Kamala Harris' Laugh Is A Sound Check For A Divided Country - Los Angeles Times

Kamala Harris' laugh is a sound check for a divided country - Los Angel... https://www.latimes.
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COVERING KAMALA HARRIS
More than a laugh: Kamala Harris’ is a sound check for a divided country
1 of 10 7/22/2021, 8:34 AM
Kamala Harris' laugh is a sound check for a divided country - Los Angel... https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-07-21/kamala-harris-laugh
“You’re writing a story in the Los Angeles Times about the vice president’s laugh? I think that’s laughable.” — Bakar
Sellers, Democratic lawyer and CNN commentator
Seriously, to weigh how the first woman and first woman of color to become vice president is perceived, Kamala
Harris’ laugh may provide the ultimate gauge.
While many people just hear levity in her laugh, those on the right react with heckles and attacks, a difference that
says as much about the divisive, personally vicious state of politics as any debates over policies.
President Trump made fun of “the laugh” at a late October rally in Pennsylvania. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” he bellowed
mockingly, and mirthlessly, adding his own snicker as he otherwise savaged Harris for being “more liberal than ‘crazy
Bernie.’”
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Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker and Fox News commentator, in an interview called Harris’
laughs “distinctively jarring.” And a male host on Newsmax claimed at one point, “Well, the queen bee — cackling
Kamala — is losing her support among Democrats.”
Harris’ supporters and some outside observers say the attention to her mirth is not funny. Instead, they say, it reflects
the double standard she faces as a pathbreaking politician as well as the pressure to appear at once likable and tough,
yet still authentic. Sellers called the critics’ catcalls “obscene and upsetting — because she’s such a great spirit and
that’s what she exudes in her laugh.”
2 of 10 7/22/2021, 8:34 AM
He recalled her pun sessions with advisors that would put her in stitches. “I’m not saying every time you see or hear
the laugh it’s the appropriate moment,” he said. “It’s not like someone just told a joke. But I’m saying that’s where it
comes from.”
At times, like when she walks onto a stage after a lengthy introduction, Harris laughs unprompted in the way that
politicians often do to try to demonstrate humility — as if to suggest that, while she may be a history-making vice
president, she also sees the attention around her as a bit much.
Or she’ll laugh amid an earnest policy discussion, seemingly trying to bring the subject down to earth. At a speech in
Michigan this month, Harris talked about people waiting months to get their COVID-19 vaccines. “It’s July!”
with a guffaw. “It’s time!”
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But the laugh that’s proved the most polarizing is one that some observers argue is not a laugh at all. It’s her reaction,
often seemingly inappropriate in the moment, when Harris is asked a question she doesn’t like. She laughs, and it’s
hard to tell if she is doing so to deflect or to signal she thinks the query is dumb, or both.
As state attorney general, for example, she drew media attention for a deflective chuckle in 2014 when
question about whether she favored pot legalization. She replied only with a laugh and a few words that basically
restated the question.
She got far more attention recently for laughing defensively and awkwardly when she was pressed repeatedly last
month by NBC News anchor Lester Holt on why, as President Biden’s envoy on migration from Central America, she
had not yet visited the U.S.-Mexico border.
3 of 10 7/22/2021, 8:34 AM
That laugh made it onto news sites, social media posts and cable channels across the political spectrum
media went into overdrive over Harris’ “cackle” or “giggle,” mentioning it at least 151 times on Fox Business Network,
Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network in the six weeks since the Holt interview, according to Media
Matters, a left-leaning group that monitors conservative media. Fox twice aired a montage that consisted of Harris
laughing.
“She doesn’t know how to communicate. She just offers that awful giggle that just makes people cringe,” former Rep.
Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said on Fox Business Network.
Alice Stewart, a Republican consultant who has worked on several presidential campaigns, complained, “It’s the
obvious attempt to evade a question. And she often gets away with it.”
But Joe Navarro, a former FBI expert on body language and the author of 14 books on human behavior, said people
commonly respond to uncomfortable situations with laughter. He contended that is a sign of tension, a reflexive, self-
soothing mechanism.
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Navarro said he believes Harris gets unfair scrutiny based on her race and gender. But, he added, as a politician she
should be aware that audiences may be turned off by her “tittering” in the face of tough questions.
4 of 10 7/22/2021, 8:34 AM
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Bush “had a smug smirk. It was bad,” Palmieri said. But, she added, “For Harris, it’s like ‘We don’t like the sound of
her laugh. We don’t like when she laughs.’ These things define women in a way, and linger for women leaders in a way
that they don’t for men.”
Clinton’s boisterous laugh provided fodder for a “Saturday Night Live” skit and much political punditry. It was
dissected for its pitch, volume and authenticity. Advisors’ debate over how to handle attention to the laugh was
captured in an internal email stolen by Russians and published by WikiLeaks in 2016. In it, campaign chairman John
Podesta defended her laugh to another advisor, praising it as part of Clinton’s “authentic weirdness
While Palmieri laughed at recalling that backhanded compliment, she lamented that women, and especially women of
color, have to contend with such matters as they climb the political ladder. If they respond to a tough question with
tension, they are criticized as angry, she said; if they try to diffuse it with laughter, they are marked as phony, or
worse.
Palmieri said that when people gave conflicting advice to Clinton — she needed to be softer and more “likeable,” yet
also “masculine and strong” — the former first lady, senator and secretary of State would ask them to give her an
example of a female world leader who’d pulled off that feat.
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5 of 10 7/22/2021, 8:34 AM
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Noah Bierman
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Noah Bierman covers the White House in Washington, D.C., for the Los Angeles
Times. He previously wrote for the paper’s national desk.
6 of 10 7/22/2021, 8:34 AM
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