Proving, as ever, that there’s no prophet as eerily accurate as an animated satirist trying to make up possible headlines for a far-flung future, it looks like Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks successfully predicted the recent movement to see Oprah Winfrey toss her hat into the political ring almost 12 years before it happened.
Per Mashable, the moment in question comes from “Return Of The King,” one of the best episodes from the Adult Swim adaptation of McGruder’s long-running newspaper comic. The episode sees Martin Luther King, Jr.—who was only put into a coma in this universe, not killed—awaken and give an angrily inspirational speech to America’s black population, inspiring a new cultural renaissance. One of the knock-on effects: a newspaper headline declaring an Oprah victory in 2020. (This, despite the fact that the episode aired back in 2006.)
People have been semi-joking about Winfrey’s political future ever since Sunday night’s Golden Globes, when she gave a rousing speech to the assembled crowds. Unlike The Simpsons, though, which predicted the Trump presidency as a dark joke about America’s gradually sliding electoral standards, The Boondocks presents President Oprah as an aspirational idea (regardless of how you might personally feel about America’s sudden TV-star-to-White-House-resident trend).