The Democrats are getting mileage with a new line of attack against the Republican ticket. But what does “weird” really mean?
Democratic politicians and pundits have recently begun throwing this insult at Republican presidential contender Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance: “weird.” As a scholar who has made my academic career in part by celebrating weirdness, I object. Trump and Vance don’t deserve the compliment.
The weird should be understood as whatever is strikingly contrary to the ordinary, predictable and readily comprehensible. It is a contrast with the normal. Consider blades of grass. Although no two are exactly the same, their variation keeps to certain limits. But here’s a blade that splits into three halfway up, with each finger curling around in a loop. Why would it do that? Now that’s a weird blade of grass!
Recently, my family and I visited Hayao Miyazaki’s Ni-Tele Really Big Clock in Tokyo. What a weird object: It looms from the side of a skyscraper, featuring mannequins and giant bird claws. When noon strikes, one claw opens to reveal a smiling sun, a fish tail bangs a gong and a bell-headed mannequin enacts a goofy dance. Nature also offers plenty of weirdness, such as the miraculously thin, Seussian piles of stone in Utah’s Bryce Canyon, the surreal mineral-deposit terraces of Pamukkale in Turkey and gloriously bizarre fish and fungi around the world.
The Democrats are getting mileage from calling Trump and Vance “weird.” The word has been used enough by allies of Vice President Kamala Harris and her presidential campaign to receive substantial news coverage as a political strategy, even praise for its success.
