May 10, 2011

The Culture War Is Over; Culture Won

Bob Gorrell, 5/9/11:
This is an utterly awesome world, in which even right-wing cartoonists will quote the comedy of those dirty hippies from Monty Python -- and can expect to be widely understood.

8 comments:

  1. Dude, dirty hippies? Your view of conservatives is cartoonish. Explain that.

    Try to read a bit more broadly. Try to be a bit less shrill.

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  2. Whoa: "Please remember that the purpose of Editorial Explanations is to explain and to expand knowledge, rather than to engage in any partisan bickering."

    Really?

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  3. Anonymous #1: Are you claiming that Monty Python didn't tend to the left wing, with all that "come see the violence inherent in the system" and the entire plot of Life of Brian?

    Because I'd love to see what the sunrise looks like on your planet.

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  4. Anonymous #2: If claiming something is awesome counts as bickering in your book, you'll need to increase the dosage of your medication before venturing any further on the Internet.

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  5. My point was not about Monty Python's politics but about your cartoonish view of conservatives. It turns you into a caricature. It makes you look like someone who would use the cliche "Because I'd love to see what the sunrise looks like on your planet," and think, "Zing!"

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  6. Oh, please. Yesterday I was supporting you in your defense of sarcasm. Of course you meant "awesome" sarcastically and obviously the comment was partisan.

    I don't care about partisanship, really. I say carry on. I will. I just hadn't previously noticed that note.

    Oh, and your biting quip about increasing the dosage of my medications... ZING!

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  7. Oops, you weren't being sarcastic so much as you were being partisan. How did you say it yesterday about insufficient readers or whatever. Me. I should have reread the original post.

    Whatever, carry on. But, still, work on those zings.

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  8. Anonymous: First off, if you're going to comment this much, you really should pick some name, just so we can all know you're a single person.

    And I'm getting more and more confused with every comment -- there are plenty of posts here that pick on conservatives (probably more than pick on liberals, at the moment; I'm mildly concerned about that), but I don't consider this one of them. Again, I'm calling what a generally conservative cartoonist is doing "awesome."

    Right- and left-wingers tend to talk past each other: they have different referents, different expectations, and different cultural touchstones. To see a cartoonist as dependably conservative as Gorrell use (without any explanation or apology) a Monty Python reference -- and I will insist that their comedy is deeply left-wing, particularly in a contemporary American context -- is unexpected, and the fact that this is a really funny cartoon only makes it better.

    Editorial Explanations is not exclusively devoted to "look at this stupid cartoon" posts -- those do predominate, so it's easy to see how you could have gotten that impression -- and this particular post was not aimed in that direction. Editorial Explanations instead aims to showcase editorial cartoons that may be confusing, obscure, or unlikely, and to say things that are intended to be funny about them.

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Please remember that the purpose of Editorial Explanations is to explain and to expand knowledge, rather than to engage in any partisan bickering. All cartoonists are completely correct, in their own worlds.