The first time I was called weird was at primary school. I spoke and walked a little differently from other boys and liked playing with girls. That was enough. I was not unhappy, but once christened with the title, I was now “weird”, a sufficiently broad categorisation for everyone to understand. Luckily, there were a couple of other kids the same. Weird loves company. Swelled by minor ranks, I began to notice that everyone gets painted with the “weird” brush from time to time. If you’re fat. Weird. Wear glasses. Weird. Ginger hair, a lisp, a birthmark. All weird. Preferred books to TV? Practically a different species. Super-weird.
In the past two weeks, since reframing the US election with an astonishingly speedy turnaround of political fortune, Kamala Harris has successfully reversed this playground insult. The sharpest, most effective Democrat line of casual rage directed at the Republican ticket of Donald Trump, JD Vance and Project 2025, in a battle that suddenly has real heat, has been, “you’re weird”. On press releases, tweets, from her supporting Democrat cast. The line against Trump 2024: weirdness. It’s beginning to stick. The sharpness of the insult, in this instance, is that Trump/Vance present themselves as a median line to sanity. Their political mission is the voice of the common man (heavy emphasis on the gender).
How long before Musk, Tate, Farage, the grandiose salesmen of anti-weird, have it thrown back at them?
Perhaps noticing Maga rallies full of flag-waving crackpots sporting Halloween costume bandage patches taped to their ears, maybe observing the specifically overbearing beard-dye that appears to be used by JD Vance, Harris has affected her meek-inheriting-the-Earth moment. She is making victims of the bullies. Calling Trump and Vance “weird” is a specifically measured term of abuse. It is petty, venal and may, in time, prove completely politically impotent. But boy (heavy gender emphasis again), is it delicious.
It's pleasing to see the boot on the other foot, for once. How long before Musk, Tate, Farage, the grandiose salesmen of anti-weird, have it thrown back at them? In art, music, theatre, film, nightlife and fashion, “weird” has exotic connotations. Often, it’s a compliment. Weird implies avant-garde, ahead of the pack, curious, visionary, out of step in a fascinating manner. Politics is a different realm altogether. Weird, in this instance, implies unstable, unsuitable for service, removed from the central public interest. To call a political opponent “weird” is to assume the position of normality, sanity and reason. Only one party can get there first. Weird is the criticism to which there is no response.
Weird wrongfoots you, until you notice the strange superpower not being like everybody else affords you, if utilised correctly. By secondary school, I didn’t mind being weird at all. Doors opened to unusual universes. I made curious friends who liked The Cramps and John Waters, went to solemn nightclubs where people talked about radical architecture before performing rudimentary teenage outrage down dark allies. Weirdos could do amazing things with hair, clothes, make-up. I learned the kind of bad habits, how to pierce an extraneous bit of flesh, stick and poke a tattoo, that are best to get out of your system by 14 than retain into your twenties, thirties and beyond. Soon enough, weird turned into cool. Cool turned into gay. That’s when the fun really began. Weird is just life’s circuitous shortcut to finding out who you are, while everybody else is routinely strangled by orthodoxy, compliance and an openly worn desperation to fit in. Weird is unusually resourceful. Weird gets on with it.
How all of this works out for Trump and Vance is turning into more rewardingly watchable sport this summer than the Paris Olympics. The role-reversal is complete. Weird only works as an insult when it stings. You can’t be the man of the people and say “yep, I’m weird, so what?”. Three choices remain. Embrace their inner weird, a dangerous pastime for the political classes. Continue to attempt to take America with them on an odyssey of weird. Or utilising the catch-all insult as a tool for genuine self-discovery. They may yet surprise us all. The war of weird is far from over.
Ten years ago, a friend’s oldest kid was having some bother at school, way more than I ever did. I can’t even recall what his weirdness was now. Curly hair? General air of eccentricity? Being clever? “Being like the other kids is the most boring thing you can be,” I told him. “By the time you’re 16, you’ll love this about yourself. Being weird is the best.” Now shrouded in the outward cloak of respectability, weirdness barely visible, it formed as sharp a reminder to myself as it did him. Weird rules.
Paul Flynn is an Evening Standard columnist
