Washington Post's new RW comic strip

[WoodrowFan]

The Post recently redid its comics pages. One of the new strips is a piece of RW crap called "Prickly City." Last week it was praising Annthrax Coulter and slamming Senator Clinton. This week it called Dan Rather slimey and today it was a "Michael Moore is fat" joke. Its as unfunny as "Mallard Fillmore" and not even as well drawn! If you read the Post and want to complain about this crapfest you can email the Post's comics editor at

[e-mail]

[jeff30997]

1. They're being infiltrated by the pod-peoples !

[xpat]

8. Whaddaya mean infiltrated?

The WaPo _are_ pod people.

[deutsey]

20. UUUUGGGHHH!

[The Backlash Cometh]

34. Now THAT would make a great bumper sticker!

[deutsey]

41. Off to the side it could say:

The GOP Wants YOU!

[SideshowScott]

72. ROFL hahahah! That would make a great t-shirt

That ending of the remake of invasion of the bodysnatchers is a classic scene..Im starting to really understand what the film was talking about

[Hissyspit]

98. Hey, isn't that...

...the Family Research Council's new 'Homosexual Detection Expert' when he saw the Spongebob balloon at the Macy's Christmas parade?

[deutsey]

106. LOL

:hi:

[livinginphotographs]

2. Man, that's really not funny.

Like there aren't any fat republicans.

and

"So let me get this straight."

"Sinclair Broadcasting rushes to braodcast a derogatory story on John Kerry based on questionable sources and some outright lies, just weeks before the election..."

"Yet the report says there was no evidence of political bias."

"And they call my people slimy..."

Somebody deserved to be kicked out of art school, IMO.

[xpat]

15. RW humor is an oxymoron

Look at their mentality. All that conservatism amounts to is building walls against human development. If you hate creativity and progress, how can you be funny?

PS: For anyone who is feeling down because we may have lost a couple of rounds recently, just think about this. If conservatives won consistently, we'd still be using stone tools.

[Politicub]

27. I agree - RW humor doesn't really exist

No wonder the right is against No name calling week. They have nothing left if they can't call people childish names and hurl insults.

[jdj]

22. Michael Moore is right. They just aren't funny.

"my people"?

Well at least they admit it.

[rqstnnlitnmnt]

3. this is supposed to compete with doonesbury and boondocks?

damn good luck, this stuff is drivel (even if I wasn't a leftie...it's not even funny or clever at all.)

[rqstnnlitnmnt]

4. the little squiggle seems kind of.....gay

doing makeovers?

sitting on top of a clearly male cartoon dog?

OUTRAGE OUTRAGE PROTECT THE CHILDREN

[bryant69]

5. Much partisan political humor sucks

Or to put it another way, the more partisan a humorists the less likely he is to be all that funny.

Because eventually "fighting the good fight" (well bad fight, in this case) is more important that actually having funny jokes.

Both Doonesbury and Boondocks maintain a certain distance from their subject, focusing on individuals rather than just providing political arguments--which is why they work better--at least that is my theory.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[WoodrowFan]

24. Doonesbury and Boondocks

Good point on Doonesbury and Boondocks. Plus, they make fun of both sides. I love Boondocks series this Summer making fun of moderate liberals getting worked up over Nadar.

Huey: "Congratulations, you're the world's first moderate extremist."

[JHB]

67. Doonesbury & Boondocks (more)

They also have ensemble casts that allow a shift of focus, and they both take the time to occasionally poke fun at themselves.

Mallard Fillmore (and it looks like this one too) are one-note ponies: "ALL liberals are stupid, shallow, have NO common sense, and are basically wrong ALL the time"

[LittleClarkie]

96. Mallard even more because he sets up then knocks down straw men

Usually so simplistic and stubbornly obtuse. Almost childish really in the way the cartoonist can't see both sides, and goes off with half truths. Supremely unfunny. And yet I have a friend who likes it. Makes me wonder about that person.

Doonesbury is pretty good at going after both sides indeed. Clinton's waffle icon, Bush's asterisk, now with its own war helmet and cape to hide the microphone. I would have been quite angry if Kerry's had been a freakin' flipflop.

