Most political cartoons try
to be informative and entertaining, but fail at both. It's not that political
humor can't be funny; it's just that these cartoonists are bad at it. Here's
how:
-Labels: The reason of
using labels is that they're either useless or necessary. Either a joke makes
no sense without a label explaining what's going on, or the situation is so
obvious that using labels is treating the readers as if their brains were made
of dildos.
-Obviousness: When
was the last time a political cartoon actually tried to make an insightful
point? When was the last time they had anything original? Here's a great
example: When the news was reporting on the building of a massive wall along
the US-Mexico border, there were literally dozens of cartoons making the same
joke: "WHAT IF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS COULD BE HIRED AS CHEAP LABOR TO BUILD
THE WALL SO THAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS COULDN'T ENTER THE US? IRONY."
When they're not making
obvious jokes, they're making incredibly
simple observations that weren't funny to begin with and attempt to milk them
for all they're worth.
-No knowledge required:
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, when an issue requires
extensive knowledge on a subject in order to actually understand and make
assessments in regards to it, people who have no background in that particular
area need to do everyone a favor and need not to speak. Political cartoonists
however, can't grasp this concept, which probably why they're writing political
cartoons and not doing something that requires intelligence, like ditch
digging.
Yes, cartoonists care about
factual accuracy about as much as Hitler cared about giving his employees the
day off on Yom Kippur. The best example comes from anytime it snows, where a
comic shows a sign on a building saying something to the extent of "global
warming meeting canceled due to snow," because snow is proof that the
climate hasn't changed at all and therefore the comic is ironic, meaning the
comic is both funny and informative. With this accomplished, the cartoonist is
so happy that any chance of him/her realizing how stupid this sounds vanishes.
-Exaggerations:
There are no issues that are in black and white, the people involved in those
issues vary greatly in their beliefs, and there is no simple way to summarize
an issue in a few words. At this point,
you might think we're being unfair and (ironically) exaggerating the flaws of
political cartoonists. We assure you, we're not.
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