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2024年美國總統競選的一個顯著特點是新聞熱點的快速更新。僅僅兩週前，有人企圖刺殺唐納•川普(Donald Trump)，當時人們預計這一事件會主導並「重塑」競選。然而，之後選舉新聞的數量之多使得那件事似乎成爲了遙遠的記憶。事實上，在過去的一週裏，「川普槍擊事件」(Trump shooting)在美國的網路搜尋量已被另一個關鍵詞超過： 「J•D•萬斯沙發(JD Vance couch)」。
One of the manifold remarkable aspects of the 2024 US presidential race is how quickly the news cycle moves on. Just over two weeks ago, an assassination attempt was made on Donald Trump — an episode that was expected to dominate and “reshape” the race. And yet the sheer volume of election news since then has made this feel like a distant memory. Indeed, in the past week, the number of Americans looking up “Trump shooting” online has been eclipsed by the number putting another search term into Google: “JD Vance couch”.
這次搜尋與一則謠言有關，謠言稱川普的競選搭檔萬斯在他的暢銷回憶錄《鄉下人的悲歌》(Hillbilly Elegy)中承認自己曾與一張沙發發生性關係——儘管這則謠言毫無根據，但被大家瘋狂玩梗。然而，雖然這不能怪罪於萬斯，但一系列錯誤判斷、說錯話和讓人非常尷尬的表現卻是他自己的鍋。這些因素結合在一起，使得這位俄亥俄州參議員在社群媒體上被持續羣嘲。
The search relates to a rumour that Vance, Trump’s running mate, had confessed to having sex with a couch in the pages of his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy — a rumour that, while utterly baseless, has been seized upon by meme makers. But while this is hard to blame on Vance, a series of misjudgments, blunders and a strong cringe factor are not. And those have combined to keep the senator from Ohio trending on social media for all the wrong reasons.
在過去的一週左右，萬斯多次嘗試向大家展示他是一個你容易產生好感的人，幽默風趣，換句話說，就像另一個川普。問題是他似乎做不到。川普天生幽默，萬斯則不是。而且不知爲什麼，儘管川普生來衣食無憂，而萬斯出生在一個貧困家庭，母親吸毒，卻是川普顯得能與普通百姓打成一片——至少是對他的支持者而言。
Vance has made several attempts, over the past week or so, to come across as a likeable kinda guy who can crack jokes and make people laugh — a guy like Trump, in other words. The problem is that he can’t seem to pull it off. Trump is naturally very funny; Vance is not. And somehow, despite the fact that the former was born into a life of privilege while Vance was born in an impoverished home to a drug-addict mother, it is Trump who manages to come across, to his supporters at least, as a man of the people.
上週一，在他的家鄉俄亥俄州米德爾敦的一次集會上，萬斯開了個很怪的玩笑，他說他喝激浪輕怡(Diet Mountain Dew)，民主黨人很可能會說喝激浪輕怡是種族主義。伴隨著稀稀拉拉的笑聲，他說：「它是好東西！」然後假笑（假得讓人很尷尬）了一下，模仿川普的樣子朝人羣指了指，說：「我愛你們。」
Last Monday, at a rally in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, Vance made a weird crack about how Democrats would probably call the fact that he drinks Diet Mountain Dew racist. “It’s good!” he said as a few members of the crowd laughed halfheartedly, before doing a very awkward faux laugh and pointing his finger at the crowd Trumpily with an “I love you guys”.
把那場演講中的尷尬片段剪在一起的一支影片被瘋轉，維吉尼亞州集會後臺的一支意外搞笑的影片也是如此。在影片中，萬斯整理了一大堆垃圾（包括激浪輕怡瓶子），然後像《辦公室》(The Office)中的邁克爾•斯科特(Michael Scott)那樣對著攝影機說：「如果我喫了這些東西的一半，我都當然會像吹氣球一樣胖起來」，然後請求大家爲他的競選活動捐款。
A montage of awkward moments from the speech was shared widely, as was an accidentally hilarious video of Vance backstage at a rally in Virginia. In the clip, Vance goes through the “ton of crap” (including bottles of Diet Mountain Dew) that had been laid out for him to eat and drink before saying to camera, in distinctly Michael-Scott-from-The-Office fashion, “If I ate even half this stuff of course I’d balloon up like crazy,” and then asking for campaign donations.
