Kaufman “set up camp on ever-advancing frontiers of unpleasantness, all the better to mystify crowds about where the joke, if there was one, ended.” You were never quite sure what was a bit and what was real.
There’s a direct line from Kaufman’s recurring routines as an obnoxious lounge singer and misogynistic wrestler to Musk and Bannon throwing Nazi salutes and never clarifying whether they are really Nazis.
