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The State News shook up their cartoon lineup at the beginning of the semester. The highlight of the changes was adding Piled Higher and Deeper to the paper. They also replaced Mallard Fillmore with another conservative political comic, Prickly City. I'd never read Mallard Fillmore much before, so in my first few weeks of having a real school paper to read, I thought it was coming from more of a libertarian perspective than a hardcore conservative one. But I eventually got tired with Mallard's attitude being so far out to the right and stopped giving the strip more than a glance in my daily read. When Prickly City came along, I was cautiously hopeful, as it seemed to really be more libertarian than conservative. Then, this: I was really frustrated at this comic but have been thinking really hard about a way to express exactly why it's so infuriating that would actually make sense to a reasonable person who had somehow come to endorse the perspective portrayed by the comic. Why is it not funny? I think like all humor (usually political) that misses the mark on accuracy, it's hard to laugh at something that is just wrong. Like racist or sexist jokes, for instance - they're only funny if all parties involved are quite aware that racism and sexism are bad things and ought not to exist. A true racist telling a racist joke isn't funny; it's uncomfortable. Stephen Colbert lampooning neoconservatives is funny because there not only are people like that, they run the executive branch of our government. Would it be funny if, instead of the human influence on global warming, the cartoonist was poking fun at people who believed that the Earth is round? I don't think it would. But if he did do that, he'd probably get ridiculed. So, is the round-Earth theory an unquestionable paradigm too? Well... no... you can question it. You would just have to be very silly or ignorant to do so seriously. It reminds me also of the Holocaust deniers: "[what, I'm not allowed to question this?!]" No... that's not it. The issue isn't about what you believe, it's about the evidence you have to support your belief. | ||||||
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