[realisticphish]

68. aaron mcgruder is god

i have his boondocks treasury, and i read it constantly


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[Inland]

6. Conservative "humor" merely hatred, spleen

but they think if they can say, "hey, just trying to be funny" nobody can criticize it.

Rush has been doing it for years.

The laughter that it gets is basically a sneer and the enjoyment a hater gets in seeing the object of his hatred receiving an insult.

[ElectroPrincess]

7. There's justice in the world after all ...

In that, RW cartoon hacks are not NEAR as gifted as our liberal cartoon editorial artists.

[mattclearing]

9. Prick City

Stop reading the Washington Post.

It is not the newspaper of Woodward and Bernstein.

It hasn't been since sometime during Clinton's term, possibly before that.

It is only considered readable because it is not the Moonie Times.

The Times cannot legitimize the Post's transgressions in my eyes.

Take it from this DC resident, The Post is propaganda, plain and simple.

They editorialized in favor of the the Great Social Security Jacking.

They legitimized Bush's tax cut math against Al Gore in 2000.

They are not liberal. They are not moderate.

Thank you.

edited for bolding

[President Jesus]

10. this is good for our side

I mean it...let them publish this drivel. Let's even encourage it.

It just makes right-wingers look all the more retarded. I mean, that strip is tired, pathetic, and most damning (to Americans): not funny.

[paineinthearse]

11. WP ombudsman

In addition to the comics editor, let the WP ombudsman know as well - [e-mail] [phone]

[WoodrowFan]

16. good idea, thanks (NT)

[ooglymoogly]

12. omg they are so mind numbingly dull

about as funny as a funeral wreck...is this the best the rw can dig up...talk about the dumbing down of murka... jeeesh. micheal must be chortling in his fist at the post's unbelievable idiocy

[IceOwl]

93. Seriously...

Out of all of the things they could have taken Michael Moore to task over, the best they can come up with his "he's fat, huh huh huh"

What a bunch of cynical morons.

[demnan]

13. It's lousy

it won't last. Don't take it seriously. After all, most cartoonists (the good ones anyway) are Democrats.

[Skinner]

14. Ugh.

What the hell? I think it might be time to cancel my Post subscription once and for all.

[mattclearing]

18. The Post never gets my money.

I read their stuff online only. And extremely skeptically.

Delivered newspapers are arguably pollution anyways. Salon is my only real subscription.

[Burma Jones]

17. It's like Calvin and Hobbes if they were done

By a Moran that can't draw or think of anything to say beyond trashing others. It's that whole "we're so persecuted by you clever, better looking but morally inferior lib-ruls" BS thing again. This guy and his fellow travelers have nothing to offer but sliming other people. Now, if he thinks that puts him on a par with Doonesbury and/or Boondocks, he's going to have to be funny first, you know, by doing strips that have nothing to do with politics. This is done in a style that is classic (read fascist) propaganda that you could read on many Neo Nazi sites. I suppose it sells though................

[mopinko]

19. in the chicago trib also

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[WildClarySage]

21. Take a swine, groom him, put him in a new suit

and he's still Rush Limbaugh.

Glass houses, WP, it's those damned glass houses...

[FizzFuzz]

46. the perfect response! n/t

[Stuckinthebush]

23. Written by the unfunny editorial comic writer of the Birmingham News

He is so right wing and unfunny, that it is amazing he keeps his job.

[w4rma]

25. So this is who they replaced Ted Rall with. (nt)

[WoodrowFan]

28. no

Ted Rall was never in the print edition, just online. This is the Post's print edition.

[w4rma]

30. It's also the Post's online edition. So, yes it is. (nt)

[WoodrowFan]

31. true, that's where I got the links to post them above.

but it didn't replace Rall in either, the online edition has a ton of cartoons.

[w4rma]

42. Rall is out and this guy is in.

Forget the timespan, etc. Noone else has been added and noone else has been removed, recently.

[WoodrowFan]

44. no

they dropped "One Big Happy", "Shoe" and one of the soap opera strips. they added "Prickly City", "Frazz" (which I like) and "Candorville". A 3 for 3 switch on their pages. I really don't think Rall had anything to do with it.

[w4rma]

47. I agree. You are correct. (nt)

[kiki]

26. On right-wing "humour":

The following is from the book "Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization" (Pluto Press, 2004). It is in reference to "pranks" or practical jokes, but I think it applies to humour generally...


'Are there criteria for good and for bad pranks? V. Vale and Andrea Juno argue that

the best pranks invoke the imagination, poetic imagery, the unexpected and a deep level of irony or social criticism <…> Great pranks create synaesthetic experiences which are unmistakably exciting, original and reverberating, as well as creative, metaphoric, poetic and artistic. If these criteria be deemed sufficient, then pranks can be considered as constituting an art form and genre in themselves. (1987:4)

Bad pranks, on the other hand,

are characterized not only by unoriginality but by conventionalized cruelty, these pointless humiliations do nothing to raise consciousness or alter existing power relationships. They are deeds which only further the status-quo; they only perpetuate the acceptance of and submission to arbitrary authority, or abet existing hierarchical inequities. ... (1987:4–5)'


(Emphasis added)

I think this cartoon is a case in point. Michael Moore fat? Ooh, you dangerous, iconoclastic rebel you. To be honest I quite like the scratchy drawing style, but I'd say it owes much to pioneering left-wing cartoonists/illustrators like Jules Feiffer and Tomi Ungerer. Other than that it's pretty childish and pathetic - a great big steaming load of not funny.

Edit: On further examination of the drawings, the execution is actually pretty slapdash and lousy. In the last panel, without the caption, you'd have to write "Michael Moore" on the guy's shirt to know it was him... looks more like a stereotypical Wall Street fat cat to me.

[MisterP]

89. what's that that's supposed to be a nose? a potato chip laid in his face?

it's like it made with eraser shavings

[Bridget Burke]

29. Now competing with Mallard Fillmore....

For the title of "most unfunny"....

[YusefHawkins]

35. Looks more like Rush Limpbug

All it needs is the drugs and it would be a Rush.

[Harry S Truman]

32. Wait...

is this dreck on the comics page of the Washington Pest, because Doonesbury sure isn't - it's in the Style section.

Third-quarter scoring update:
Internet as News Source 35, TV and newspapers 21. Internet has the ball.

[kiki]

33. Tomi Ungerer, genius

http://www.postersplease.com/images/image.php?id=816
http://www.postersplease.com/images/image.php?id=817
http://www.postersplease.com/images/image.php?id=830


These were obviously drawn during the Vietnam war, but I guess that shows that some things don't change. "Kiss for Peace" is particularly prophetic - change the ethnicity of the centre figure and you have a scene from Abu Ghraib.

[Plaid Adder]

36. So how much does the Bush administration pay THIS guy?

Wow this strip is bad. As the original post says, it is precisely as unfunny as Millard Fillmore, and for the same reasons:

1) There's no character development (look, it's Millard Fillmore, he's a duck who spouts right-wing bullshit, it's genius I tell you).

2) The relationships between the characters are unclear/arbitrary; the only interaction betwen characters involves one character ranting about a specific political issue to another character.

3) There's no context to give us a sense of an actual setting (two characters talk at each other in an empty box).

4) There's no plot (again, all that happens is one character rants at another one).

By contrast, if you look at comic strips that are arguably just as partisan as Millard Fillmore or this piece of dreck but on the other side, such as Doonesbury, Boondocks, and Bloom County back in the days before Berkeley Breathed lost his mind, they all have a number of features that their right-wing brethren either can't or don't care about providing:

1) Real characterization with backstories, individuated personalities, and recognizable, long-standing, developing relationships between characters.

2) A detailed physical setting that provides the home base for most of the action (though Doonesbury's moves around a lot).

3) Story lines (often carried through several weeks' worth of strips).

4) A highly developed sense of irony.