川普永遠不會這樣做。萬斯可能是千禧一代，但更加了解影像和網路運作方式的卻是那位嬰兒潮一代的前總統——也許是因爲他與電視界的淵源和對電視的喜愛。川普經常發表非常冗長而雜亂無章的演講——我聽了他2022年宣佈再次競選總統的演講，許多超級粉絲都沒聽完就想走——但他明白，真正會被數百萬人觀看的是那些剪輯和金句，並且只有這些才真正重要。
Trump would never. Vance might be the millennial, but it is the boomer former president — perhaps because of his background in and affection for television — who has a better sense of how the moving image and the internet work. Trump often gives incredibly long and rambling speeches — I was in the crowd in 2022 when he announced he would run for the presidency again and many superfans were trying to leave before he’d finished — but he understands that it is the clips and soundbites that will be watched by millions of people and that only they really count.
川普對合理否認的魔力也有著敏銳的把握。萬斯在2021年上電視時發表了針對不生孩子喜歡貓的「貓娘」的言論，並在社群媒體上再次發表了同樣的言論，而川普則往往更加狡猾。他使用諸如「很多人都在說」或「我一直聽說」之類的詞語，以便讓自己與冒犯性評論保持一定的距離，並透過肢體語言來傳達他真正的意思。
Trump also has a keen grasp on the magic of plausible deniability. While Vance went on television in 2021 to rally against childless “cat ladies” — and doubled down by posting the same phrase on social media — Trump often tends to be more cunning. He deploys phrases like “a lot of people are saying” or “I’ve been hearing” in order to put some distance between himself and an offensive comment, and uses body language to signal what he really means.
「他說的話有一個劇本，但他對人們表達出來的意思還有一個元劇本，」科羅拉多大學博爾德分校(University of Colorado Boulder)的人類學家、2016年一篇關於川普娛樂價值的論文的合著者唐娜•戈爾德斯坦(Donna Goldstein)告訴我，「其中的重要內容涉及欺凌他人，但都是以小丑般的姿勢完成的……他經常用幾個手勢來表達他想說的最後一句話，而手勢有很大的詮釋空間，這樣他就可以逃脫責罰。」
“There’s a script of what he’s saying, but then there’s also a meta script of what it means to people,” Donna Goldstein, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-author of a 2016 paper on Trump’s entertainment value, tells me. “A lot of it has to do with bullying other people, but it’s all done in this clownish, gesture-ish way . . . He often just gestures the final sentence, which is then highly interpretable, and so he’s off the hook.”
萬斯還有一個川普所沒有的問題：他有一個真正的意識形態。例如，川普在墮胎問題上多次改變立場；而萬斯公開呼籲全國禁止墮胎。川普開始呼籲團結，而萬斯談論「完全用另一個統治階級來取代現有的統治階級」、需要「推翻現在實際控制這個國家的人」。
Vance has a further problem that Trump doesn’t share: he has a real ideology. Trump has changed his position on abortion many times, for instance; Vance has openly called for a national ban. While Trump has started calling for unity, Vance talks about “completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class” and the need to “overthrow” the “people who currently actually control the country”.
萬斯說的東西太嚴肅了，聽衆不能輕易地以「他只不過在開玩笑」——這句話是我經常從川普支持者口中聽到的——的方式將這些話打發掉。他缺乏川普的魅力、自信和喜感，也缺乏川普風格中常常被低估的含蓄。如果前總統想要一個能很好地襯托他光芒的競選夥伴，萬斯是一個很好的選擇。
Vance is too serious for listeners to brush off his comments with an “oh he’s only joking” — something I often hear from Trump’s supporters. He lacks Trump’s charisma, confidence and comedy value, and he also lacks the subtlety of Trump’s style, which is often under-appreciated. If the former president wanted a running mate who would make him shine, Vance was a great pick.