"See that old car down the street there? Imagine that's the opposition party. It's shattered, ancient, falling apart at the seams. My little gun is a racist mutant with a block of lunatic delegates..."
Newspaper columnist Spider Jerusalem then blows the car to smithereens.
In her Saturday column, UNBC political science professor Tracy Summerville wrote about the role late-night comedy has played in defining U.S. presidential elections for the past several decades.
Other artists and entertainers have also explored this fertile ground for social commentary and satire. Transmetropolitan, an award-winning comic book series that ran from 1997 through 2002, had plenty to say about U.S. politics and society. Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan's main character, is a manic Hunter S. Thompson figure writing a popular newspaper column for a technology-mad consumption-obsessed United States of the not-too-distant future.
In a year-long story arc in Transmetropolitan, Jerusalem covers the opposition party's nominating convention and then the general election. The lunatic Jerusalem speaks of doesn't win the convention, yet it's not hard to apply those words to today's Republican Party and Donald Trump.
Jerusalem is plenty angry himself, a fearless jerk who sees his journalistic responsibility is telling the general, mostly powerless population what the wealthy and powerful don't want them to know and show them what they don't want them to see.
"I can't solve any problems. All I can do is try to make sure people can't avoid noticing them," he tells his assistant in a rare introspective moment. "Make sure other people solve them. The right people."
The real threat in Transmetropolitian is Sen. Gary Callahan, who still wins the nomination, even after Jerusalem uncovers that his running mate is a brain-washed two-day old clone.
This frustrates Jerusalem to no end because it means people aren't listening.
"They don't care. The billboards, the TV pitches every five minutes, the flyers and the canvassers and all that; and they don't care. They're not thinking about the election. They don't even notice. They're thinking about going to the movies ... and having a quick smoke during their lunch hour. They're thinking about themselves. That's all."
With the exception of Fox News, those same words could be said by nearly every mainstream journalist at every American news media outlet, large and small, about this presidential election.
In Trump, reporters have dutifully covered every single one of his insults against women, the disabled and the parents of an American soldier killed in action, his intolerance of Mexican and Muslims, his encouragement of Russia or China to engage in cyber espionage against the United States (in most countries, they call that treason) and, this week, his sly encouragement of some gun fanatic to take a shot at Hillary Clinton. Somehow, he is the Republican nominee for president.
Meanwhile, in Clinton, reporters have dutifully reported her irresponsible handling of confidential emails and state secrets, exposing the same derision she has for the law that her husband did when he was president. She has, as the National Post's Andrew Coyne so eloquently put it, "more baggage than a bus depot." Somehow, she is the Democratic nominee for president.
Jerusalem runs into the same no-win scenario in Transmetropolitan, forced to cover two undeserving presidential candidates who care little for the country or its people.
When Jerusalem confronts Callahan, shortly before his landslide presidential victory, Callahan reveals his true agenda.
"I hate people more than anything. And I'm going to be president."
Looking down from his high-rise suite at the streets and the people far below, Callahan says: "I hate you all, you know? All you scum. I want to be president because I hate you. I want to make you shut up and do things properly. Get through your doomed little lives quietly. I want to be president because I think I should be."
Comedians, journalists, editorial cartoonists and comic book writers and artists have been cracking jokes, but their mockery is now turning into furious rants, as they realize the storyline is two shamelessly power-hungry candidates running for president and an American electorate that doesn't seem to care that they are the new scum.