Millard Fillmore clearly could care less about 1 through 3, and it appears Prickly City is taking the same route. #4 is what the two Prickly City strips above are straining for, yet miserably failing to achieve. And this is largely because the rank-and-file right wing is distinguished for, among other things, its absolute inability to grasp or groove on irony. To appreciate irony, you have to be able to realize that things are often not what they seem, and one of the reasons things are often not what they seem is that the powers that be are trying to pass off abuses of power as good government. If you are so close to the party in power that you are not ready to believe that they might ever lie or be dishonest, then you've missed your invitation the 24/7/365 irony party that has been underway since January 2001.

Irony, for instance, is what saves *Boondocks,* which is a little lighter on categories 1-3 than Doonesbury or Bloom County. What sells *Boondocks* is Huey's finely honed sense of irony, which is accompanied by a simmering rage at the idiotic injustices he's forced to live with and witness. Probably the best illustration of that is the look he gives to the 'camera' in the final panel of one of Boondocks' many "Huey watches the news" strips. You know, the look that says, "Can you believe this bullshit?" The furry creature in strip #1 above is trying to have the same talking-to-the-audience moment in the final panel, but it doesn't work the same way, because Huey's exhausted yet outraged reaction to the travesty on the TV is grounded in his characterization--and shared by his exhausted yet outraged audience--while furry critter is merely delivering this week's punch line.

The directors' commentary on the DVD of *Monty Python and the Holy Grail* has Terry Gilliam, the only American Python, talking about what he loves about British humor, and what he says is that it has this wonderful sense of irony that he attributes to the fact that England used to be a world power and has now been sadly reduced in circumstances. England still acts like Britannia rules the waves, but it so doesn't, and Monty Python 'got' the gap between England's image of itself and the reality and made wonderful comedy out of it. *Blackadder,* another one of my favorite British comedy shows, depends for its humor on recognizing and exploiting a basic but hard-to-face truth about how power works, which is that it does not follow the smart. For the last 3 seasons, anyhow, the central situation that BLackadder is built around in every historical period is that poor Edmund Blackadder, cunning and ruthless though he is, will never get ahead because even though the authority figures in his world are all completely insane, they still have the power to thwart any plan his brain can concoct. Hope they are broadcasting that show on some station over here, because we're all in a much better position to appreciate that now.

For this reason, political humor is at its best when it's oppositional. Political humor that aligns itself with the powerful isn't funny. It can, I suppose, be tremendously satisfying, if all you want out of a comic strip is to see your own biases confirmed.

Well, I seem to have wandered a bit,

The Plaid Adder

[WoodrowFan]

40. worth sending to the Post

Please send this to the post, it's very well thought out and written (as usual)

[realisticphish]

71. blackadder

i havent seen it broadcast in a long time, but i have all 4 seasons on dvd, and it wasnt too expensive

btw, the rest of the post kicked ass, too :)


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[JHB]

73. Spot On!

Doonsbury & Boondocks also have enough sense (of irony, I suppose) to poke fun at themselves from time to time, too, such as the "Mike & Zonker report to the Readers" in Doonsbury, or Huey occasionaly being hoist by his own strident petard, like so:

[Taxloss]

74. LTTE. LTTE.

I am considering burning my DVD of "All the President's Men".

[fob]

84. PA, I believe you've said all that needs to be said about that crap.

As for "the furry creature", it looks like a not-so-disguised ripoff of the Geico Insurance Gecko to me. So the irony of picking a cold-blooded creature as their right-wing spokestoon is probably lost on the dumbass "cartoonist".

[Eyeball Kid]

103. Holy crap.

We're all Edmund Blackadder now.

[Akoto]

37. I could rewrite this ...

I'm a fantasy/science fiction writer, but I'd love to try my hand at a comic strip! The first one is just low-blow drivel, so I'll provide a better script for the second ...

---

"So let me get this straight ..."

"CBS News broadcasts a faulty story on George W. Bush and later admits its mistake. Another story is broadcast just recently, featuring the President admitting that WMD - our main justification for going to war - will not be found ..."

"Yet we're still focusing on Dan Rather?"

"Man, and we call their people slimy ..."

[Ms Chicklet]

38. As unfunny as Mallard Fillmore

Here's what you really get when you put a swine in a suit:

[stanwyck]

52. Is that possible?

we just got this Prick cartoonist added to the AJC. No wit at all. This guy is hardly Aaron McGruder.

