Meet Adam Wren, the Idiot from Indiana

Ever told a bad joke?

I've told many -- some might even call this blog a bad joke, just thought I'd get that obvious one out of the way -- and there are many reasons why a joke "fails to land."

Maybe the idea behind the joke was funny but the execution was bad.

Maybe the idea behind the joke was flawed and it falls apart when told. 

Maybe the joke wasn't just as funny to the person hearing it as it was to the person telling it.

Or maybe ... maybe ... just maybe the joke betrays something bad about the person telling it. Maybe the jokes reveals something ugly that makes the joke not only unfunny but also disturbing.

Such is the case of Adam Wren, a supposed "humor" writer from Indiana who allegedly came to NYC for a few days to visit the "bubble" of "Clinton Country."

Oh yes, Mr. Wren the Hoosier thinks he's just the funniest guy there is. Oh, he's a hoot. So funny. So witty. So wry. And if you don't think he's funny, if you don't get the joke, then you're just a crabby liberal elitist who doesn't understand the oh-so-virtuous world of "middle America."

Mr. Wren recently posted a long, long, long, long, long, long (and I do mean long) supposedly "humorous" piece on Politico where he visited trendy parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan to try to "understand" the people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and are horrified (how dare they!) by the Donald J. Trump Presidency. "Aren't these people ridiculous?" Mr Wren is saying. "Aren't they arrogant and dumb?" He makes fun of their habits like eating organic food and doing yoga, he makes them out to be precious little cry babies, and he's just so mean but, oh, just so funny, that everyone should love his "skewering" of blue America -- even idiot liberals!

This piece was clearly meant to be a "humorous" answer to all the journalism in the last year where reporters from Blue America traveled into the heart of Red America to try to "understand" Trump Voters. I get that Mr. Wren the Red American Trump voter found these pieces annoying and condescending -- I frankly found them boring myself, only because they were trying to make me feel sympathy for people who don't deserve it and all those pieces did was confirm that for me -- so attempting a humorous "answer" might have some merit to it. But his piece is hateful and not funny and, more importantly, it revealed something about Mr. Wren -- that he's an arrogant racist idiot.

Why?

Because if you want to visit the real "Clinton Country" go to the South Bronx. Go to the poorest areas of NYC where vastly more people voted for Clinton over Trump than in other, better heeled parts of the city. But Wren didn't do that, not only because it would ruin the central premise of his piece, but also because "those people" i.e. black, Hispanics, basically anyone non-white, doesn't exist for people like him. They're non-people to people like Mr. Wren. 

I'm not going to post Mr. Wren's garbage (you can seek it out if you'd like) but I will highlight some selections that Ben Adler, a very fine writer from City and State wrote in response to Mr. Wren's piece that was "lazy bias masquerading as anti-elitism."

In New York City, the borough that went for Clinton by the largest margin isn’t Manhattan or Brooklyn; it’s the Bronx, where Clinton won 88 percent, versus 86 percent in Manhattan and 79 percent in Brooklyn. This is not because living farther uptown inherently makes you more Democratic; it’s because the Bronx is the poorest and least-white borough. But Wren didn’t go to the Bronx.

n fact, only the white working class went for Trump, while the non-white working class went overwhelmingly for Clinton – hence, Clinton’s victory among lower-income voters. Wren and his editors chose to reinforce faulty stereotypes merely because they already exist. It’s a feedback loop of malicious ignorance.

Trump won voters making between $50,000 and $200,000 per year, while losing those making less than $50,000. The portrayal of Trump voters as mostly blue-collar folks suffering from “economic anxiety” is inaccurate. The antidote to such flawed journalism is careful, nuanced reporting, not incurious, prejudiced claptrap.

I'm quite sure Mr. Wren enjoys the "outraged" responses to his piece like those of Mr. Haber and me. When you're a bad person like he is (or the President he admires) you enjoy upsetting people.  You enjoy making hurting people who are unlike you. And that's who Republicans and Trump voters and Red Americans like Wren are -- bad people, people who enjoy inflicting pain on "the other." Good people don't inflicting pain. 

It's that simple. Really.

But we're all capable, I guess, of telling bad jokes.