On the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration, a friend texted me Randy Rainbow’s newest, Seasons of Trump. In a chorus line, wearing a range of bright comical outfits, Randy and his video avatars count the 2,102,400 minutes that Donald Trump was in office, the 1,460 days, the 11, 780 votes he said he needed. Randy rhymes the nonstop offenses: the lies, the tweets, the fake news, the Hollywood Access tape, the porn stars, the racism, Covid, the Russians. The insurrection. “In Muellers, in red hats, in words he can’t spell?/ How will you remember four years stuck in hell?”
I’ve always enjoyed these little films. But this was the first time that Randy Rainbow made me burst into tears. Hearing him, I was painfully aware of all those minutes, those days, of how frightening it had been, how long it had lasted, how much I had steeled myself to endure, to accept – and how relieved I was that it was over.