[hilster]

39. sick.

that's it. I'm making my own political cartoons.

[LynneSin]

43. First Admendment rights.....let em have their strip: We have Boon & Doon!

We still have Doonesbury & Boondocks, two very well established progressive cartoon strips. Heck Doon & Boon both have real people in real-life situations whereas the best these 2 right-wing strips have are animals talking to each other.

And as an avid reader of the comic strips, even non-political strips are lean more progressive than conservative. For Better or For Worse featured an outing of a gay friend to one of the main characters and has expressed anti-war sentiment through the grandfather, a WW2 vet who served with the Canadian Army. Even Jump Shot, Fox Trot & Funky Winkerbean have taken shots against conservative causes (Funky actually was critical against those who are critical of evolution)

This is small potatoes - to get outrageous about it will only provide free advertising for something that is barely amusing and poorly done

[depakid]

45. The Post is a laughingstock

it's gotten so bad that you might as well read the Moonie Times.

Seriously.

[brooklynite]

48. Take a look at "State of the Union"

which appeared recently in the NY Daily news:

http://www.creators.com/comics_show.cfm?comicname=sou

Very much in the same vein. It seems as though the RW "comics" are unable to offer sophisticated and witty humor at the expense of their liberal targets (something Jay Leno and others have certainly shown an ability to do), but can only provide the usual heavy-handed insults that the right-wing true believers seem to constantly need to reinforce their beliefs.

[Brooklyn Michael]

51. Glad another Brooklynite noticed!

[Skinner]

56. Oh man. That is crap.

Check these out...

[Plaid Adder]

58. Jeez. Like, you could dig for days and not find a single particle of humor

in either of those strips. The didacticism I get, but where is the funny?

Yikes,

The Plaid Adder

[WoodrowFan]

80. beep beep beep

Yep, the humor detector reads 10.7 humor particles per BILLION. that ranks these strips on the humerous scale right below the label of a can of peas...

[ComerPerro]

49. "weeks before the election"???/

As in, Ten weeks before the election. Jeeze.

I don't get right wing humor.

[Brooklyn Michael]

50. NY Daily News - State of the Union by Carl Moore

You think THAT's bad? That's actually clever compared to the !@#$%^&*! the NY Daily News has been running the last couple of months. State of the Union by Carl Moore is even more crudely drawn, less funny, and (if possible) more hypocritical. Most of the time it doesn't even make sense. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/strips/sou/sou.asp

I've said before that, with very few exceptions, the reason you don't see a lot of conservative comedians and comic strips is that CONSERVATIVES SIMPLY AREN'T FUNNY.....They might crack each other up, but what the NY Daily News and the Wash. Post don't seem to understand is that the HUGE majority of their constituents are NOT conservative.

[Hamsta1]

53. Can you say "racist"

I had never seen or heard of "State of the Union" before and I wish I never had. (Just like that "slimy" lizard-roach-thing, what the hell WAS that?) but come the f*** on! Kofi Annan asking Bush to restart Oil-For-Food... And why? Because he needs RIMS for his BENTLEY?? And to give his wife BLING-BLING? What the hell... I'm white and I'm offended. Why didn't he just say he needed to stock up on his collard greens and fried chicken? Or start a record label or something. Oh yeah, it wasn't funny either. And the link on Jewishworldreview.com kinda startled me too. Haven't the Jewish people learned something about prejudice and intolerance?

These ignorant race-baiting, kofi-clowning, vote-purging, gay-bashing, "freedom"-loving, flag-waving, gun-toting, shill-paying, goat-loving, retard-executing, arab-killing, tax-rebating, tort-reforming, spongebob-trashing, bible-whacking, reefer-banning, democracy-spreading, prison-building, no-contract-bidding, torture-excusing, liberal-demonizing, child-leaving-behind, truth-altering, Rice-confirming MORANS are really trying my patience today.

[MrScorpio]

62. Kofi has more class in his baby finger

Than this so-called cartoonist has in his whole fucking body.

What a crock of shit.

[Logansquare]

65. My lord, that is truly awful

His charactictures of muslims look like the anti-Semitic cartoons from Nazi Germany.

