Life Imitates Art 🐧

or: Penguin Pulls A Trump 

I freely admit I watch “Batman” reruns, bad as they are. Tonight Penguin returns to Gotham City apparently a solid citizen who begins a campaign to run for mayor. Yes, of the fictionalized New York City. 

Of course the only opponent who polls better than Penguin is Batman. Shenanigans ensue and, looking back 54 years later, it’s hard not to see the Penguin as Trump. His campaign is as insurgent as Trump’s was, his popularity among the voters as unexpected. Of course, it’s a TeeVee show, it’s supposed to happen even as it’s hard to believe.

The parallels to recent history continue on election night, when Penguin, convinced he will win, calls Police Commissioner Gordon to promise he will be replaced in his job by The Riddler, and Police Chief O’ Hara by The Joker. (He’ll run the city as if it was all his own, IOW.) But then Penguin sees the returns, which favored him early in the night, turn against him. 

What to do? Well, he’s the special guest villain, what can he do? Something nefarious, of course. He realizes if he kidnaps the election commission, the body charged with counting the vote, he can stop Batman’s victory before it happens. The law, he says, requires the commission count the vote. If they can’t, the count stops with Penguin the victor.

I kid you not. The only thing missing is Penguin crying “Stop the steal!” as he runs off-camera.

 

He is thwarted, of course. Penguin’s last words, after he hears it was all in vain, the vote having been counted before he kidnapped the commission?  “Fraud! It’s a fraud, I tell you! I demand a recount!”

You can’t make this stuff up. Or you can, but you can’t make up the echo in history.

Funny, that.