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Thursday
If you’ve been following the news, you’ve probably noticed that political parody has been having a field day with Donald Trump. While the president has been masterful at dominating the airwaves with his incendiary tweets—many delivered in all caps and awash in exclamation marks—California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been responding in kind, bolstering the Trump opposition while unnerving Trump’s supporters. It has all been very Swiftian.
As arguably history’s greatest parodist, the 18th century Anglo-Irish satirist knew how to cut fraudsters, venial politicians, power-hungry tyrants and others down to size with pitch perfect imitations of their style. “A Modest Proposal” is Jonathan Swift’s most famous example, but the Newsom-Trump battle reminds me more of Swift’s run-in with the most famous almanac writer of the day, who claimed that he could foretell the future.
More on the Issac Bickerstaff papers in a moment. First, however, here’s a taste of what has been transpiring between Newsom and Trump. For several years now, Trump has been tweeting out messages like the following:
THE DEMOCRATS ARE EXTORTIONISTS WHO ALMOST DESTROYED OUR COUNTRY. NOW WE ARE BACK, AND THE USA IS THE “HOTTEST” COUNTRY ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!
Now here’s Newsom:
DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER “HOT.” FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME — GAVIN C. NEWSOM — HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS “STEP.” MANY ARE SAYING HE CAN’T EVEN DO THE “BIG STAIRS” ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE — USES THE LITTLE BABY STAIRS NOW. SAD! TOMORROW HE’S GOT HIS “MEETING” WITH PUTIN IN “RUSSIA.” NOBODY CARES. ALL THE TELEVISION CAMERAS ARE ON ME, AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR. EVEN LOW-RATINGS LAURA INGRAM (EDITS THE TAPES!) CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT MY BEAUTIFUL MAPS. YOU’RE WELCOME FOR LIBERATION DAY, AMERICA! DONNIE J MISSED “THE DEADLINE” (WHOOPS!) AND NOW I RUN THE SHOW. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GCN
There have also been visual parodies. Newsom’s target is images of Trump, created by his fans, as a superhero, as the pope, as a carving on Mount Rushmore, as a figure in a painting where Washington and Lincoln listen to him respectfully. It’s political kitsch that feels like self-parody only that those who produce it are serious. Newsom has therefore been responding in kind with images of himself in similar poses.
Few things are more delicious in a satiric battle than when the target and his allies fail to realize that they are being satirized, which has been the case with a number of Trump supporters. Certain rightwing political and media figures have been lecturing the governor on how he is acting undignified and needs to grow up—which, of course, is Newsom’s satiric point about Trump.
For his part, 18th century almanac writer John Partridge also missed Jonathan Swift’s point, which pushed the satirist to ever greater satiric heights. I borrow some from a previous post to tell the story.
Astrologers were as popular in the early 18th century as they are now, but Swift considered them frauds and the people who believed them fools. Partridge was the Jean Dixon of his day, publishing a yearly almanac of predictions. In January of 1708 Swift, under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, challenged Partridge with his own “Predictions for the Year 1708.” Partridge was a fraud, Bickerstaff wrote, because he failed to predict that he himself would die “upon the 29th of March next”:
My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it, to show how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns: It relates to Partridge the almanack-maker; I have consulted the stars of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs in time.
Literary scholars believe that Swift chose the March 29 date so that he could then publish “The Accomplishment of the First of Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions” as close to April Fool’s Day as possible. (April 1 itself was out because it was a Sunday.)
The day after March 29th, there was a follow-up letter, with Swift this time impersonating a supposedly impartial observer. This gentleman reported that Partridge had in fact died, as Bickerstaff had predicted:
In obedience to your lordship’s commands, as well as to satisfy my own curiosity, I have for some days past inquired constantly after Partridge the almanack-maker, of whom it was foretold in Mr. Bickerstaff’s predictions, published about a month ago, that he should die the 29th instant, about eleven at night, of a raging fever. I had some sort of knowledge of him when I was employed in the Revenue, because he used every year to present me with his almanack, as he did other gentlemen, upon the score of some little gratuity we gave him. I saw him accidentally once or twice about ten days before he died, and observed he began very much to droop and languish, though I hear his friends did not seem to apprehend him in any danger. About two or three days ago he grew ill, was confined first to his chamber, and in a few hours after to his bed, where Dr. Case and Mrs. Kirleus were sent for, to visit and to prescribe to him.
