Icing It
There are a growing number of people who are sensitive to the fact that when a joke in the mainstream public domain (TV commercials, sitcoms, newspaper cartoons) features an idiot—the “butt” of the joke— it is almost always a white male, just like my cartoon above. I’ve occasionally gotten raging complaints about this from readers accusing me of being a “snowflake,” or “bending over for political correctness”.
I take legitimate complaints about my cartoons very seriously but this type doubtless comes mostly from parrots of Rush Limbaugh and the like, so I largely disregard them. They are correct that white males often take the brunt of the joke in public media but there is a perfectly good reason for this phenomenon and it predates Political Correctness as a social institution. It’s about punching up vs. punching down.
The vast majority of stand-up comedians and humor writers instinctively understand that it is fine to make fun of people with more power than most, but cruel to make fun of someone with less. That’s why it’s okay to make fun of politicians, celebrities, the rich, and not okay to make fun of disabled people, minorities, the poor, the disenfranchised, children, old ladies, etc. This concept comes not from politics but from common decency, and it is a concept not understood by a growing number of Republicans these days as they follow the lead of schoolyard bullies like the Cheeto Mussolini.
Making fun of people who have less social power than you do is childish and weak. As I and others have said many times, Trump is a poor person’s idea of a successful person, an ignorant person’s idea of a smart person, and a weak person’s idea of a strong person. The reason white males are the butt of public jokes is because there is no more powerful general class of person in the U.S. than white males. Especially white heterosexual males.
If you’re going to argue that many millions of white males are not powerful, you’re missing the point, which is not that all white males are guaranteed success, but that the overwhelming majority of successful people in the U.S. are white males.
If this hurts your iddy biddy feelings, Mr. White Man, leave a mean comment for me to mostly disregard and ask yourself who the true snowflake is in this situation.
Wondering whose feelings Wayno was hurting this week? Let’s find out now!…
I’ve long believed that overalls are misnamed. Unless you have no feet, arms, head, or upper chest and shoulders, they should be called “overparts”. If you’re with me on that, let’s start a movement against poorly named clothing. Let’s start with knocking the “s” off of pants; one leg alone is not a “pant”.
I’m afraid, too, doc. Personally, I’d rather listen to cats mating while they cut corrugated tin with a chainsaw. (For readers over a certain age, EDM is a type of music popular in nightclubs and other places where people want to sweat a lot.)
And now, for my readers under a certain age: There used to be stores that had scores of new books on shelves and tables for people to purchase with money and take home. That was before Jeff Bezos owned the entire world.
On a slightly different topic, do people who tweet a lot even read books? I know one addicted tweeter who doesn’t and quite possibly never has. #TrumpTheTwitterTwat
And behave yourself or they’ll tack on a few seasons of Downton Abbey.
One thing you have no access to in prison is cool T-shirts with motorcycle/pie themes, which happens to be my featured item of the week in our Bizarro Shop!! If you love the Bizarro Bunny and want to intimidate nerds, grab yourself a few of these! (Different colors and styles available, so poke around in there.)
Discarded caption: “You may think you’re a ventriloquist’s dummy but I’m not doing THAT.”
And when this guy has a garage sale, we all clamor to buy stuff for hobbies that we can later abandon.
Don’t forget to pop over to Wayno’s weekly blog for his comments about this batch, and his always-cool musical tidbits and videos. This week’s clip happens to be a fave of mine by one of the lesser-known Neville Brothers.
Okay, beloved Jazz Pickles, thanks so much for crawling along with us through our tunnel of comedy this week. If you enjoy what we do and that we do it without a pay wall or ads, please consider perusing some of the links below which help to keep hay in the stables here at Rancho Bizarro. We will appreciate it mucho!
Until next week, be happy, be smart, be nice, and resist ignorance and fascism.
BIZARRO SHOP (enamel pins, Hello Shitty, shirts and more!)
DIEGO PIRARO FINE ART…where you can buy my paintings or prints of them from me personally!
…Daily Bizarro IN YOUR EMAIL + archive access
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels