How Does One Lampoon a Buffoon?

This photo is on the cover of The New York Times today. I noticed it on the floor in front of my neighbor's apartment as I was waiting for the elevator, the first in triple-take. This is unusual, because most of the time if I do happen to get a glimpse of this turd's face, I recoil in horror. The elevator came, I got in, and from the elevator I looked at his face again, staring at me upside down from the floor--and I just had to look at it up close. So I got out of the elevator, and picked up the paper to see if what I was looking at was as compelling as it seemed from a distance.

It was!

Look at him! He has morphed into a characture of himself! How do you do a characture of a characture? A characture artist would be at a complete loss.

"I can't work with this," he'd say. "It's already finished. What do you want me to do? Add roller skates and a surf board, and a tennis racket, and have him juggling? And then throw in a painting of George Washington? "

Even if you trekked into the deep, dark, recesses of the tropical rainforest (what's left of it, anyway) and showed this photo to an indiginous person (what's left of them, anyway) who has never seen a newspaper, let alone a white man, he'd point to it and say in his indiginous language:

"Retard!"