Before this fictional Partridge passes away, however, he makes a deathbed retraction where he admits to being a fraud:
“By what I can gather from you,” said I, “the observations and predictions you printed with your almanacks were mere impositions on the people.” He replied, “If it were otherwise I should have the less to answer for. We have a common form for all those things; as to foretelling the weather, we never meddle with that, but leave it to the printer, who takes it out of any old almanack as he thinks fit; the rest was my own invention, to make my almanack sell, having a wife to maintain, and no other way to get my bread; for mending old shoes is a poor livelihood; and,” added he, sighing, “I wish I may not have done more mischief by my physic than my astrology; though I had some good receipts from my grandmother, and my own compositions were such as I thought could at least do no hurt.”
An elegy about Partridge also appeared. Here’s the first stanza:
Well, ’tis as Bickerstaff has guess’d,
Tho’ we all took it for a jest;
Partridge is dead, nay more, he dy’d
E’re he could prove the good ‘Squire ly’d.
Strange, an Astrologer shou’d die,
Without one Wonder in the Sky!
At this point, the fun really began. Proclaiming himself very much alive and treating Bickerstaff as though he were an actual person, Partridge accused him of lying. In other words, he responded like those Newsom critics who accuse him of shameless narcissism when he announces, “ALL THE TELEVISION CAMERAS ARE ON ME, AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR.” In a pamphlet entitled, Squire Bickerstaff detected; or, the astrological impostor convicted, the astrologer also complained of ill treatment:
I could not stir out of doors for the space of three months after this, but presently one comes up to me in the street; Mr Partridge, that coffin you was last buried in I have not been yet paid for: Doctor, cries another dog, How d’ye think people can live by making of graves for nothing? Next time you die, you may e’en toll out the bell yourself for Ned. A third rogue tips me by the elbow, and wonders how I have the conscience to sneak abroad without paying my funeral expences. Lord, says one, I durst have swore that was honest Dr. Partridge, my old friend; but poor man, he is gone. I beg your pardon, says another, you look so like my old acquaintance that I used to consult on some private occasions; but, alack, he’s gone the way of all flesh —- Look, look, look, cries a third, after a competent space of staring at me, would not one think our neighbour the almanack-maker, was crept out of his grave to take t’other peep at the stars in this world, and shew how much he is improv’d in fortune-telling by having taken a journey to the other?
Swift couldn’t believe his good luck, just as Newsom has been enjoying those Trump fans who fail to grasp that he’s being satiric. He therefore had Bickerstaff write an indignant rebuttal–A vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; against what is objected to him by Mr. Partridge in his almanack for the present year 1709—in which he complains that Partridge has treated him “after a very rough manner.” Should gentlemen be able to have a civilized discussion over what is merely a difference of opinion, he asks.
Then he goes on to prove that, despite Partridge’s assertions to the contrary, he is in fact dead. Bickerstaff proves this in two ways.
First of all, he reports that he has overheard the following response from people who have bought Partridge’s almanac:
Without entering into criticisms of chronology about the hour of his death, I shall only prove that Mr. Partridge is not alive. And my first argument is thus: Above a thousand gentlemen having bought his almanacks for this year, merely to find what he said against me; at every line they read, they would lift up their eyes, and cry out, betwixt rage and laughter, “They were sure no man alive ever writ such damn’d stuff as this.” Neither did I ever hear that opinion disputed: So that Mr. Partridge lies under a dilemma, either of disowning his almanack, or allowing himself to be “no man alive.”
He follows this up with a second argument:
Mr. Partridge pretends to tell fortunes, and recover stolen goods; which all the parish says he must do by conversing with the devil and other evil spirits: And no wise man will ever allow he could converse personally with either, till after he was dead.
To be on the safe side, however, Bickerstaff does throw in a disclaimer:
But now if an uninformed carcass walks still about, and is pleased to call itself Partridge, Mr. Bickerstaff does not think himself any way answerable for that. Neither had the said carcass any right to beat the poor boy who happen’d to pass by it in the street, crying, “A full and true account of Dr. Partridge’s death, etc.”
Swift didn’t write any more under the pseudonym but essayists Joseph Addison and Steele kept the name alive in their legendary tabloid The Tatler. Its purported editor was Isaac Bickerstaff.
So how much good can Newsom’s parodies do? I wrote recently about the elevated claim, made by Mark Twain’s Satan in The Mysterious Stranger, that “against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” Needless to say, this is not entirely true since comedians have been making fun of Trump for years and yet he’s still standing.
But it’s also true that Newsom’s parodies are revealing his emptiness. Trump relies, like other dictatorial leaders, on intimidation. When one starts making fun of his threats, one chips away at his seeming invincibility.
In short, don’t stop with the mockery. Just make sure it’s smart and witty.
