Joker’s Televised New Year’s Address to Gotham City, December 31, 2020
By: @sayanniething
Rejected on 12/10/20
The transmission begins at 10 p.m. with an interruption of Gotham’s annual New Years’ Eve telecast. The Joker wears a suit with a colorful pocket square and a fake flower in his lapel. He is sitting behind a news anchor desk, sipping from an oversized coffee mug that reads “BANG!” The two henchmen flanking him are wearing face masks decorated with jagged, grotesque smiles.
Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?
The Joker cackles nervously and dabs the sweat from his forehead with his pocket square.
It’s my annual New Years’ address, and things are… well, they’re different this time around. As cases of COVID-19 in Gotham City continue to climb, I wanted to speak to you about what my organization has done to slow the spread of this insidious virus. I’m not a doctor, though I have impersonated many to great effect. But from what I gather, social distancing, hand washing, and mask wearing are the cornerstones of a responsible public health response. And I practice what I screech— (gestures to henchmen, cackles)
See, we have fun! That said, I have had to put a number of my junior goons on furlough. There’s just less chaos to be sowed, and while I do expect these guys to die for me, but I don’t want to be a dick about it.
Many are out of work, like, uh, this guy—
(gripping a goon’s family portrait) Get a load of this dumb rock, with his ugly wife and their dumb-ugly kids! Probably warms your hearts, huh? I would encourage anyone so inclined to donate to their GoFundMe page: just search for “Joker’s Goons.” I was able to place a number of these disposable thugs as essential workers at Whole Foods, another reminder that the Legion of Doom is not just an evil cooperative but also a networking opportunity for any college kids living at home with their parents! (cackles) The laughter was probably misleading, I’m serious. Our internship applications are rolling on Idealist.
(clears throat) Some have accused me of only wanting to resolve this public health crisis, so that I can feel safe while I kill you all. Now, let me just say, once and for all: that’s a big part of it. But also, any other course of action would be pretty ghoulish and, as I have stressed the past eighty years and counting, I’m not a ghoul. I am a demented clown.
And fighting the spread of COVID has become weirdly political, can I just say? (suddenly bangs fist on desk) Listen to this, just listen: the other day, I was dynamiting an elementary school that, before you all panic, was evacuated in the nick of time. Thanks a lot, the Bat Man… But the parents who came to pick up their kids—holding hands and weeping all over each other, hugging and kissing, no masks: so irresponsible! Really makes you think. The children are our future. That’s why I was trying to blow them up.
Then, in my effort to make a hilarious getaway, because I give the people what they want, some unmasked mouth-breather in a “Don’t Tread on Me” t-shirt came up to and touched. My shoulder. Like we were in the same pod! He congratulated me on my vigilante violence against the teachers’ unions, and I told him, “Six feet apart, or I’ll put you six feet under!” I thought this was a pretty clever jab, but I’ve since googled it, and, well, I suppose I’m not the first. Anyway, this loser is yelling in my face, while some head-to-toe Lululemon bimbo-mom joins in, telling me I shouldn’t live in fear of the virus because of herd immunity. (bored) So I tread on the first one with a steamroller, while my goons shot up the other with a truckload of measles vaccines.
Don’t live in fear of the virus?! For the record, I don’t feel fear, I provoke fear, I am fear incarnate. So, anyone that wants to, you know, call me a snowflake or say I’ve been blue-pilled can choke on a ventilator.
He crushes his mug between his fingers, and the shards fly everywhere. A cameraman cries out in agony, “Oh god, my eye! So much blood!” The Joker does not react.
On the other side, like, those people saying that I’m “too little, too late,” that I’m not a real leftist, those people need to take their heads out of their NPR tote-bags and remember that while their college-age daughters have been shrieking their empty heads off about abolishing the police, I’ve been walking the walk. I’ve been doing my part to personally decapitate the police, one pig at a time. What have you been doing, you know? You can’t abolish the police with a sign unless it’s made of explosive cardboard. Which I have stockpiled! I’ve done that! People need to remember that I have always been and will always be an apolitical agent of violent mayhem.
I do have my softer side. (to the henchman to his right) Smell my boutonnière, bubbeleh.
The henchman leans in to take a whiff and is promptly sprayed in the face. A sizzling sound registers on the audio track. “The acid, it burns!” he shouts, running off-screen. The remaining henchman is stoic, unflinching.
I don’t have a softer side! I’m the same Joker I’ve always been! I am eternal destruction and anarchy—just with a few guard rails, that’s all. And I am tired of being dragged through the inane muck of your culture wars. Save yourselves, Gotham, so I can eliminate you with the dignity and theater you cockroaches warrant! I mean, really, none of you deserve me, not you, Commissioner Gordon, not you, Bruce Wayne, not a single one of you. Fuck this!
He reaches up and punches the camera lens, which shatters.
It’s over. I’m done. (mutters) I gotta spend less time on Twitter.
The transmission abruptly ends.