"An animated political video featured in The New York Times’ opinion section has sparked outrage among a number of leaders and advocates in the LGBTQ community."

"The short cartoon depicts U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin as gay paramours — a trope used numerous times by comedians and satirists seeking to mock the relationship between the two leaders," NBC newsplains.

“Trump and Putin: A Love Story” is part of a three-video series titled “Trump Bites,” which was animated by Oscar-nominated animator Bill Plympton and produced by Billy Shebar and David Roberts. In The New York Times article accompanying the video, which was posted on the Times website in late June, the creators said the series is a “riff on Mr. Trump’s absurd utterances to illustrate the president’s tumultuous inner life of paranoia, narcissism and xenophobia.”

In this episode of Trump Bites, Donald Trump’s not-so-secret admiration for Vladimir Putin plays out in a teenager’s bedroom, where the fantasies of this forbidden romance come to life. https://t.co/h5gpVJzj69 pic.twitter.com/f4aBEOfRYt

— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) July 16, 2018

Bill Plympton has been around a long time. He's most famous (to me anyway) for "How to Kiss" (and his Trump + Putin video uses the same humor of making kissing grotesque and ridiculous):

"Riffing on Adolf Hitler’s early efforts to become a painter, plus a report that the Führer had loved Disney’s Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs..."

"... this dire mockumentary purports to tell the secret history of the Nazi regime, with World War II more or less an afterthought to Hitler’s passion project: a four-hour, animated Die Nibelungen starring a cartoon duck."

From "What the hell was Bill Plympton thinking with Hitler’s Folly?" at A.V. Club.

Don't you love hand drawn animation?

I do. Have you seen the new music video drawn by Bill Plympton? (You can see it, in low resolution and after a few minutes of interview in a link found here.) I've loved Plympton ever since I saw "How to Kiss" in an animation festival maybe about 15 years ago. (You can watch "How to Kiss" here.)

ADDED: I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but computer animation makes me ill. Years ago, I walked out on "Antz," and I've never gone back. I've seen parts of computer animation films on TV, and I can see that the technology has become fairly good, but there is something wrong with it, something crucial missing -- emotion, humanity... something.