By Jonah Kondro
The first time I heard Donald Trump’s name was in a reference in a film plot. When I was younger, my stepfather and I were watching Die Hard with Vengeance, you know, the film that has Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson running around New York City trying to stop a bomb planting terrorist. I had to ask who Donald Trump was; I was thinking (at the time) that Trump was the bad guy in the movie, and I wanted to confirm my suspicions. My step-father claimed that Trump was in fact a real person, was worth a lot of money, and was in possession of a terrible haircut.
Since the beginning of the election south of the border, I developed a mental picture of Donald Trump as a political cartoon character, that had magically sprang free from the editorial section of a newspaper, that had won the lottery, and that had started doing whatever he wanted. Trump’s vociferous political rhetoric coupled with his absurd hair style creates a living breathing hate-filled cartoonish creation. It’s ironic in retrospect that I thought Trump was a Hollywood movie character. His recent and illogical rise to political fame in the United States gives support to my cartoon perception of Trump.
If you care to venture into the realm of the internet, a Google image search of Mr. Trump produces a pretty good laugh—especially when a photographer captures the wind lifting up Trump’s weird comb over.
Sometimes I wish that Trump will magically get placed back into a comic strip where he belongs. Unfortunately, the power of his ludicrous political discourse is swaying the voters in his direction. He may have a good shot at becoming the next president of the United States.
If recent history has taught us anything, the lesson should be that anything is possible. Dennis Rodman, you know, the retired NBA player with brightly dyed hair, problems with drugs and alcohol, and former husband to Carmen Electra—yea, he has made more diplomatic progress with North Korea than the United Nations has. He also stared on Celebrity Apprentice, Trump’s reality television show. If Trump gets elected, I wonder what the odds are of Dennis Rodmen ending up as vice president. Rodman might help Trump re-establish American ties with the totalitarian regime of North Korea.
A reader of this column may think that this would be better posted on some pop culture website, unfortunately Trump and Rodman are active political components of a very real country—the United States. It seems to me that Hollywood, reality television, and their crazy celebrities have created a cartoon kaleidoscope that is shaping the outlook of a large mass of people.
Rational discourse cannot provide a short answer to why a pair of cartoon characters have been so successful in their political endeavours (whether intentional or not). If Trump makes it into the oval office, he can vacation to Canada in a year or so and smoke a celebratory spliff on parliament hill (providing Trudeau gets his way).
I’m going to finish off this written account of cartoon madness by borrowing the words of Porky Pig—That’s all Folks.