Greenland is a giant, cold mass of an autonomous territory just sort of sitting there off the eastern coast of Canada. That’s literally all I know about it. And despite Greenland being in the news for the past few weeks as the United States attempts to seize control of it from the Danish government, I still don’t know much else.
Maybe our political comedians can give us more insight into this issue. But no. The jokes seem to mostly come from a lack of understanding of what’s going on. For example, “Late Night With Seth Meyers” seems to really indulge in a lack of clarity. A local news broadcast is shown, saying, “This seize of land in Greenland may be linked to Trump’s not winning a Nobel Prize. Stay with us as we explain.” The clip abruptly ends, and Meyers says, “Please, let’s not.”
We are teased with more information that is denied to us when a clip says, “Donald Trump has claimed victory in eight foreign conflicts, some of which are not conflicts, and some of which are not resolved.” Seth Meyers has a laugh at the president for this fact, but does not clarify what conflicts the quote is referring to. It makes me think that maybe these could have been great victories for the administration; I will never know. Thankfully, Meyers uses the time that could’ve been used to explain things to instead show clips of the President speaking awkwardly, or the host’s Trump impression, just like every comedy show during this administration.
Maybe “Gutfeld!” will have a more informative take on the Greenland situation. To Greg’s credit, he does show a fairly long clip of Jen Psaki on MS NOW decrying the Greenland situation as a land grab. But instead of incisive commentary about how the anti-Trump take is wrong, we get a series of oddly personal attacks on Psaki, the lowlight of which was calling her “Strawberry Shortbus,” a fairly unforgivable insult based on Jen’s bright red hair. Greenland does not seem like a particularly divisive issue. But apparently, even this can cause partisan posturing from humorists, regardless of their affiliation.
The cleverness on the topic is no longer heartening on the print side of things either. There’s an unfortunate side effect of Greenland being presently owned by Denmark. Lazy racial stereotypes are more easily tolerated, because when we do it to the Danish, we’re still only picking on white people. The Onion’s article with pros and cons of the US acquiring Denmark makes some of the most obvious Danish jokes imaginable. The pickled fish reference was lame enough, but bringing up Björk literally demonstrates how these kind of jokes peaked in the 1990s.
And the Babylon Bee, the conservative answer to the Onion, did not make me laugh with their Denmark joke. But it did serve as a useful metaphor for the use of racial humor. So, on rhetorical grounds alone, The Babylon Bee had the funniest take of the week. According to their satirical article, in order to properly defend against US invasion, Denmark is placing Greenland inside a giant tin of Danish cookies.
And really, if you only make fun of a country by sort of name-checking things broadly associated with it, like Björk and cookies, you’re trapping the nuances of the country in a tin of stereotype. Open the tin, discover the unique cultural cookies inside a country or a topic, and use these carbohydrates of original thought to make some original jokes. That would be as sweet as a vanilla wreath.
