The media has such a distaste for reality that they've taken to running daydreams. Vanity Fair, which was once a respected cultural touchstone, embarrassed itself on Thursday by asking "eight TV and [sic] screenwriters and astute observers of human behavior" to write scenes in which Donald Trump resigns.
Writer Nell Scovell began her piece with a bizarre paragraph trying to convince herself and her readers that Trump would resign by the end of the year. For those of you keeping track at home, that's in 79 days. I suppose one never knows what's going to happen in 2017, but it seemed a fairly delusional way to open the piece. Or perhaps, as she was the woman behind Sabrina the Teenage Witch, she's planning some magic.
The second paragraph went thus:
While we wait for special counsel Robert Muller's investigation into money laundering, bank fraud, foreign influence, election rigging, and hotel-mattress wetting, I asked eight TV and [sic] screenwriters and astute observers of human behavior to come up with two scenarios of how Trump will leave the Oval Office.
Her own scenario was an Ivanka Trump snuff fantasy:
Just like he bragged, Donald’s gonna shoot someone on Fifth Avenue . . . and it’s gonna be his son-in-law. Donald squeezes the trigger. Suddenly out of the crowd, Ivanka throws herself in front of the bullet intended for her husband. Her father watches in horror as his daughter takes the hit. She crumples to the ground—dead (but still incredibly put together.) Donald falls to his knees and cries in despair. What twist of cruel fate allowed him to kill the one thing he kind of, sort of loved?!
Umm...what? The thing she imagines is that he murders his daughter? How is this the thing that came into her mind? Maybe we're all better off not knowing.
The other writers weren't all that exciting. Danny Zuker (Executive Producer, Modern Family) made jokes about Trump hating people with accents, ignoring the fact that he's married two of said people, and his scenario has Trump riding off on a motorcycle with Sarah Palin. Megan Amram (Writer for The Good Place and Silicon Valley), a woman who is paid to write funny things, literally came up with a poop joke. "Donald Trump publicly shitting himself at a rally, then trying to cover his butt with Mike Pence's sweater, but the sweater isn’t big enough to cover his big butt, so he slips and falls and can’t get up ’cause he’s covered in his own shit, so he’s pulled off by the Secret Service, never to be seen again." Wow.
Andy Bobrow (Executive Producer, Last Man on Earth) said Trump would build a second White House (bigger, in gold), and insist he's still president. Another lazy submission. Robin Thede (Creator/executive producer/host of BET’s The Rundown with Robin Thede; former head writer and correspondent of Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show) imagines that Trump would rename Martin Luther King, Jr. Day "Donald J. Trump Day" as part of his new civil rights movement. Ed Solomon (writer of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Men in Black, Now You See Me), tells a bizarre story about bathrooms, after which Trump leaves for Scotland. David Yazbek (composer and lyricist for The Band's Visit) rounds out the middle-school humor with a "small penis" joke
The only other notable submission came from Merill Markoe (head writer of Late Night with David Letterman), who calls Donald Trump "a humiliated and rage-filled narcissist" and then writes the following scenario:
Donald Trump is forced by a mysterious angel to look at what life in the United States would have been like if he’d never been born or been elected. Hillary would be in the White House; there is Medicare for everyone, and the economy is booming as the U.S. leads the fight against climate change. None of his horrible sons would have been born, so wild animals in Africa would be safe. Ivanka would be sitting in a tower in another dimension, sewing shoes by hand as she stares longingly at the moon and waits to be born to someone who had a profitable tech start-up. Kellyane Conway would be hanging around the greenrooms of morning-talk shows, waiting for someone to drop out at the last minute so she could give horoscope predictions. Melania would be preparing for her wedding to Sumner Redstone. Donald is so moved that he begins to sob and calls a press conference. “My fellow Americans,” he says, “I want to resign. I have been such a fool.” Then he and his family go to work to preserve the environment and save endangered species. In the last frame, they’d all be standing in line to volunteer for the Peace Corps.
If this is the utopia we would have had to look forward to under Hillary Clinton, why did anyone ever vote for Barack Obama? Really makes you think.
To top this all off, Vanity Fair headlined this piece "Breaking News: Trump Resigns! (Well, Not Yet)"
This is one of the most pathetically awkward things I have ever read, (and I spend a lot of time on Twitter). We really are watching media die before our very eyes, and it is dying the most awkward of deaths. Look away, fair readers. You shouldn't have to watch.
