IF YOU’RE A Parks and Recreation fan, at some point over the last few days you’ve probably thought about how the show would handle the current election. What would Leslie Knope think?
Earlier today, Vox published a letter from Leslie (written by a former Parks and Rec staffer) to the people of America, and it has all the answers you need.
In her letter, Leslie describes a mock-election held by one of her teachers, where the candidates were a ‘bookish’ tortoise called Greenie and a ‘cool-looking jaguar’ called Speedy.
[Speedy] promised that, if elected, he would end school early, have extra recess, and provide endless lunches of chocolate pizzandy (a local Pawnee delicacy at the time: deep fried pizza where the crust was candy bars). [Greenie] promised to go slow and steady, think about the problems of our school, and try her best to solve them in a way that would benefit the most people.
I think you know where this is going. Except you don’t, because before we voted, Greg Laresque asked if he could nominate a third candidate… “I nominate a T Rex named Dr Farts who wears sunglasses and plays the saxophone, and his plan is to fart as much as possible and eat all the teachers,” and before Mrs Kolphner could blink, Dr Farts the T Rex had been elected president of Pawnee Elementary School in a 1984 Reagan-esque landslide.
Leslie asks people not to be discouraged by the result, but to get to work figuring out “how to do good in this infuriating world that constantly wants to bend towards the bad”.
She also tells young girls not to listen to the “doughy-faced nightmare men” and concentrate on “working hard, learning, and communing with other girls like you.”
“We elected a farting T Rex who does not like you, or care about you, or think about you, unless he is scanning your bodies with his creepy T Rex eyes,” she writes.
He is the present, sadly, but he is not the future. Your strength is a million times his. Your power is a billion times his. We will acknowledge this result, but we will not accept it. We will overcome it, and we will defeat it. Now find your team, and get to work.
You can read the full letter here (and try not to weep).
