CSotD: Faith-based Humor
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Tom the Dancing Bug (see the rest here) offers a simple transposition, proposing that science-deniers apply their (alleged) beliefs to other areas.
I'd say it could have been done in four panels rather than nine, and possibly even in one, but Bolling touches on several aspects of denial and sustains within that extended length.
Length is a major issue in satire: One of my nearest misses, back in about 1972, was called "Jonathan Livingston Beagle" and, as the editor said and I see in retrospect, it was simply too long.
By contrast, "Bored of the Rings" was a worthy takedown, the difference being that "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" itself was very short, simple and one-dimensional, while part of the task of satirizing "Lord of the Rings" lay in spoofing the book's multi-layered complexity and capturing the prose style in a way that ridiculed it but maintained its fascinating word flow.
This cartoon also represents a case of knocking the top hat off the rich guy: Climate-change deniers are as well-funded as the Tobacco Institute, which makes them a prime target for ridicule, as does the fact that they cannot possibly believe their own preposterous lies. These are genuine villains.
It would be cruel to go after silly deniers with the same venom.
"Silly deniers" would include those who see through climate-change denial but then are outraged about vaccinations, or who mock the anti-vax crowd but then flip out over the purported dangers of GMOs, or who are enraged that a company in California bottles water but see no issue in far more companies bottling far more California water, because those companies add corn syrup and artificial flavoring and then carbonate the stuff. (But they hate junk food.)
However, they aren't paid to spread nonsense and most of them don't have the background to spot the illogic in their positions, and anyone using humor to criticize them needs to be a little compassionate.
But the paid hacks?
Sic'em, Tom.
And speaking of villains
Much of the humor in Alex is insider stuff that not only requires understanding the financial industry but understanding the British variation thereof. However, today's topic is happening in a variety of industries, including, specifically, newspapers.
I've mentioned before that, at one paper where I worked, the publisher's secretary had the job of maintaining a display of employee photos in the breakroom, but was so efficient at her task that, as they began laying people off, the joke became that, on your way in each morning, you should stop by and see if your picture was still up before you bothered going to your desk.
But, good lord, at least those of us who still worked there had desks to go to.
We did have a general manager who was a Neat Desk Nazi, but, even under his watchful eye, there was a chance to personalize your workspace and feel a sense of belonging there. Which is to say that, while he couldn't abide the idea of three, rather than one, photo of your child, much less a Happy Meal plastic mascot of some sort by your computer, he acknowledged that you were a person and not simply an FTE.
Quaint concept.
This was the same paper where, as I've mentioned, a corporate VP assured us in an all-hands gathering that, in fact, we had been receiving cost-of-living raises all along when we were pretty damn sure that we hadn't had such a thing in several years.
Thinking of which makes me dig this Bottomliners out of Tuesday's bin and run it two days late.
That paper was part of a publicly-traded-but-closely-held chain that had gone on for decades, until a couple of the little lordlings who had inherited their preferred shares decided they needed more polo ponies or something, got together with Warren Buffett and began trying to get the golden eggs out of the goose faster.
It wasn't simply not giving us raises, though they did end our pensions and put us on 401ks to which they contributed for awhile and then decided not to anymore.
It also included putting the family business on the trading block and ending all investment in improvements or maintenance. Whatever equipment we had was what we had, because investing in keeping things running smoothly would simply change the Profit-and-Loss and make the chain less attractive to buyers.
The goose was supposed to die anyway. That's how you get all the eggs at once.
Then it's polo ponies for everyone!
Speaking of beliefs
I'm not sure I like Robert Airial's take so much as I like that he's not introducing facts-not-in-evidence.
The sands are running out, and Bernie has said he's not ending his campaign. And he's clearly regrouping.
And, though I'm a Bernie supporter, I like the look of misery, or, possibly, "because" I'm a Bernie supporter. It is a sad moment, when so much effort proves inadequate.
However, while the "Crazy Old Commie" stuff from rightwingers was predictable, there has been a distressing lack of "getting it" from more centrist and even progressive cartoonists, who are now stepping up to dance on his (unfilled) grave.
It didn't take a lot of investigation to find out that he never promised anything for "free," and I don't recall Gene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy being mocked for visualizing change.
Nor does it take intellectual rigor to realize that staying in the campaign is how you keep up the pressure to make the Democrats put reforms in their platform.
Come on: What part of
I will do everything that I can to make certain that Donald Trump is not elected president. But … the major responsibility will be on Secretary Clinton to convince all people, not just my supporters, that she is the kind of president this country needs to represent working people in this country, to take on the big money interests who have so much power, to fight for what the American people want.
do you not understand?
Thus was it always
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