Donald Trump’s presidency has been one of the most widely publicised events of the last decade. The range of praise, hate, dissent and multi-faceted chatter which has stemmed from his rise to POTUS has been unthinkably far-reaching, and isn’t going anywhere soon.
With any such discourse comes satire. From Mark Hamill to anonymous photoshop geniuses, the whole world has jumped on the Trump bandwagon, but what’s more interesting are the commentators who are jumping off.
With the whole world pitching in their take on Donald Trump’s presidency, why are some of our favourite cartoonists raising the white flag?
Recently Trey Parker and Matt Stone recently spoke to ABC News on Trump’s rise, and how even they, the creators of South Park, have given up on ridiculing the controversial figure.
“They’re already going out and doing the comedy. It’s not something you can make fun of,” said Parker.
Stone added, “It feels like it’s going to be more difficult. We’re having our head blown off like everybody else.”
Parker went on to summarise their feelings bluntly, saying “It’s really tricky now as satire has become reality.”
Similarly before last year’s Graphic event in Sydney, where The Simpsons creator Matt Groening was the keynote speaker, he said:
“We predicted that [Trump] would be president back in 2000 – but he was of course the most absurd placeholder joke name that we could think of at the time, and that’s still true. It’s beyond satire.”
“One of the things that occurs to me is the sober writing of political history is impossible for this election. There’s a certain lack of civility and common sense, a complete exaggeration of name calling and triviality [that] is just astounding. And it may be here to stay. We shall see.”
While The Simpsons are usually pretty reserved when it comes to political satire, South Park are the fellas at the top of their game. With them out of the picture, who knows who else could follow?
Via Consequence of Sound and The Guardian.
