On why it isn’t possible to sound like P.G. Wodehouse and talk about Trump (a lament)

Okay, so a while back, I did a little piece on the kind of science fiction I’d like to do about the Trump administration. One of the people who bravely suffered through my turgid prose, “La Dona,” very kindly suggested that I might want to try to actually, well, write the aforesaid story...instead of just talking about writing it.

As I say, La Dona was being very kind and I deeply appreciated the encouragement. Yet, I realized, upon reflection, that there is a real problem with writing about American politics today. To wit, I have an urge to make it funny. To be precise, I want to write like the great British humorist, P.G. Wodehouse. To be even more precise, I would like my prose to sound a bit like the nasal intonations of one of his most famous characters, Bertie Wooster.

As I’m sure you know, Bertie’s a charming young Johnny of the upper class who’s nice enough...quite the dickens of a fellow...but he’s got all the brain power of your average cherry stone clam after a lobotomy. I mean, basically short on the jolly old brain cells, if you know what I mean. A bit thin in the cerebellum, as they’d say down at the Drones Club. (But, not to worry. For general sagacity and profoundity, he relies on Jeeves, his butler, who is positively dripping with the stuff. Never can tell who’ll get a big one. Brain, I mean.)

Anyway, that’s who I want to sound like while I’m doing fiction about Washington. I mean, good old Bertie is just the chap. Dead solid cinch and all that.

Except...except...then I tried to do it. I mean, I tried to write like him. And, the result? Well, the term “total, full-speed, fourteen carat debacle” drifted into the frontal lobes. With a side order of abject disaster.

Here’s the rub, as the poet chappie would say. Suppose you sat down to your high powered, fuel injected, German engineered word processor and set out to write a funny story about American politics today. Well, you could start out with the DNC being handed on a silver platter a candidate (one Bernie) who could raise billions with the twist of a nostril, and who packed ‘em at the campaign meetings like Billy Sunday on a Tuesday. Somebody bound to win, in other words.

But, then, lo and behold, the Powers That Be decide instead to throw the election to a candidate who may or may not be just ducky...personally, I’m rather keen on her....but she’s about as popular with a certain (large) class of voters as a plutonium enema and so, basically, bottom line, viz., therefore, and thus...they snatch Defeat from The Bicuspids of Victory and guarantee themselves a loss.

Boffo stuff, to be sure. But it’s been done! I mean, someone has beat us to the punch. It’s been on TV and everything.

Okay, so let’s try another approach. Let’s say that the RNC finds itself confronting a candidate so vile, so vulgar, so fascistic, and so basically ridiculous that he campaigns on a slogan of “grab ‘em by the pussy” and openly talks about walls and storm troopers. Oh, and he also brags about all the help he’s getting from our friends, the Russians.

But, rather than unite against this ranging loony tune who’s an existential threat to the nation if not the entire Western world, the GOP cheerfully says, “so long as he cuts taxes on billionaires, snuffs Obamacare, and makes the world safe for oil companies...well, that’s terrific. And what the heck if whole bunches of poor people die in the street, and Putin’s in the White House, and China takes over the Pacific and crushes our economy, so long as we get ours...”

Hysterical, to be sure. Laughable as all get out. But, again, we’re just too late. We’re coming in three lengths behind on the outside rail while everyone else is popping corks at the winner’s circle. I mean, someone else has already milked the gag for all the laughs that could be squeezed, pasteurized, and shipped to Piggly Wiggly.

Fine...

So suppose, instead, we do a story where the aforesaid Luna Tuna is now in the White House and he then proceeds to alienate America’s friends near and abroad, proves utterly ineffectual at working with Congress, communicates chiefly via tweets (which he sends while on the toilet in the early hours), talks about modifying (or scrapping) the constitution to increase his own power, terrorizes the White House staff, appoints cabinet members whose real job is to undermine the very agencies and causes they’re meant to promote, and then wraps it all up by haranguing  boy scouts and bashing trans-gendered Navy Seals and Marine Corps officers.

Yes, yes. I know. Knee slapping. Roll ‘em in the aisles. Tears of mirth, a cert, an absolute cinch and all that. But, once more into the breaches (or at least lederhosen) dear friends, ‘cause someone’s beaten us to it again. They rode up to the carousel on a Harley and made off with the old brass ring before we even got out of the gate. Danged frustrating, if you ask me.

Well, all right, if we gotta...let’s try again. This time we’ll make the White House a nightmare sitcom where the long suffering White House Press Secretary, Sean (“Melissa’s Mini-Me”) gets used like an errand boy until finally he can’t take it any more and quits when President Looney Toons hires Anthony (“Scarface”) Scarmucci,  who, in turn, launches off into an expletive laden rant about his boss, Reince (“And Repeat”) Priebus, who then gets tossed out the window a few days later...only to be joined by Scarmucci himself who gets canned after ten days, or actually, before he technically starts work ... which means he had a tenure measured in the negative numbers.

Ah...but...wait for it. You know its coming. As utterly absurd as this story may seem to you, me, and, of course, Gussie Fink-Nottle... and as silly a piece of ye olde theater of the absurd as we could wish...alas, it’s old hat and older underwear. Another wordsmith has hammered and tonged his way into the same plot ages and ages and ages ago. As in, on July 31. Or, as I write this on Wednesday, day before yesterday.

So, you see my problem. I just can’t keep up with the competition.

Ergo...sadly, alas, and regrettably, when it comes to modern politics, I’ll just have to abandon Bertie, and comic writing.

We need, you see, someone else...someone whose style...and subject matter... really matches the administration at hand.

Someone like, uh...er...

Stephen King springs to mind...

Wouldn’t you say?

Until next time, onward and upward.