Donald Clarke: Yes, of course it’s another column about Trump

Pondering the world's discontents this week, I was reminded of a fantastic early Human League song called The Black Hit of Space. The lyrics imagine a sinister record whose galloping popularity engulfs all contemporary culture.

“As the song climbed the charts, the others disappeared/ Til there was nothing but it left to buy,” Phil Oakey sang. “It got to number one, then into minus figures/ Though nobody could understand why.”

Oakey goes on to wonder how the record continues to sell “when it’s swallowed all the shops”. (Records? Shops? There once were such things, junior.)

Little in the everyday course of events could have a similar effect on international discourse. A world war would do the trick. Alien visitation would also skew all conversation in one direction. But a commonplace occurrence such as, oh, I don’t know, a US election – that could not infect all conversation in this manner. Could it?

Since our purpose is to avoid mentioning the unmentionable, we shall henceforth refer to the incident that managed this feat as the Orange Toxic Event. (In the interests of balance, readers who celebrated on November 9th are invited to substitute the words “New Orange Dawn”.) It has seeped into every available crevice.

Look, here is an article on the 40th anniversary of Network, which suggests Sidney Lumet's great film anticipated the Orange Toxic Event. Right next to it, an art critic argues that Norman Rockwell's painting of the Statue of Liberty can steer the Orange Toxic Event towards "decency".

Enda Kenny was pilloried for sending a message of welcome to a senior Orange Toxic Event official whose ancestors originated in Sligo. "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords," Kent Brockman, the craven newscaster in The Simpsons, once remarked when it was feared such beasts were taking over the planet.

One last Hallelujah

As the colourful, pungent fumes spiral up every nostril, it becomes hard to think clearly about anything else. Even poor Leonard Cohen got dragged into the Event. On the weekend after his death, the perennially hamfisted Saturday Night Live had Kate McKinnon deliver a mawkish rendition of Hallelujah while dressed as Hillary Clinton.

“I’m not giving up and neither should you,” McKinnon said at the end with a faux sincerity that undermined all succeeding efforts at satire. When bridges are jammed with motorists succumbing to the Orange poison, there is no room for uncomplicated tribute.

Maybe we can talk about celebrities. That subject always offers a route away from the grim realities of the post-apocalypse. Not this season it doesn’t. Such apparently incompatible personalities as Slavoj Zizek, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kanye West (now, there’s a dinner party!) are all in trouble for being insufficiently horrified by the advance of the Orange Toxic Event.

Zizek, a phlegmy Slovenian philosopher with Hegelian Marxist tendencies, argued that the Orange Toxic Event would create chaos out of which helpful new energies might emerge. Such arguments employ the same logic that suggests the Black Death was a good thing because it led to rise of humanism. We can’t talk about him without mentioning the Event.

Paltrow, who has no known Hegelian Marxist tendencies, takes a surprisingly similar line on the Orange Toxic Event. “It’s such an exciting time to be an American because we are at this amazing inflection point,” she said before mouthing the words “love” and “understanding” a few times.

I see what you mean, Gwyneth. Bullfights are exciting if you like bullfights and you’re not the bull. Now tell me why cupping cures haemorrhoids. We can’t talk about her without mentioning the Event.

If Kanye bothered

West’s recent decision to check himself into hospital for emotional difficulties is not something to laugh at. Indeed, it offers opportunities to consider our often unserious attitudes to mental health. But we can’t even have that conversation without mentioning the Orange Toxic Event.

Shortly before his apparent breakdown, Kanye suggested that, had he been bothered, he might have cheered the advance of the Event.

I would wager that, in some quiet corner of Lizard Fancier Monthly, there is a discussion of how the Orange Toxic Event will effect the Crested Gecko population. The flight-time displays in airports squeeze mention of the Event between reports about ongoing delays to Rangoon.

Well, you can get used to almost anything. After a few months with a screwdriver jammed in your temple, that inconvenience ceases to be the first thing you think of every day. Normalisation sets in. Perhaps that’s the greater danger.

The Orange Toxic Event wants us to become used to its malign presence. “It’s the hit that’s never gone,” The Human League continued. “Time stops when you put it . . . ”

The song ends before the line has a chance to complete itself with the implied rhyme. Beware.