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Donald Trump and Satire: Super Soaking
特朗普与讽刺：全方位包围
Lessons in civics from comedians.
从喜剧中获得的公民经验。
Barack obama was bad for satirists, even if few seemed to mind.
讽刺作家很难拿巴拉克.奥巴马开刀，即使很少有人在乎这点。
Moderate, upstanding and cool, the first black president gave close observers of human ridiculousness little to work with.
第一位黑人总统以温和、正直又潇洒的形象使得那些身边的滑稽糗事观察者少有可乘之机。
Most gave up and welcomed him admiringly onto their shows.
于是他们大部分都放弃了，并且在自己的节目中用钦佩的眼光欢迎奥巴马的到来。
“I can’t believe you’re leaving before me,” Mr Obama, appearing on “The Daily Show” for the seventh time, told its outgoing host, Jon Stewart.
“我不敢相信您会比我先离开这里。”奥巴马第七次出现在“每日秀”的舞台上时对即将卸任的主持人乔恩.斯图尔特说。
It was not the relationship to power the acerbic Mr Stewart would have liked.
尖刻的斯图尔特不会喜欢被强迫出现这种关系。
Thankfully, Donald Trump is making satire great again.
而值得庆幸的是，唐纳德.特朗普使得嘲讽再次复兴。
The most conspicuous beneficiary, “Saturday Night Live” (SNL), a hitherto jaded platform for comedy skits on NBC, is seeing its best ratings in over 20 years.
最明显的受益者，迄今为止已老生常谈的NBC搞笑平台的《周六夜现场》（SNL），20年来创最佳收视率。
This is partly thanks to Alec Baldwin’s parody of the president as an irascible halfwit.
这在一定程度上归因于亚力克.鲍德温的拙劣模仿，他将总统模仿成一个易怒的笨蛋。
But the chaos in the month-old administration has provided additional targets.
然而一场爆发在刚刚成立一个月的川普政府中的争论提供了另外一种可能。
On February 4th SNL unveiled a hilarious parody of Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, as a gum-chewing maniac.
2月4日，“周六夜现场”节目曝光了白宫新闻秘书斯宾塞滑稽地模仿一位嚼口香糖的疯子的事件。
The belligerent Mr Spicer has since appeared cowed.
自此，干练好强的斯宾塞先生大为受挫。
There are a couple of lessons here for more sober political commentators.
对于头脑尚清醒的政治评论员而言，可以从中学到很多。
One is to abandon the complacency about Mr Trump that, until Mr Baldwin took over in October, had rendered SNL’s portrayal of him toothless and pointless.
一个经验是可以让川普的自满显露无疑，鲍德温先生10月份接任前，一直将他在“周六夜现场”节目的形象塑造得无权无势并且无厘头。
Another is to let the weirdness of this presidency speak for itself.
另一个经验则是凸显总统言论的滑稽无逻辑。
“America first, Australia sucks. Your reef is failing. Prepare to go to war,” the SNL Trump blustered down the phone to Australia’s president, Malcolm Turnbull, on February 4th.
“美国至上，澳大利亚濒危。你们的矿产正在骤减，准备好迎接战争吧！”在2月4日的“周六夜现场”节目中，川普在电话里怒怼澳大利亚总统马尔科姆.特恩布尔。
That, minus the threat of war, is pretty much what Mr Trump said to Mr Turnbull in a recent phone call.
这段内容，除了战争威胁以外，基本就是近期川普先生和特恩布尔先生通话的主要内容。
Other satirists are finding Mr Trump’s tendency to defy parody harder to handle.
其他的讽刺作家发现川普先生的倾向难以滑稽模仿和掌握。
“It’s really tricky now as satire has become reality,” Trey Parker, co-creator of “South Park”, a satirical cartoon which presented the Trump-Clinton contest as the “giant douche or the turd sandwich”, has said.
“现在讽刺已经变成现实的情况真的很棘手”, 南方公园”的联合创始人Trey Parker这么说到，他曾将特朗普 - 克林顿的竞选以一则“巨型灌肠或者三明治”的讽刺漫画展示出来。
The Onion has the same problem.
而洋葱网也有同样的问题。
One of the satirical online paper’s recent headlines, “Eric Trump Scolds Father That He Mustn’t Inquire About The Businesses, For He’s Sworn Not To Tell,” is a pretty faithful description of the firewall between the 45th president and his family firm.
在洋葱网的最近头条中，“Eric Trump 责骂其父亲，即他不可打听企业事务，因为他宣誓了不过问，”这是对第45位总统和他的家族企业之间所存在的防火墙的一个相当靠谱的描述。
Indeed, many of the headlines generated by Mr Trump’s administration are deeply Onion-esque.
事实上，特朗普政府颁布的许多标题都是“洋葱式”的。
Kellyanne Conway, a Trump spokeswoman, was briefly barred by CNN for using alternative facts—her references to a fictitious jihadist atrocity, which Ms Conway called the “Bowling Green Massacre”, were the last straw.
特朗普发言人凯莉安.康威被美国有线电视新闻网禁止过发布非真实性的报道--文章中提到了一个虚构的“圣战暴行”，康威称“博林格林大屠杀”是最后一根稻草。
Mr Trump’s wife, Melania, has sued a newspaper for reporting lurid untruths about her on the basis that this cost her the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” of making millions as “one of the most photographed women in the world”.
特朗普的妻子梅拉尼亚（Melania）也起诉过一家报道了她一些不实信息的报纸，这篇报道使她成为了 “世界上最受关注的妇女之一”。
No satirist could do better.
没有讽刺家能做的更好的了。
SNL’s response, in sending up Mr Spicer, is to shift the focus onto one of the relatively normal players in Trump world, to show how pervasively strange it is.
美国综艺节目《周六夜现场》回应斯派塞先生时，是把焦点转移到特朗普团队中这个相对正常的工作人员之一，以突出如此奇怪的现象。
At first glance, none of this should bother Mr Trump.
乍一看，这些不应给川普先生带来任何困扰。
SNL’s weekly audience of 10m represents less than half his Twitter following and is dominated by left-leaning millennials who would sooner work in an abattoir than vote Trump.
《周六夜现场》每周1000万名观众人数还不到其推特粉丝的一半，而且他们深受那些宁愿到角斗场工作都不愿投票给川普的左派人物的影响。
Yet Mr Trump, who unlike his core voters devours the mainstream media and loves to hobnob with the celebrities who appear on shows like SNL, minds the lampooning a lot.
然而特朗普先生却不像他的核心支持者一样喜欢紧盯主流媒体，还喜欢看着像《周六夜现场》这样的节目喝上两杯。他对那些讽刺表演十分在意。
“Not funny, cast is terrible, always a complete hit job. Really bad television!” he tweeted last month.
“一点都不好玩，演员十分糟糕，总在完全的讽刺。十分糟糕的电视节目！”他上个月发推特说道。
SNL’s response was to start planning ways to take Mr Baldwin’s impression, which the actor has described as a civic duty, to a wider audience.
《周六夜现场》回应称他们开始规划让鲍德温先生让更多观众熟知，而鲍德温称这是公民义务。
译文来源考研英语时事阅读
