The recent disturbing proclamations of American presidential hopeful Donald Trump have many onlookers asking the same question: What would he look like if he were forced to wear a little moustache drawn on his face in dog poo?
No wait, that’s not the question (but for what it’s worth, I think he’d look better – it’d keep people from looking at the hair).
No, the question being asked is: Are we allowed to laugh anymore?
For months now he’s been running his campaign for the Republican party nomination as if he’s just finished reading Facism for Dummies. This week his open-air bigotry saw him call for a temporary ban that would prevent any Muslim, even American citizens living abroad, from entering the United States.
The mind boggles. Obviously the stereotyping and the extrapolation from a small group of extremist fighters to a massive, diverse population numbering more than 1.5 billion worldwide is disgusting and dangerous fear-mongering.
On top of that, how would this plan work? Professor Trump said that everyone entering the United States could potentially be asked a simple yes or no question: Are you a Muslim?
Supposedly if you say “no,” you’re in, “yes” you’re out. Is that really a code that would be too difficult for ISIS to crack?
Trump has always been a curiously popular wealthy racist but he’s been given a new platform since joining the race to be elected president, his incendiary remarks getting worse and worse since the Republican nomination debates began in early August.
Thank goodness the campaigns are finally coming to an end with the presidential election scheduled for … Nov. 8, 2016!?
And we thought our latest Canadian election campaign was long. Imagine if we had to watch Stephen Harper pretend to smile for 15 months.
With a guy like Trump you could always just blow him off – or better by far, laugh at him – when he was just some clown on a TV show who was spending his dad’s money. But the presidential race gives him a wider audience and more clout. And ever since he’s joined the race there has been an ever growing chorus of people claiming that this whole Trump thing is “not funny anymore.”
I completely disagree. We need to laugh at him now more than ever. He’s still hilarious. The thing that isn’t funny is all the people who are lining up to follow him. It’s not all that surprising, however. We’ve seen time and time again that preying on people’s fears and pointing out an outsider for an “us-versus-them” confrontation is a way to garner support from people who are easily scared by shadowy foes.
Look at Rob Ford. A legacy baby from a wealthy family who passed himself off as the common man, fighting the good fight against the stuffy old system. Sound familiar? Ford whipped up support by opposing the gay rights movement, and was caught using racial slurs on camera so many times he’s now officially listed on IMDB as a Quentin Tarantino character. He also loved crack.
Like, really loved it, which is a little scary given the position he held, but also hilarious given the position he held. If he had built his own Trump Tower it just would have been a giant, Toronto waterfront crack pipe.
Look at Stephen Harper. He tried to whip up support by turning a non-story – a few women who chose to wear a niqab during the citizenship ceremony – into his No. 1 rallying cry during the election. Scary, given the wedge he was trying to force between Canadians, but also hilarious because Canadians laughed him off the stage.
But is it OK to enjoy the existence of these men who peddle in fear for their own gain, simply because we love to laugh at them?
I may be biased because I was raised by a trio who were always looking for the laughter in life – my father, my mother and Homer Simpson – but I say most definitely yes, it’s OK to laugh. In fact, it is our duty to laugh at these people.
Remember Sarah Palin? You probably don’t really remember her, you remember Tina Fey pretending to be Sarah Palin.
Remember Saddam Hussein? Probably. He’s much worse than the rest of these jokers. But did you know that there’s a whole new generation that knows him predominantly as Satan’s sass-mouth lover in The South Park Movie? What a perfect fate for an awful man.
Nobody is laughing with Donald Trump. That much was obvious during his painfully unfunny Saturday Night Live appearance last month. But then again, nobody was ever laughing with Donald Trump. But they were laughing, and they need to keep laughing.
If you’re having trouble conjuring a laugh, just think of that pretend moustache. It helps explain why the things coming out of his mouth are so foul.
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column. He can be reached via email at [email protected].
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