Below is the lastest strip in a web based cartoon called Day By Day which a bunch of bloggers post and which drives me nuts. Today’s is one of the worst examples but is illustrative of a number of points:
- It derives its imagery in part from Doonesbury, the long running counter-culturish strip which started in the 60’s by Gary Trudeau, especially the quotes floating about the White House (not displayed in this strip but often a part of the daily dose.) It is indicative, however, that it is asserting itself as a response to Doonesbury with a rightist twist. For me if you are going to say something different, new and interesting, don’t coat tail – you are only reinforcing the fact that your idea is only a reaction.
- It requires dumbing down to read it. The one below, like much neo-con a la Frum, requires a very conscious supression of known fact. This is based on the assertion one supposes that whatever the left is also supresses fact. But you have chosen to mimic that which you hate if you accept this. That is just sad.
- In this particular installment, it requires you to reject specific awareness of the very well known facts of Watergate and Oliver Nort/Iran/Contra as conspiracies of the right, needing you to accept the concept that “the conspiracy” against Clinton is laughable. This requires the abdication of personal responsbility for determining relevance through inviting you down the path of collective unawareness to get the joke – rather than considering all of recent history. Again, the argument may be that the left does the same thing but that is the “we are no better than X so like us better than X” argument: aka nonsense.
- The characters are interchangible, reflect one point of view and are unconnected to any personal existence other than the expression of the point of view. Without storylines, it is a shallow cartoon regardless of the quality of its political content.
- It flows these points through a non-existant group: hip diverse young right-wing folk who are attractive, witty and all sexificated. Everyone know that all young political types of any point of view are not like this, although they perceive themselves to be through their self-association with power. My own experiment with policial humour here is teaching me the lameness of the medium because, as we all know, they who like political humour are, in fact, more like the characters in Dilbert. I would actually be happy if someone would mirror Day By Day with the comments interposed over the characters from Dilbert. That would be entertaining.
So to like Day By Day, in order for you to “get it,” you have to be unaware of historical fact, willing to supress known fact, jealous of the success of the strip being mirrored, somewhat unfunny to begin with, and needy in relation to self-image. Who wants to fit themselves into that definition? Like Canadian conservatives and Stephen Harper, I am sure they can do better.
