Media and tech firms are bending the knee to Trump. Only satirists say how small he is
President Donald Trump, a master at minimising others, is now being literally minimised on South Park by the crass and fearless creators of the cartoon.
I could have told Trump that it's best not to provoke brilliant satirists. I learned that lesson the hard way 20 years ago.
When I wrote Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk, about the tangled father and son saga that led to the invasion of Iraq, I wanted Pat Oliphant, a lacerating political cartoonist, to do the book's cover.
I wheedled until that acerbic Aussie finally agreed. When the drawing came back, it was dazzling: a tiny, jangly-eyed George W. Bush under a big cowboy hat, his hands braced at the guns on his holster. He was walking down the driveway of an overgrown haunted version of the White House with a gargoyle hanging from the trees.
Oliphant had given the president the body of a bug. Even though the book was harshly critical of W. and his scheming advisers, I was worried that the sketch might be a bit too disrespectful to the president.
The cartoonist was a firm believer in 'stirring up the beast,' as he called it, taking a torch to the lies and hypocrisy of the powerful. So, naturally, he was contemptuous when I suggested that we make W. less buglike. But, faced with more wheedling, he reluctantly agreed to take another crack at it.
I waited nervously. When the new illustration came in, W. no longer looked like a bug. Pat had made the president look more like a monkey. And he was even smaller.
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