What happens when a loved one is (gasp!) a Republican?
By Erica Slutsky (Writer/Singer/Songwriter)
There’s this great episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where gleefully offensive hero Larry David is allowed a hall pass to cheat on his wife. He gets seduced by Tony winner Cady Huffman (playing herself), but then sees a photo of George W. Bush on her table and realizes that he can’t sleep with her because she’s a Republican.
Skittishness about Republicanism has been around since the Reagan era’s Family Ties, which featured a lovable young Republican going against his hippie parents. But, in the twenty-first century, particularly after George W. Bush, there’s been a mainstream fictionalized discomfort (blue balls?) around the admission that anyone could be proudly conservative, particularly in comedy. It would be too easy to cite liberal writers, who are certainly free to express a point of view through their work. But the majority of states in the early twenty-first century put a Republican in the White House twice. Perhaps this result was more in spite of than because of Bush’s missteps.
Gerald and Jimmy at the bar. And you thought the “Land of Confusion” video was terrifying.
Richard Nixon is usually the go-to punchline, and he was, perhaps, the turning point, since his name is synonymous with trickery. It’s almost cliché to reference Nixon, or even Ford, now: How many times have you seen a sitcom where a morally suspect character idolizes him? Ronald Reagan was mostly exempt from being lampooned because there were artists in the eighties who identified as Republicans and didn’t feel any shame about it. But the odd projects that did make fun of Reagan were, well, odd. Garry Trudeau, one of the first satirists to speak out against Trump, formed Reathel Bean and the Doonesbury Break Crew with composer/performer Elizabeth Swados for the political spoof song “Rap Master Ronnie.” In what few ways Reagan was portrayed, he was as exaggerated as possible, as in Sid and Marty Krofft’s puppet sitcom DC Follies. He may have also been the least-impersonated President in Saturday Night Live history, but that was because the writers and cast were genuinely afraid to parody a kindly and popular old man who happened to be the Leader of the Free World. Meanwhile, on rival show Fridays, a cross-dressing Reagan was the Frank N. Furter in a Rocky Horror parody with Nixon as Eddie (played by, no joke, Larry David).
Fun Fact: Reathel Bean played Reagan in Trudeau and Swados’ Broadway musical adaptation of Doonesbury!
The only nineties example that I can think of is in the Woody Allen musical(!) Everyone Says I Love You where, in typical Woody Allen fashion, a teenage boy identifies as a Republican in a family of wealthy New York Democrats until he learns that his head isn’t getting enough oxygen. But George W. Bush and Donald Trump gave comedy writers a lot more to work with, especially after some time had passed. In the final episode of Glee (spoiler alert!), Nixon-worshipper Sue Sylvester ends up becoming the Vice President to Jeb Bush in 2016 and 2020. She pledges to run for President, and has Becky serve as a Secret Service Agent to boot. I know that it takes place in the future and is supposed to be ridiculous, but, I have like fifty questions about the logic of this entire episode, and at least four are about this scene (that preschool scene is my Bat Credit Card – I will go ballistic if anyone asks me about it). Let’s face it, Glee’s tacked-on season finale was basically the ending of AI to this series and already invalidated a perfect ending (namely, the preceding episode). So, I’m having a lot of trouble believing that Sue Sylvester is a Republican. Yes, she’s rich. Yes, she’s arrogant. Yes, she wants to defund the arts. But she has a disabled best friend, calls herself a feminist, and “ships” Kurt and Blaine in the same season! Plus, I can’t help thinking that even Sue would aim much higher than President.
Ahahahahaha everyone thought that President Jeb was the worst-case scenario ahahaha waaaaahhhh
The Carmichael Show had one of the earliest responses to Never Trumpism with the episode, “President Trump.” In it, voice of reason Jerrod struggles to reconcile his family’s diverse political views: His fiancée feels the Bern, his mom is firmly With Her, and his dad (David Alan Grier) becomes a rabid Trump supporter after shaking the candidate’s hand and realizing how firm his grip is. Naturally, Jerrod keeps an open mind until he ends up in the hospital after a rally. Hmmm…bigoted dad, sensible mom, outspoken son, and liberal young female? The Carmichael Show is a stone remake of All in the Family, with characters who happen to be Black. Not that any of that isn’t culturally relevant today. Besides featuring one of my favorite Grier performances (and I’m a Grier superfan), mom (Loretta Devine) gets the best one-liners about Trump’s tiny hands and how no one likes Ted Cruz.
If only Hillary had won, John Legend could have sung this at the inaugural ball.
Blackish differs from The Carmichael Show in that, much like every other TV show from the Bush era, it takes the high road and barely mentions any candidates by name. In other episodes, Blackish has seriously discussed racial profiling, white microaggressions, and hatespeech. But its most political episode, ironically, is one of its funniest. Teenage son Andre Jr. joins the Young Republicans at school because of a girl he likes (plus, he thinks Dick Cheney is a total badass). Initially, Dre gets it, but then he discovers that the girl is Black – and that her family is conservative largely because they benefit from far greater tax breaks than Dre and Bow’s upper-middle class household. Besides the running gag of every other family member refusing to comprehend that Black Republicans could exist, Blackish makes a valid and unique point about why upwardly mobile people of all ethnicities tend to think conservatively. At the same time, the girl’s mom just assumes that Bow is a housewife, rather than a hardworking liberal doctor who barely gets to see her children. Reportedly, creator Kenya Barris feels a need to speak out about Trump, too, so we might even see more episodes like it in the future.
But George W. Bush? Sit down, millennials: That’s a different story…
ERICA SLUTSKY Erica Slutsky is a writer, singer, and songwriter in New York City. https://ericaslutsky.wordpress.com/
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