2 comics
Two comics seem appropor right about now.
From Dennis Eichhorn’s “Real Stuff”, we have this story that opesn with a large panel showing Muhammad Ali raping Dennis. Frightened expression on Eichhorn’s face. He wakes up thinking, “What a weird dream.” Shoot to his office-job, where his coworkers are discussing their weird dreams. “You think that’s weird, last night I dreamt I was butt-fucked by Muhammad Ali!” The co-workers fall into awkward slence, and then say “Well, back to work.” Dennis is left mulling over the meaning of his dream. “Maybe I’m a latent homosexual?”
The next day we see Dennis Eichhorn at a party, talking with a black woman he doesn’t know. She snaps at him in so many words, “You white men have had it easy for so long… but you’re about to have your day. Trust me!” and leaves laughing.
Eichhorn is puzzled for a couple of panels, and then the punchline: “Oh! Now I get it!”
The second story comes from an early 1960s Archie comic. Mr. Weatherbee and Mrs. Grundy are walking around, watching various students give inspiring Kennedy-esque speeches before crowds of students, running for student president. Weatherbee can’t hide how impressed he is: “They seem to have matured overnight! My children — they’ve arrived!” We see Jughead lurking in the background, lackadasically crunching on an apple. He’s running too. Weatherbee shows nothing but scorn to Jughead, who’s not doing anything to win the campaign. We then see Weatherbee talking with candidate Archie on how impressed he is on everyone’s new-found maturity, and Archie jumps right into a stump speech “Yes. It is high-time my generation grabs the world from your generation’s faltering hands. I look forward to generations yet unborn who will look back and comment ‘THERE Was a Man!” Weatherbee smiles, leaving saying “I wish they could all be President!” Before noting Jughead again “Except him…” and asks Jughead, “Are you still running for president?” Jughead says something like “Golly gee, yes, sir.” “How do you expect to win if you don’t even give any speeches?” To wit, Jughead responds “I was just about to do that”, and runs into the intercom room and announces over the loudspeaker “Free Coffee and Donuts at the coffee shop! My Treat!” Next panel, crowds of students are running over Weatherbee to the coffee shop, and we flash to the next day with Weatherbee talking to Archie. “I can’t believe you all lost to Jughead.” Archie: “He was just too clever an opponent, and he was the only one with campaign funds.” Weatherbee: “He practically bought the vote. How’d he get all that money?” “From us…” And the punchline, “We paid him to write those campaign speeches.”
So, in summary, what happened in this election was a hybrid of those two stories. As it always seems to be, actually.