Like most people, I have some concerns now that Donald Trump has been elected to our nation’s highest office. I’m worried that a man with no prior experience in government might not be able to properly run our country. He lost around a billion dollars in the 1990’s and the nation’s budget generally runs at a deficit, so he has some experience in fiscal mismanagement, but is that enough?
Will Vladimir Putin be making a victory tour around the red states? And what about the First Amendment? Will all networks be forced to run old episodes of The Apprentice? Will government agencies be restricted from communicating with the public?
As I’ve mentioned, I have many questions and concerns.
Most importantly, however, are the ones I have as a satirist, particularly “How in the fuck am I supposed to write in a satirical manner about someone who is inherently satirical?” The point of satire is to take a kernel of truth and expand it to an absurd, albeit somewhat plausible, conclusion. The problem I’m facing, along with a few hundred others, is that Trump has shown himself to be incredibly absurd, which has blurred the lines between reality and satire.
I’ve got a piece about resting bitch face I’ve been itching to publish. It would have been a bit edgy if Clinton had won the election, but now I’m concerned that it will be taken word for word. The same is true for a piece I’ve been thinking about regarding the burden of white privilege and whether or not I’ll be able to afford a new addition on my house.
My concerns don’t just relate to writing. I’ve been tossing around the idea of pitching a new sitcom as well as a game show to the networks, both of which, I should add, are now dead in the water. “Grab My Pussy” could have been the next biggest gameshow since “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”
Likewise, my sitcom is kaput (I’m allowed to say that still even though I’m not technically Jewish, right? RIGHT? I’m not even sure of that anymore). It could have been golden which, for the record, is not a reference to water sports. “Golden Showers” is another idea I’ve had and it could have been great. It could have been HUGE. Imagine the following scene that takes place in the kitchen of the suite at Trump Tower.
Melania Trump: Don Junior, why are you late to breakfast and where is your father?
Don Junior: I couldn’t say. The old man is still upstairs and the last thing I heard, they were in that room with rubber sheets. You know, the one where he like to pee on all of us.
Melania: WHHHAAAAAT? That silly goose. He always said that he’d like to date her. Let’s have some pancakes.
Sure, it probably didn’t happen, but it’s just plausible enough that it isn’t funny. A man who’s said that he’d date his daughter if they weren’t related, instructed a minor to “give him a call when she’s 18” on an escalator or believes that grabbing a woman by the crotch is an appropriate come on isn’t a man I can effectively parody.
Wouldn’t it be funny if the KKK endorsed a candidate? I could have a field day with that…at least I could have if the KKK hadn’t actually endorsed Trump. It’s horrible and all that Trump pretended to be clueless about the agenda of the KKK, but the real victim here is satire. I had an entire piece about Trump appointing David Duke as the Secretary of the Interior, and now it’s just kind of sad because it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
The same goes for foreign policy. How in the hell am I supposed to parody a man whose entire concept of international politics essentially consists of the phrases, “I make good deals” and “I am building a wall?” I have a six-year-old daughter with larger vocabulary and a more mature world view. Quite suddenly my pitch for a fake reality show called “Mexico Builds a Wall to Keep Out Yokels” could be more of a commentary on the state of things rather than a droll piece of satire.
DeVos as Secretary of Education? Perry for Energy? Sessions for Attorney General? Tillerson for Secretary of State? If someone put a gun to my balls, I couldn’t make up a group of people more suited to irony. Hand guns to keep grizzly bears out of school in Wyoming? Perry originally thought that his appointment would be a position that promotes oil production. Hell, how about a national holiday commemorating patriotism which just happens to be the day Trump was inaugurated?
I couldn’t write anything more absurd and that’s, perhaps, the most frightening thing about this entire situation.
This post was originally published on The Unfit Father.
image credit: DonkeyHotey / Flickr