An internal April Fool's column debate: In era of The Great Deconstruction of America is Trump satire appropriate?
I’d just about hit send on a below column several times. But it didn’t seem right — either to run it — or not to run it. So I’m looking for your input. Giving you the choice.
The trigger warning will come before the column.
Let me explain.
As a small-town journalist who’s spent thousands of hours at City Council and Boards of Supervisors meetings, as a reporter who once delved so deeply into Carroll, Iowa’s wastewater system that I wrote a 100-inch story titled, “From Flush To Finish,” the occasional satirical column became something of an indulgence. I started writing satirical columns, mixed in with mainly serious ones, in my late 20s, in the final years before Mark Zuckerberg cashed in human joy for billions. Sometimes the columns worked, really worked, with the humor firing, often with lampooning of the neighboring state of Missouri — and other times, well, I bombed in print. They were popular either way and elicited phone calls and drop-by visits to the paper — both far more meaningful than trolling online comments or impulsive emails.
For some 20 years, in addition to writing for The Carroll Daily Times Herald, I have penned the Political Mercury column for Des Moines’ Cityview. The publication, operated by my friend Shane Goodman, the publisher, and his wife, Joleen, an ace marketer, used to come out once a week. Now it’s monthly. During the weekly schedule, I’d look forward to the first issue in April so I could publish an April Fool’s column, generally one focused on politics. But as readers pick up the monthly magazine well into April, the “Fool’s column” seemed a fool’s errand.
I did move the April Fool’s column to The Iowa Mercury. I published an April Fool’s column on President Trump a year ago today.
And for months I’ve had one ready for today. It started out far more edgy and envelope-pushing and potentially offensive than the final version, which is stripped down.
Here’s the conflict: As we roar into autocracy, does satire of Trump have a place? Just certain types of jokes? None at all? Is it whistling past the graveyard?
The absurd is routine.
Nothing Trump does surprises me. But almost everything he does still shocks me.
Trump’s provocations are daily. The Great Deconstruction of democracy and American life roll in hourly horrors. Gallows humor may be all we have left. Or is it?
If I trick out a fictionalized Trump comment or action for an April Fool’s treat, spin a bit, a written impersonation about something he didn’t really do, but falls in line with how the times are, making the story seem plausible, readers could be forgiven for believing it. Incredulity no longer applies in Trump’s reign.
At the same time, sparing Trump of satire seems wrong, too, as it plays into a normalization of what demands defiance. “Saturday Night Live” and “Real Time With Bill Maher” and others continue to satirize Trump, scripting imagined conversations and events.
Hitting send seems wrong.
Hitting delete seems wrong.
So you can decide.
If you don’t want to read an April Fool’s column on Trump, stop, right now. Danger Will Robinson! Trigger warning.
Should you be on the other side of this, and think that satire, attempts at it if not successful delivery, is vital, then read on as the column is below, but be fair to me, and realize that the punch in the column is the April Fool’s gotcha — which is gone now.
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Headline: Trump founding national fraternity, first 'Trump Houses' to be constructed at University of Iowa, Iowa State University
Troubled with what he sees as the emasculating effects of the modern university campus — an environment in which terms like “trigger warnings" and “micro-aggressions” increasingly define the social and academic rules of engagement — President Donald Trump is launching his own national college fraternity system with the inaugural chapters slated for chartering at Iowa State University and the University of Iowa, sources close to the president and New York real-estate mogul confirmed this morning.
Land-use negotiations for “prime property” in Ames and Iowa City are ongoing, and bids for the fraternities — which will simply be known as Trump Houses — are likely to be let in early May.
No Greek letters, like Tau or Sigma or Alpha, will be involved in the branding, Trump said.
“The Greeks had, you know, compulsory homosexuality during ancient times, and I’m not so sure about some of them today,” Trump said.
A central factor in the development of the culture in Trump Houses is a ban on alcohol, the removal of an historically confounding factor in many facets of campus life. What’s more, Trump’s late older brother had a well-chronicled battle with booze and the Republican president is a near-total abstainer himself.
“This beer-bong business, doing shots, things like that, at fraternities is for total losers, complete low-energy types,” Trump said. “Those Greek frats are for absolute disasters like the Bushes.”
As for the academic rigor of a Trump House, the president is said to be negotiating “some amazing deals” for grade inflation for his members.
“You’ve heard of the ‘Gentleman’s C’ — well, we’re going to bring our pledges and brothers the ‘Trump A+,’” said the 47th president. “What really matters is the grade on the card, not what’s behind it. Read the books if you want, maybe go to a class, but this is about closing deals. No one leaves a Trump House his senior year without at least a 3.5 GPA. We are willing to pay off professors, who let me tell you, will take the money. They’ll give A’s to Trump men, and they’ll thank me for it.”
The “Trump Man” philosophy will extend into a fraternity member’s post-graduate years as well. Trump House alumni will be forced to resign from the brotherhood of the fraternity should they become stay-at-home dads or post incomes lower than their wives for three consecutive years.
“We don’t want hipster-loser dads in the Trump organization, sensitive types,” Trump said. “If you’re home changing diapers, and feeding your own child, we just want nothing to do with you. And don’t even think about being in the delivery room when your children are born. Those just aren’t things we need to see.”
Trump’s first houses will be in Ames and Iowa City because of Iowa’s crucial status as a first-in-the-nation presidential testing ground, Trump said.
Several Iowa Board Of Regents officials are said to be highly distressed at the prospect of the Trump Houses. Trump dismissed such concerns.
“I’m the guy who wrote the ‘Art Of The Deal,’” Trump said. “Iowa and Iowa State actually will pay to build these houses, and they’re going to love Trump, let me tell you.”
April Fools! (For now).
About The Iowa Mercury
(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
These days, it's like The Onion is a real newspaper, as the satire literally writes itself.
Doug—Another comment. With apologies to Groucho: Any fraternity that would have me as a member I wouldn’t want to join. Would it be Mu Alpha Gamma Alpha?