Friday, April 22, 2016

Trump Humor

I realize that even though late night talk show comics are having a field day with this year's presidential race, there are some folk who see nothing funny about the current political reality show. The New Yorker, naturally, wanted to prove the contrary position and did so by having every single cartoon in its April 25 issue be about Donald Trump.  Inasmuch as it came out the weekend before the New York primary, it did not have a great impact on the outcome in the Empire State.

Last night before heading to slumberland I got a little late night reading in, and it was this April 25 edition of The New Yorker. Now I realize that reading the cartoons first is probably akin to young men looking at the pictures of women in Playboy first, but I'm willing to confess that I did that last night. (I don't usually do that, because what I usually do is look at the cartoons as soon as my magazine comes in the mail.) Some of the cartoons were pretty hilarious.

I knew right away that something was up wen I hit the second cartoon and it was about Trump like the first had been. The third confirmed my suspicions. By the end I felt like I'd just finished a nice dessert after a long day.

Here are a few examples, described.

1) It shows a scene at the beach in which a little boy has made an absolutely gigantic sand castle that spells out his name: Trump. The letters are taller than he and it's about 18 feet wide. The caption reads, The Formative Years At Rockaway Beach.

2) The second is a table of bridge players looking at their cards. The caption reads, "One no-trump. Oh, please, God, no Trump."

3) Two women sitting in a diner holding wine glasses and chatting. The one says to the other, "If Trump becomes president, I don't care how high he builds that wall -- I'm going over it."

So against this backdrop, when I woke in the middle of the night I found that all those cartoons only served to feed my subconscious. Upon waking the first thing in my head was a Trump cartoon. It went like this.

The image is of an unemployment line, with a large sign at the top that reads, Unemployment. But the line is made up of famous monsters from Hollywood. The Wolf Man, the Mummy, Frankenstein etc. Frankenstein says, "Before Trump came along I was the scariest thing going."

After that one made me smile I thought of another one that would be a spin-off for a conservative magazine. At the end of the line we see Hillary.

O.K. you can replace Hillary and have the same effect by putting Trump in that line after Hillary gets elected.

* * *

The next cartoon features two people sitting on a park bench with the N.Y. skyline in the background. They are dressed in stylish clothes, clearly New Yorkers, and happen to both be reading this same edition of The New Yorker. Instead of a caption, they have those word clouds that contain the words they are saying. The first one says, "Wow, Trump's amazing. He not only controls the media, he controls the cartoonists, too. Next thing you know --"

The second one cuts him off: "Don't say it."

* * *

Anyways... hope something here made you smile. If you are a cartoonist and use one of my cartoon ideas, please send it my way to post here, and maybe I will send you a copy of my book A Remarkable Tale from the Land of Podd. Thanks!

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