[iverglas]

94. that one took me a minute ...

The line at the Jewish World Review site said:

Are you accessing our literally hundreds
of right-thinking columnists/cartoonists?

Read it as "Are you accessing our literally hundreds of right-WING columnists/cartoonists?" ... and marvelled at their refreshing and completely unexpected honesty.

[Blue_Tires]

54. i swear i don't even recognize this WaPo anymore

this makes Mallard Fillmore look like Doonesbury

[AlCzervik]

55. We got that about 6 months ago in the sacramento Bee, it's stupid

[SmokingJacket]

57. Why is rightwing humor so **bad**?

I mean, apart from my obvious bias. Even my freeper parents recognize that Doonesbury is funnier than Mallard Fillmore, and that Jon Stewart is funnier than... than... well, there's no equivalent.

[Plaid Adder]

61. I got a few theories:

1. Most of today's right-wing 'humor' is extremely mean-spirited, and by that I mean it attacks the vulnerable instead of the powerful. Kicking someone who's already down, viciously, is not something that (to most people) is a laugh riot when you see it. That's because most people realize that mocking the vulnerable is often a prelude to abusing them in one way or another, and most people don't think abuse is funny. Most of us don't, anyhow.

2. There are two kinds of humor: the humor of the expected, and the humor of the unexpected. Most allegedly funny TV shows rely on some combination of both (the characters have familiar verbal tics, mannerisms, personality flaws, etc., the plots adhere to the same formula, but there are twists and surprises within the individual episode).

The humor of the expected is what people tend to drop back to as the default, because it's less work. A lot of stand-up comics rely on the humor of the expected as a way of easing people into the act because the laugh of recognition is the easiest laugh to get. ("Don't you hate it when...", "What's up with...", etc. etc. etc.) It is also easier to get the audience on your side by telling them things that reaffirm their own view of the world, instead of surprising them by asking them to look at something differently.

The humor of the unexpected is riskier, but the rewards are greater. *Monty Python,* for instance, is funny largely because they come up with shit that you woudl never have thought of in a million years. Much of it defies even the laws of logic, never mind ideology. First MP episode they ever aired started off with a skit about sheep who had gotten the mistaken idea that they were birds, and were tryign to learn how to fly. Who came up with that? Where the hell does an idea like that come from? Sometimes, the idea is so bizarre or absurd that it just doesn't work. But when it does work, it's frickin' hilarious. *The SImpsons* was also great at doing the unexpected. Ditto for the *South Park* movie, which I found unexpectedly hilarious despite the unbelievably high bathroom humor quotient.

RW humor, for the most part, doesn't take risks. Their audience doesn't like that. They rely on the humor of the expected, which means the predictable. For us, being able to see the punch line coming a mile a way makes a joke not funny. For them, it makes a joke cozily reassuring, which earns it a laugh.

3. A lot of humor is didactic, but there's ways and ways to do it. Doonesbury and Bloom County's didacticism is usually worked out through story lines involving well-realized characters. The examples cited above just tell you waht the moral is and leave it at that. Which is funnier? You tell me.

4. Irony. See my earlier post abotu why the RW doesn't get irony, and why that makes it very hard for them to be funny.

Ah well,

The Plaid Adder

[SmokingJacket]

63. Great analyses, PA.

Sounds like you've put some thought into this subject before... if not, amazing seat-of-the-pants work!

The issues of irony and character development really intrigue me. I'll have to work them into my Grand Unified Theory of the Right Wing...

[Colorado Blue]

64. Amen & well written.

[elshiva]

97. Great, Pladder esp.# 1

Rush Limbaugh is a case in point. He makes fun of the vulnerable and the powerless, gays and women (feminazis). He called Chelsea Clinton, "a dog."
But in comics like Doonesbury, Boondocks, and obviously Dykes To Watch Out For, the powerless gays and people of color have a voice. Doonesbury's Mark, Boondocks' Huey, and Dykes TO Watch Out For's Mo are brilliant observers and comedians becuase these characters must use humor to survive a homophobic, sexist, and racist world. That's why liberal humor is so funny and intelligent.

