American and British politicians have provided rich pickings for satirists, writers and artists on both sides of the Atlantic, over the decades.
And the leading figures of the first age of neoliberalism weren’t immune from being remorselessly mocked by sketch writers.
As extraordinarily formidable as Britain’s first woman Prime Minister was, the clever clogs at ITV, found several ways of sending her up, in the ground breaking Splitting Image show.
And It didn’t matter that Ronald Reagan was something of a transformative figure, who brought the revolutionary ideas of Milton Friedman and Frederick Hayek to life, the two-term Republican President was lampooned as profoundly stupid.
And the spirit of parodying didn’t end with Reagan and Thatcher.
For political aficionados of a particular age, George H.W. Bush’s dentures falling into his glass of water and his vomiting in Japan, played into the hands of the late night talk show hosts in the early 1990s.
His use of English was another source too.
William Jefferson Clinton’s complicated (messy) personal life was for a long minute, a blessing to not only the mainstream press, but also to the entertainment world.
The sobriquet, slick willy, wasn’t for nothing.
His successor —George W. Bush —provided so much material for commentators, before he became the Republican nominee in 2000, when he couldn’t name the military leader of Pakistan, when he promised to clampdown on autocrats around the world.
His mangling of the English language, most famously with malapropisms such as misunderestimate and hostile, when he meant underestimate and hostage and his mispronunciation of nuclear, gave ammunition to the likes of Stewart, Letterman and Leno.
Obama, with his intellect and wit, was something of a darling of the late night talk show hosts, but that didn’t get in the way of Key and Peele coming up with a few hilarious skits regarding his sex life with his wife.
But that was a very long time ago and American politics and showbiz have taken a turn for the worse.
You would think that Donald Trump, with his toupee, malignant narcissism, extreme bigotry and not to mention his egregious use of the English language, would send comedians into a satirical overdrive?
Clearly not.
It would seem that the 45th President of the United States of America has outdone the comedians in satirizing himself and plumbing new lows in his comments regarding Haitians, disabled people, army veterans, prisoner of wars and just about every one else.
Donald John Trump has shown in the course of his political career that there are limits to satire and some things are much too absurd for us to comprehend.
Our protagonist can say that he loves the badly educated and get millions more on board; our man can boast about grabbing women by the vagina and yet have vast numbers of women, defending him with their lives.
Reagan spoke on behalf of a generation when he implored Gorbachev to tear down the wall and Trump thinks that Vladimir Putin is a very fine man.
Simply put, satire is wasted on Donald Trump and the joke is on all of us.
And this sobering fact is compounded by the possibility that this man might very well succeed in becoming the next President.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Adebayo Adeniran's work on Medium.
Comments
Leave a comment