Let me say something unfashionable for a columnist on the Left: the joke is not the problem. Mocking a White House that has turned the press podium into a stage for loyalty performances is a public service. If Hochul's office wants to compare a new press secretary's debut to Aaron Rodgers going down on his first night as a Jet, I assume that's the intended jab, since the office won't explain it. Fine. Democrats spent a decade being scolded for bringing a policy paper to a meme fight, and I won't join the scolds.
But look at what the joke displaced. According to the White House, Katie Zacharia's first briefing covered the Youngstown rally, campaign stops and wage data. Wage data is the one subject on which this administration is vulnerable and Democrats should be relentless. Do paychecks cover rent, groceries and child care? Whose pay is rising, and whose is being eaten by tariffs and prices? A briefing that hands you that opening deserves a rebuttal with numbers and names. It does not deserve a stock photo of a man clutching his leg.
This is the trap of the trolling era. Social media rewards the quick dunk, and the dunk feels like opposition. It isn't. The Right built its politics on contempt as entertainment because it can monetize contempt. Democrats have a different job. We claim to be the party that governs, that delivers, that treats voters as adults with real problems. Every minute spent copying Trump's team at its own game is a minute conceding that politics is a game.
Then there's the awkward part for Albany. This is the same press office that, not long ago, was handling the departure of its own press secretary, Avi Small, who was placed on leave after a complaint alleging he inappropriately touched a fellow employee. It is an allegation, and I'll treat it as one. But Hochul and communications director Anthony Hogrebe say the administration has zero tolerance for misconduct and that its procedures worked appropriately.
Maybe they did. But a party that campaigns on accountability for the powerful has to earn the right to snicker at someone else's staffing drama. Institutions always say their processes worked. The test is whether the employee who complained would say so, and whether the public will ever get enough transparency to judge. An office that wants to be taken seriously on workplace safety should be at least as forthcoming about its own house as it is quick on the retweet.
None of this makes the White House a victim. Zacharia is stepping into a job where her predecessor's main qualification was never being embarrassed by facts, and where the boss grades the performance on adulation. Trump praising her first outing tells you what the role is for. Mock that. Skewer it. But aim at the institution, not just the new hire's first day.
Democrats are at their best when the joke is a doorway to the argument: here is what they said about wages, here is what your wages actually did, here is what we'll do about it. At their worst, the joke is the whole argument, followed by a no-comment when someone asks what it meant. A press office that posts a picture and declines to explain it is not winning the information war. It is just doing the other side's job for free.