[WoodrowFan]

105. RW and Imagination

I saw this comment today from a weekly cartoonist I like who does "The Pain, When Will it End." He says one difference ebtween liberals and the RW is imagination. Sure, many RWers are imagining that Saddamm had WMD, but I'd argue that's a delusion, not truely imagination.

At any rate, the section I especially liked (not to mods, this is 1/2 of his paragraph, the artist being quote dlikes LONG paragrpahs).

I’ve thought before that the most fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives is not over issues of individual freedom vs. authority or progress vs. traditional values, but imagination. Conservatives don’t have any. The status quo seems only inevitable and right to them, the natural order of things, and anyone who protests it is an impractical dreamer who should get a job or a malcontent who needs to be medicated. They're incapable of seeing their own historical moment as in any way anomalous or provisional; as Montag's colleagues assure him in Farenheit 451, "Believe me, houses have always been fireproof. Firemen have always burned books." They believe that they deserve their own lives; they can't imagine having been born as someone else. (Empathy, and by extension compassion, is a function of imagination.) They can't imagine what it would be like to be poor, or black, or gay, because, well, they're not, and they suspect that these unfortunate conditions are those people's own faults, a consequence of some moral failing or dereliction. (I always secretly felt this way about old people until I noticed I was aging as well.) Likewise people living in other cultures with different beliefs and customs; they're simply ignorant, deprived of the advantages of Jesus and Wal-Mart.


Check his cartoon out as well..

http://www.thepaincomics.com/

[Stirk]

91. There's Dennis Miller.

And there's obviously no competition between those two. To put it in Miller's own templatized comedy formula...

Jon Stuart makes Dennis Miller look like... eh... some obscure historical figure who was notoriously unfunny.

I just need some practice.

[GiovanniC]

59. Wow, a Prize Winning Comic

In the "Unintentionally Funny" category.

[Kikosexy2]

60. Lucky...

for we have our "Boondocks", "La Cucaracha", and "Doonesbury" and "Opus"--now these are funnies.

[skypilot]

66. "And they call my people slimy"

Yes, yes they do. And you are.

[otohara]

69. LOL

thanks for the chuckle

[Hissyspit]

101. I nominate this for Post of the Day

Simple, but concise, and, unlike the comic strip, funny.

[skypilot]

107. Thank you. I'll take it.

:)

[Logansquare]

70. Contrast the top one with Doonesbury's swipe at Coulter

Trudeau actually clearly actually read "Treason" or as much as he could stomach before using Coulter's own words to condemn her. That's why its such a smart and hilarious cartoon.
Prickly City had to go with an ad hominem attack because that's all they have to work with. You can call this cartoonist and his audience "Dumb and Dumber."

[solinvictus]

75. Scott Stantis...

He's the op/ed cartoonist here for the Birmingham News and he has another strip, The Buckets. Stantis is a Republican shill who used to be semi-objective, but seems to have crossed over completely. I've never cared for him.

[WoodrowFan]

78. he does the Buckets?

Gad, a non-political strip but also unfunny and BADLY drawn. I should have recognized the "style."

[dragonlady]

76. Just noticed this in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

It is carried on the op ed page next to Doonesbury (great contrast, by the way). It seems that political strips like this can't be on the regular "funny pages."

[Obviousman]

77. I have this strip in my paper

I'm all for giving the opposite side a voice on the funnies page, especially there are 3 liberal comics in my paper.BUT the reason I'm against this one is because it is simply not funny. I mean, to be still going on about Dan Rather, can't he find ANY new material?

[imax2268]

79. They are probably getting paid by KKKarl...

to promote the Bush misadministrations hate on liberals...

[6000eliot]

81. Looks forced and obvious to me

I don't think it will go anywhere.

[Tsiyu]

82. AKKKKK! NO HUMOUR ALERT!!!!!!

I've seen better comics in high school newspapers. I've seen better comics in MIDDLE school newspapers!

So # 1: How much is Rove paying this no talent "artist" and

#2 Who in the HELL ever told this poor soul they were FUNNY?

Again: AAAKKKKKK!!!!!!!

