Phoning in to the Fox Noise panel program "The Five" last Thursday, Donald Commodius Trump made the bizarre claim at the heart of my editorial cartoon today.
“Now I think I did very well with the gay vote, OK? I even played the gay national anthem as my walk-off, OK? And I think it probably helped me. But I did great. No Republican’s ever gotten the gay vote like I did and I’m very proud of it, I think it’s great. Perhaps it’s because I’m from New York City.”
The "gay national anthem" Trump referred to is the Village People's "Y.M.C.A.," one of the staples of his 2024 presidential campaign appearances (including the one where Trump appeared on stage and called for a 34-minute impromptu concert, after the crowd had already been standing for hours listening to music while waiting for him to arrive).
For dropping their cease-and-desist order to stop playing their music at Trump rallies, the Village People were rewarded by landing the gig to perform "Y.M.C.A." at Trump's "Make America Great Again Rally" and the Turning Point USA Inaugural Ball on January 19, 2025.
I hope they were paid enough to be worth it, because I would argue that "Y.M.C.A." can no longer be considered the gay national anthem. Not only is it now a staple along with "Mambo #5" and "Electric Slide" of different-sex wedding receptions, the Village People front man and co-author of the song Victor Willis has disavowed its gayness:
“There’s been a lot of talk, especially of late, that Y.M.C.A. is somehow a gay anthem. As I’ve said numerous times in the past, that is a false assumption based on the fact that my writing partner was gay, and some (not all) of Village People were gay, and that the first Village People album was totally about gay life.
“This assumption is also based on the fact that the YMCA was apparently being used as some sort of gay hangout and since one of the writers was gay and some of the Village People are gay, the song must be a message to gay people. To that I say once again, get your minds out of the gutter. It is not."
Don't count on being able to convince Secretary of Excursions Pete Kegsbreath to enlist "In the Navy" as a recruitment tool, however.
There are plenty of other nominees for Gay National Anthem, any of which is unsullied by association with the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime. There's "Born This Way," "I Am What I Am," "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)," or "Supermodel (You Better Work)" — just for starters.
Dozens of new ones come out every summer, and I haven't even gotten around to the Lesbian National Anthems, Bisexual National Anthems, Transgender National Anthems, Queer National Anthems, and all the Plus National Anthems.
If you saw Monday's sneak peek, you will have noticed that I completely changed the last dialogue balloon. Originally, I had Trump "weaving" to the topic of his pens, the subject of a five-minute monologue during a recent televised cabinet meeting.
After I had nearly finished inking the cartoon, it occurred to me that it would be better to have him show off his ability to identify the five Village People. Just in case you thought he knew their actual names.
Inking on top of white-out doesn't work very well, so I wrote the substitute dialogue on a sheet of bristol board that I have used for drawing backgrounds for repetition in multi-panel cartoons. What I failed to consider was that the sheet of bristol board was from a bundle susceptible to bleeding. Instead of staying where I draw it, ink spreads out along the fibers of the paper.
Not far, but not neat.
That's fine for backgrounds, which aren't meant to be in focus anyway. Lettering has to be neater, though, so I ended up spending a considerable amount of time cleaning up that lettering in PhotoShop.
So if someday you notice that I've switched over to using Comic Sans, cut me some slack. I'm not planning to do it, but lettering is probably the least favorite part of any cartoonist's job.
