Trump Inspires Portlandia Reboot
The dream of the 1990s …
Donald Trump apparently sent troops into Portland, Oregon, because Fox News had run footage showing rioting in the city during 2020. The president of the United States has access to the nation’s most up-to-date intelligence, as well as at least one current calendar, so he should know that it’s actually 2025. When Gov. Tina Kotek patiently explained the present reality to him, Trump sputtered, “Well, wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?”
There is a plot line on the classic Dark Shadows series where the evil Count Petofi switches bodies with youthful Quentin Collins, trapping his mind in Petofi’s ungainly form. Petofi tells Quentin there’s no use in telling people what’s happened because it’s so fantastic no one will believe him. They’ll just think he’s a “senile old man, raving mad.” Unfortunately, too many Americans believe the ravings of this senile commander in chief, no matter how absurd.
Even after his briefing with Kotek, Trump insists that what he sees on Fox is the real deal. “Portland, I mean — every time I look at that place it’s burning down,” Trump said last Friday. “There are fires all over the place. When a store — there are very few of them left — but when a store owner rebuilds a store they build it out of plywood. They don’t put up storefronts anymore. They just put wood up.”
This is obviously a deranged lie, one Trump has not even personally verified. He’s describing Portland as if it were hit by an antifa hurricane, but presidents usually tour cities struck by a national disaster so they can see the damage for themselves. The closest Trump has come to Portland was a 2016 campaign rally in Eugene. Instead, Trump just sends his goons.
You can only deny reality for only so long — even when addressing an electorate brainwashed by Fox News. Homeland Security Secretary and puppy killer Kristi Noem went to Portland and spent her time praying over a Burgerville combo meal and losing a staring contest to a man in a chicken suit.
The Portland Chicken is Jack Dickinson, who’s from Portland but not an actual chicken. Dickinson explained his political cosplay to Willamette Week. “It dismantles their narrative a little bit,” he said. “It becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it’s, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit.”
He’s not the only Portland protester dressing for the occasion. Instead of all-black ninja gear or militia-style camo wear, protesters are showing up in inflatable animal costumes — and not even scary animals, like that freaky moment in The Shining. They’re pandas, frogs, and unicorns. Their own absurdity highlights the absurdity of the “war-ravaged Portland” narrative. It recalls the days when everyone thought Portland was like Portlandia, the sketch comedy series starring Fred Armisen from Saturday Night Live and Carrie Brownstein from the band Sleater-Kinney.
In the show’s first sketch, Fred tells Carrie that the “dream of the ‘90s” was still alive in Portland, miraculously intact after the Bush years. Portlandia presented the city as an eccentric wonderland, a place where “young people go to retire.” Sketches lampooned the farm-to-table restaurant obsession, second-wave feminism, and ridiculous lines for brunch. Portlandia was accessible to non-residents because it ultimately satirized very familiar white liberal excesses but with Portland’s own unique spin.
Seattle had the grunge movement and Frasier, but Portland was still somewhat under the national radar 20 or so years ago. When my South Carolina relatives learned I was marrying a woman from Portland, this was somehow heard as “Poland.” (Probably an issue with accents, but it was nonetheless amusing.) By 2010, though, The New York Times frequently ran features raving about Portland’s food scene and talking up the city as an ideal weekend getaway, a stark contrast from the articles that would run just a decade later. Portlandia’s kooky characters were part of the local color. Visitors looked forward to real-life sightings of men with handlebar mustaches.
Portlandia’s third season had an unintentionally prescient episode in which Roseanne Barr plays the “temp mayor” after Kyle MacLachlan’s mayor briefly stepped down. She hates Portland culture and reacts with disgust when Fred and Carrie take her on a tour. She complains that there are too many bikes and not enough malls and big box stores. She thinks grown men are too old to ride around on skateboards. Like Kristi Noem, she’s not crazy about the dogs.
Barr’s mayor stages her own coup: Air raid sirens summons everyone to a press conference where she announces her plans to “make Portland a real city … cities need to be active and busy … or at least pretend to be.” That means no more lounging around in coffee shops. She also cuts the entire city’s access to the internet.
This was in 2013, during Barack Obama’s second term. It was a more hopeful period, before Donald Trump successfully leveraged MAGA’s seething cultural resentment for people who are in any way different from them. Roseanne herself is a vocal Trump supporter and despite her wealth and fame, she’s still consumed by the same resentment. She would definitely ban dogs in quirky outfits.
Portlandia ended in 2018, which seems like a lifetime ago. (The series mostly ignored the first half of Trump’s first term.) The city’s public perception changed significantly after 2020. There was a rise in both petty and violent crime, which outpaced the nation in 2021. It was less “weird” and more dangerous. Downtown started to resemble scenes from My Own Private Idaho. Visitors wouldn’t ask residents for restaurant recommendations but instead whether their hotel was in a safe location. We can argue whether this response was fair or any more rooted in reality than Trump’s dementia but the perception had taken hold. Now, the images mocking Trump’s invasion show the Portland that captured people’s hearts or at least their curiosity. Of course, while the “war-ravaged” rhetoric is visibly untrue, Portland at its best still represents the freedom and creativity MAGA is driven to crush. The protesters might be dressed as pandas, chickens, and frogs but they are still on the frontlines of a very real war.
"Artisanal light bulb store?" Why yes we do - it's on Mississippi in North Portland. The thing "visitors" to Portland REALLY need to grasp, is Portlandia was more documentary travelogue than "satire". That "women's bookstore" existed on Hawthorne Blvd and Dick's Meats - a restaurant where portraits of "Famous Dicks" (men named "Richard") hung on the wall and the menu described the origins of the "meat offerings" on the menu actually existed on Belmont in Southeast.
Even today, driving instructions from my old house in Southeast to my new house in St. Johns include..."Take Cesar Chavez Avenue north...to Rosa Parks Blvd west..."
https://sunlanlighting.com/
One thing I loved about Portlandia is it was created by liberals who were willing to laugh at the excesses of liberals. When the last time you saw a conservative comedy that poked fun at the excesses of the Right? An inability to laugh at or be critical of your own side is a hallmark of a mentally broken movement.