a slow-mo detonation that could only have benefitted slightly more by the involvement of Michael Bay.

Watching Trump attempt comedy makes you long to watch George Bush paint.

Trump read his jokes like they were slowly printing out from his navel. At times he sounded like a Frankenstein sewn together from 10 nervous best men who hit the open bar too hard before the toast. His cadence was knock-kneed and awkward, its emphases and accents all wrong, the usual musical sturm-und-drang of his stump speech replaced with the lurching mumble of a kid forced to read his note in front of the class. His “best” joke was a plagiarism zinger at his wife’s expense (shocked!), but apart from that, he got more laughs at the previous night’s debate.

He definitely go more boos here, though.

They started as soon he dropped the word “corrupt.” It was too talking pointy; the crowd soured. Boos rose like indigestion across the crowd. Trump pumped the brakes on his next few jokes, stumbling through their setups like a drunk through a hoe-strewn barn.


“I don’t know who they’re angry at, Hillary, you or I,” Trump said, ignoring the crowd’s prompt assistance (‘YOU!”) while turning an unfamiliar shade of puce, like a threatened lizard.

The boos continued, mercifully drowning out a few more jokes, and eventually driving Trump to the bottom of his notes, where he suggested “We’re having some fun here tonight and that’s good” (more boos) and wrapped up the debacle with some tender remarks about family togetherness, American division, and the “so-called modern day world.” The whole thing went over like a fart in a car.

Then came Hillary’s set, which, in traditional Al Smith Dinner form, disappointed by failing to disappoint. Her jokes were trim, tidy, dressed for the job, and, most importantly, funny — sharp enough to sting like the pin of a brooch, but resolutely unvulgar. She zinged herself for exorbitant speaking fees and her now legendary no-fun factor, and even took some meta-shots at herself — calling the crowd a “basket of adorables” and referring to tuxedos as “formal pantsuits.” (On that note, the scene on the dais made her look like a woman highlighted in pink in an old group portrait of a Masonic lodge.)

Clinton politely picked at Trump — commending him for the peaceful transfer of the microphone, inviting him to interrupt her by shouting “Wrong!,” lamenting aloud that former mayor Bloomberg wasn’t speaking because she was “curious to hear what a billionaire has to say.” She was less polite when sticking him for misogyny, saying he sees the Statue of Liberty as “a four — maybe a five if she loses the torch and tablet and changes her hair.”


But does it really matter if the president or the pumpkin-spice babadook fake-running for president is funny? (Or even knows how to smile/show upper teeth?) I like to think so.

Coaxing out a joke requires as much patience, attention to detail, and nuanced delivery as rolling out a policy. A joke is always an exercise in control, a display of power — but jokes also put us on the same level for as long as a laugh lasts. This might be why Trump reading a joke comes off like me reading the sports page: It’s a foreign language with an alien grammar.

Granted, it was tough for him having to go onstage after eight straight years of The Obama Comedy Hour. The lame duck has demonstrated admirable and completely unnecessary comic range through his tenure, from Vine-ready micro-meta-bits (like following the unsuccessful dunking of a cookie with “Thanks, Obama”) to downright treacherous dad-joke territory (like the pure Phil Dunphy-brand ham served in his latest pitch for early voting).

It was Maya Angelou (often referred to as the fifth Queen of Comedy) who once said, “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh.” I would take it a step further and say I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t make me laugh. After all, you can wear a wig and makeup and get elected president, but without jokes, you’ll never be a real clown.


Michael Andor Brodeur can be reached at mbrodeur@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MBrodeur.