[booley]

83. Don't censor it. I got a better idea

First of all, why put enrgy into censoring something that commits the most unpardonable sin of all? Not being funny, that is.

Instead, lets call the ombudsman and editors and have this cartoon put side by side with Tom Tommorow.

[Robbien]

85. It is sad how low the WaPo has to sink to support Bush. Email sent. eom

[Rex]

86. Gummit owns the media - and?

Who needs Colon Blow Jr?

[yankeedem]

87. Affirmative action for freep "cartoonists"

Freepers bitch about McGruder and Trudeau so the paper cowtows and grabs the first right wing cartoon they can get.

Another RW tactic is to attach a well respected feature to a right wing one- for example IIRC Fox was using Fox Sports and FX to force Fox News on cable systems a few years ago.

[Rapcw]

88. If there was a joke there I didnt get it.

[iverglas]

90. I'm seeing a resemblance that cannot have been unintended

... and I think somebody should sue.

Using Pogo for purposes Walt Kelly never would have approved,
and in particularly witless ways, should not go unpunished.

[iverglas]

95. c'mon guys ^^^ -- it's Pogo doing right-wing shtick! n/t

[MonkeyFunk]

92. BWAAAHAHAHA! Michael Moore is fat! Why didn't *I* think of that?

What a great cartoon. Who'da thunk it? Calling someone fat?!? Brilliant political commentary.

/sarcasm off

[Skittles]

100. I agree - pretty pathetic stuff

not even witty or funny

[VOX]

99. "Drawn by a middle-aged, Southern, conservative white guy.."

From Spokane's Spokesman-Review Web site:
http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache:JgmL-YJKyh0J:www.s-r.com/blogs/+prickly+city&hl=en
The least-funny comic strip in history hit a new low today, accusing Ted Kennedy of bestiality. By any objective (or subjective) standard, "Prickly City" is an artistic failure. How is a strip about a U.S. senator's supposed sexual encounter with a monkey in any way appropriate for a family comics page?

I know from reading The Spokesman-Review's nifty "ask the editors" column/blog that S-R Editor Steve Smith has been keeping the strip on a short leash. In a Dec. 20 posting, he wrote, "'Prickly City' may not be long for The Spokesman-Review. It hasn't developed as I had hoped."

Steve went on to write that he's amazed by the amount of vitriol generated by comic strips. I agree with him on that point--"Prickly City" is just a few daily panels of obvious cheap shots, after all. I also believe in media outlets presenting a multiplicity of thoughtful, intelligent political viewpoints. In fact, I usually enjoy reading sparky stuff that challenges my beliefs more than pieces that play to my views.

Unfortunately, "Prickly City" fails the "thoughtful and intelligent" test. My biggest problem with the strip, though, is that I think it's (to put it charitably) unintentionally racist. It's drawn by a middle-aged, Southern, conservative white guy who for some reason decided to use a giant-lipped caricature of a girl of color as a ventriloquist dummy for his smug, right-wing white-guy musings.

I'm not arguing that creators of fiction should avoid employing characters of different races, backgrounds, etc. That's a ridiculous notion. But this is not a case of a writer creating a fully realized character and having the intellectual honesty to try to speak in what he believes to be that character's authentic voice. No, this is a case of a political bully appropriating the image of a young girl of color and making her spout his beliefs in what strikes me as an offensive minstrel show.

My guess is Scott Stantis was irritated by the success of the decidedly left-wing "Boondocks" strip and thought it would be a hoot to do a right-wing send-up. Bad idea. Worse execution. I wish he could see the strip for the embarrassment it is.

Speaking of executions, I believe today's lame bestiality-themed strip illustrates quite clearly that it's time to put "Prickly City" out of its--and our--misery.

[kiki]

102. Eurgh.

http://www.ucomics.com/pricklycity/bio.phtml

Look at him.

Look at Scott Stantis.

Look at his face.

[Hissyspit]

110. ...the face of mediocrity

[Ganja Ninja]

104. I wonder if this cartoonist is getting paid with our tax dollars?

Who in their right would pay money for such unfunny work?

[JHB]

108. No, but he's trying hard:

[Ganja Ninja]

109. Ask a silly question. n/t