Last week's US presidential debate felt like peering through the porthole of your washing machine and discovering a marmalade tabby drowning a poodle, John Lapsley writes.
It set bright new standards. Who needs the Cage Fighting channel, when you can switch on CNN for 12 rounds of a pant-suited robot wrestling the chap with a face crafted from mummified foreskin?
I shook my head, and turned off the telly. I'd found the milk snozzle for the espresso machine, and was about to give the blighter one last go, when the phone shrieked. It was my old pal Jimbo P. MacPenn. Jimbo is a bigwig with the American Society of Newspaper Cartoonists.
"What's up Mac?'' I asked.
"Have you seen the opinion polls?'' he wailed. "It's disaster. Trump's getting thrashed.''
"Calm down. A Donald thrashing can't be all bad,'' I said.
"Idiot! Have you stopped taking your pills? We'll all be ruined if Trump's beaten.'
"But why's that? Hillary will be back in the White House. This time she takes the Oval office, and Bill gets a blanket and a dog box out the back. It's true they'll throw a black family out of their home, but life goes on.''
"You don't get it, peabrain. A President Trump was money in the bank for the cartoonist. Donald would provide us a doozy a day for the next four years. His mouth's gold-plated.''
"OK. Point taken. And you'll be deprived of the Donald visuals too. Presumably you can't miss out when drawing a president with a salad for hair, and a face like a mummified foreskin.''
"Did you just say `mummified foreskin'? But that's my original line for tomorrow. How come you stole it?
"Because here in New Zealand it's already Monday,'' I joked. "Look, I think some stand-up guy used it last week and it went viral.''
"Damn it, is there no such thing as a new joke? Now I'll have to go with one of the Trump hair cartoons I've stashed. There's
a choice of Hair Force One, Orange is the new black,
and Don't mess with me or there'll be hell toupee.''
"Hair jokes are good, Jimbo. What does Obama's birth certificate matter when we need to be sure that thing on Trump's head has had all its vaccinations?"
"Sorry, I've done that one too,'' he said. "It led into my series on Trump's campaign songs. The first had a group of Donalds sitting round the campfire toasting marshmallows and singing `We Shall Overcomb.'
"Next I had Trumpers dressed up as The Beachboys. They sang Kokomo while spraying on each other's suntans.''
"Kokomo? But why not Good Vibrations or California Girls? Maybe even Little Deuce Coupe.''
"Jeez you're out of touch. Don't you know Donald hums Kokomo each day he takes the Trump Tower lift. It's how he remembers his list of Caribbean tax havens.
"Aruba, Jamaica,
Gee I wanna bank ya,
Bermuda, Bahama,
Hides dollars, pretty mamma.''
"Are you quite sure Kokomo's not a song about his exotic wives?''
"It's true they're foreign,'' said Jimbo. "There are some jobs Americans won't do.''
"Did you know the Indian Federation has made Hillary Chief Sitting Eagle?
"Damn. So she's getting the Indian vote too?''
"Not necessarily. She was going to be Chief Soaring Eagle, then they realised she was so full of it she couldn't fly.
"Jimbo, the trouble is your lobbyists have politicians so tied up in knots, nothing happens. The rational thing would be to dump your election, and draft in some crazy Third World dictator who actually gets things done.
"You need a tinpot despot. Some nutter who has gold toilets, and puts his name on absolutely everything - his palaces, even his aeroplanes. He thinks women are for the harem, he wears a crazy wig, and he wants to put his opponents in jail. That sort of bloke would sort you out.''
"Well thanks a mill, we nearly had him,'' huffed Jimbo, and hung up on me.
The cynics are too harsh about American democracy. They've spent billions on their complicated system of primaries, and come up with a perfectly matched contest - two candidates, each running against the only person they could possibly beat. It couldn't be fairer.
• John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
