The proliferation of gay jokes about Trump shows a lingering β and uncreative β prejudice. And yet! Somehow, the hilarity of Donald Trump making out with another man has emerged as a mainstay among some parts of the internet Resistance β a crowd that is well-stocked with comedians, entertainers, and people who should both know better and be funnier.
Somehow, the best that people can come up with, time and again, is a variant of lol, Trump kissing men. Whatever point they mean to make, images like the ones Saltz shared last week elide any real criticism of the relationship between Fox News and the Oval Office with a cheap joke about same-sex desire. This makes the butt of the joke not Trump or Hannity, but homosexuality.
Saltz was far from the first to have a laugh at the idea of Gay Trump. Bad writing is its own disappointment, but the question in any of these cases is, what exactly is the joke? The same could be asked of the animated video the New York Times shared last month, in which a cartoon Trump fantasizes about Vladimir Putin , drawing hearts and swooning like a preteen.
But what these examples reveal is that many still think it, whether or not they realize they do. Artist Dmitri Vrubel painted it in based on an actual photo from , on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the founding of East Germany. The fraternal kiss was a traditional greeting among socialist leaders.
The best political cartoons and memes highlight an embarrassing truth, be it that Trump seems to be afraid of stairs, or that his adulation of Putin continues to be a threat to national security. But given the state of political discourse in the Trump era β a time when penis-size posturing made it to the floor of a Republican presidential debate β the cultural brow may have sunken irretrievably.
