Cards Against Humanity,\u00a0America\u2019s crudest and most popular form of competitive fill-in-the-blank games, is no stranger to the 2016 presidential\u00a0election cycle. In May, the company released the \u201cDonald Trump Bug-Out Bag,\u201d a duffel bag packed with emergency food rations,\u00a0a gas mask, an application to become a Mexican citizen,\u00a0and other tools for surviving \u201cthe collapse of civilization after Donald Trump is elected President.\u201d In August, Cards\u00a0released two themed expansion packs, one\u00a0for each major party\u2019s nominee, as a way to raise money for Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign.\u00a0The promotion raised\u00a0almost\u00a0$400,000.<\/p>\n
But in October 2016, the company went one step further, announcing the creation of its own super PAC,\u00a0the type of political organizing committee\u00a0enabled by a 2010 Supreme Court decision to spend unlimited amounts of money on political speech. The\u00a0company dubbed it\u00a0\u201cThe Nuisance Committee,\u201d named after Cards Against Humanity\u00a0co-creator Max Temkin\u2019s grandfather Ira Weinstein\u2019s experience during World War II. While interned in a POW camp in Germany, Weinstein formed with other prisoners\u00a0the \u201cNuisance Committee,\u201d designed to irritate their\u00a0captors.<\/p>\n
A\u00a0press release announcing the super PAC\u2019s formation noted, \u201cThe comparison here between Trump and Hitler is intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n
In its first move, the present-day\u00a0Nuisance Committee bought a billboard outside Chicago\u2019s\u00a0O\u2019Hare International Airport that read,\u00a0\u201cIf Trump is so rich, how come he didn\u2019t buy this billboard?\u201d to promote\u00a0a now-defunct website outlining Trump\u2019s failure to pay income tax \u2014 which seems especially prescient considering an Oct. 1, 2016,\u00a0New York Times report. Trump flew into Chicago the morning after the billboard went up.<\/p>\n
GOOD talked to Temkin\u00a0about the challenges of satire,\u00a0the Nuisance Committee\u2019s plans, and the importance of taking an absurd political\u00a0reality seriously.<\/p>\n
What inspired Cards Against Humanity\u2019s foray into politics?<\/strong><\/p>\n We had been thinking about how to do this election pack for a really long time. We had assumed it would be some sort of\u00a0Clinton vs. Bush pack or Sanders vs. Cruz pack. We had the loose template of one pack for the Republican, one pack for the Democrat. People could pick between them, and we’d give all the money to the winning candidate.\u00a0When it became clear that Trump was going to be the nominee, we just couldn’t get our heads around it.<\/p>\n We really started to feel like the election was choosing between some sort of authoritarian fascism and American democracy. On the off\u00a0chance that Trump’s supporters\u00a0buy more packs \u2014 or just from a comedy point of view, (as)\u00a0people might be more interested in buying the Trump pack than the Hillary pack \u2014 ethically, we are not going to be able to sleep at night if we give this money to Trump.<\/p>\n How did these ideas develop into an actual political organization?<\/strong><\/p>\n We knew that some of that\u00a0money (from the\u00a0America Votes expansion pack)\u00a0we wanted to give to the Clinton campaign. We knew that some of that money,\u00a0we wanted to\u00a0gift to nonprofits and organizations that are working on issues like getting money out of politics\u00a0and increasing transparency in American politics.<\/p>\n The whole notion of having a super PAC is contrary to a lot of what I believe. But\u00a0\u2026\u00a0you do materially what you can to win.<\/p>\n But we also started thinking,\u00a0we have an ethical responsibility to use all of the tools at our disposal \u2014 design, comedy writing, copywriting, all these things that we’re good at \u2014 to do whatever we can to resist Trump.<\/p>\n That’s where the idea of the super PAC was born. We created this super PAC as a way to do media buys, spend money, and organize against Trump.\u00a0This political organization that is funded by Cards Against Humanity, but (is)\u00a0an independent organization that can go out and try to get these issues into the news.<\/p>\n Why a super PAC?<\/strong><\/p>\n The whole notion of it is disgusting.\u00a0The whole thing is disgusting. Citizens United is a disaster for American democracy. The whole notion of having a super PAC is contrary to a lot of what I believe. But also, I’m sort of a progressive materialist. If you believe in the cause, you do materially what you can to win.<\/p>\n If your opponent is going to be spending tons of money and using all of these legal tools to\u00a0outflank you, to say that we’re going to stand on principle\u00a0and we’re not going to spend any money\u00a0and we’re not going to fight back\u00a0and we’re not going to advocate for our values using all the tools that the system provides, then how much can you really care about the cause?\u00a0I feel so strongly about Trump that I will use whatever tools are legally available to try to stop him. Unfortunately,\u00a0where we are in American democracy right now, that includes all these things that nobody likes.<\/p>\n What are The Nuisance Committee\u2019s goals?<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u00a0have two mandates with the PAC. The first is: Get out to vote. You gotta get out to vote for Hillary. That’s how we’ll win the election. We are very involved in get-out-to-vote efforts. We’re especially looking at college towns in swing states. You can expect us to have a lot of media buys in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia. We’re also looking at Utah and\u00a0Arizona.<\/p>\n The other thing is\u00a0the media has this insatiable thirst for Trump-related stories and trivia. Trump exploits that. He sort of arbitrages the media’s unstoppable need for Trump stories by saying crazy stuff and getting millions of dollars of earned media whenever he tweets. A presidential candidate told the American public to go look at a sex tape\u00a0on Twitter at 3:20 a.m. Not healthy. But meanwhile,\u00a0every network is talking about Trump’s tweets.\u00a0I feel like we are able to exploit the media’s thirst for Trump by doing these sorts of jokes. The more we can pick these provocative issues\u00a0and do them in a surprising way, the more we’ll get our share of the media on the other side. Turn that tactic that’s been working really well for Trump against him.<\/p>\n Has comedy\u00a0failed in this election? What makes jokes politically productive?<\/strong><\/p>\n The more we can pick these provocative issues, and do them in a surprising way, the more we’ll get our share of the media on the other side.<\/p>\n Satire didn’t work in this election because here we are.\u00a0The way you satirize a public figure, you find something that is absurd or exaggerated about them, and you take it to an absurd conclusion. You imagine the craziest thing that Trump can do, and then you posit that he does it. Well, you can’t do that with Trump because he could plausibly say or do anything. There’s nothing you can make up about the guy that he might not do tomorrow. He’s a singularly difficult character to satirize.<\/p>\n I think where Cards has found some purchase\u00a0and where we’re trying to do something a little bit different, is we’re trying to make jokes about ourselves. We’re trying to look at our own perspectives and reactions. That’s always going to be something that’s honest. For example, talking about how we’re really scared of Trump\u00a0or what he means to us given our family histories, Jewish history.<\/p>\n Literally listen to what Trump says he’s going to do\u00a0and take it seriously. Don’t exaggerate it comedically. Just listen to what he’s saying. It’s comically, brazenly evil. The mistake people make is they don’t take it seriously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cards Against Humanity,\u00a0America\u2019s crudest and most popular form of competitive fill-in-the-blank games, is no stranger to the 2016 presidential\u00a0election cycle. In May, the company released the \u201cDonald Trump Bug-Out Bag,\u201d a duffel bag packed with emergency food rations,\u00a0a gas mask, an application to become a Mexican citizen,\u00a0and other tools for surviving \u201cthe collapse of civilization…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}