Unfortunately, this truth gives whiny right-wingers the excuse to complain that only left-wing comedians ever get air-time and that right-wing comedians are clearly discriminated against.
samihawkinssays
E. K. Hornbeck: Mr. Brady, it is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Henry Drummond: Yes. The individual human mind. In a child’s power to master the multiplication table, there is more sanctity than in all your shouted “amens” and “holy holies” and “hosannas.” An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man’s knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters.
+++
Matthew Harrison Brady: We must not abandon faith! Faith is the most important thing!
Henry Drummond: Then why did God plague us with the capacity to think? Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one faculty of man that raises him above the other creatures of the earth? The power of his brain to reason. What other merit have we? The elephant is larger; the horse is swifter and stronger; the butterfly is far more beautiful; the mosquito is more prolific. Even the simple sponge is more durable. But does a sponge think?
Matthew Harrison Brady: I don’t know. I’m a man, not a sponge!
Henry Drummond: But do you think a sponge thinks?
Matthew Harrison Brady: If the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks!
Henry Drummond: Do you think a man should have the same privilege as a sponge?
Matthew Harrison Brady: Of course!
Henry Drummond: [Gesturing towards the defendant, Bertram Cates] Then this man wishes to have the same privilege of a sponge, he wishes to think!
+++
[a crowd burns the teacher in effigy]
E. K. Hornbeck: Well, those are the boobs that make our laws. That’s the democratic process.
+++
E. K. Hornbeck: Disillusionment is what little heroes are made of.
+++
Henry Drummond: Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!
+++
E. K. Hornbeck: Looks like you’re going out in a blaze of glory counselor. You were pretty impressive for a while there today, Henry. “Your Honor, after a while you’ll be setting man against man, creed against creed” etc, etc, ad nauseam unquote. AHH, Henry! why don’t you wake up? Darwin was Wrong! Man’s still an ape. His creed still a totem pole. When he first achieved the upright position he took a look at the stars… thought they were something to eat. When he couldn’t reach them, he thought they were groceries belonging to a bigger creature… that’s how Jehovah was born.
Henry Drummond: I wish I had your worm’s-eye view of history. It would certainly make things a lot easier.
E. K. Hornbeck: Oh ho, no! Not for you. No, you’d still be spending your time trying to make sense out of what is laughingly referred to as the “human race.” Why don’t you take your blinders off? Don’t you know the future’s already obsolete? You think man still has a noble destiny. Well I tell you he’s already started on his backward march to the salt and stupecy from which he came.
Henry Drummond: What about men like Bert Cates?
E. K. Hornbeck: Cates? A monkey who tried to fly. Cates climbed to the top of the totem pole, but then he jumped. And there was nobody there to catch him. Not even you.
+++
Henry Drummond: You poor slob! You’re all alone. When you go to your grave, there won’t be anybody to pull the grass up over your head. Nobody to mourn you. Nobody to give a damn. You’re all alone.
E. K. Hornbeck: You’re wrong, Henry. You’ll be there. You’re the type. Who else would defend my right to be lonely?
blfsays
A lot of Doonesbury is “keepers”.
twas brillig (stevem)says
Oh… yeah… I too am so biased: conservapod=’no sense of humor’. They spout humorous quips while thinking it is a serious statement, without ever smirking or bursting out laughing. “Grumpy old man”=conservapo; to my liberal biased thinking. Humor is the fundamalogical difference between libs and conservs. Libs got all the humor sense and conservs got nuthin (no wonder, they’re grumpy).
Alverantsays
I was at a convention yesterday and attended a panel called “Writing Diversely”. One of the suggestions given was “Aim up don’t punch down” which pretty much summarizes this comic strip.
marcmagussays
Ranmore @1
Unfortunately, this truth gives whiny right-wingers the excuse to complain that only left-wing comedians ever get air-time and that right-wing comedians are clearly discriminated against.
Just tell them it’s a coincidence: you only hire good comedians and it just happens that none of them happen to be blackwomen conservative. They’re used to accepting that argument.
@ranmore #1: Yes, but “X being unpopular gives conservatives an excuse to complain about a conspiracy to treat conservatives as they want to treat others” is a generally applicable statement.
While the target of conservative “humor” is one reason why it’s not funny, it’s not the only reason. They really can’t seem to make a good joke. Their idea of funny is to restate what they believe with extra sneering and sarcasm.
My hypothesis, which is mine, is that it’s due to conservatives having lower integrative complexity than liberals on average.
I think the lack of conservative comedy is due to many conservatives’ inability to break taboos. And if some do manage to do so, they often do so didactically.
microraptorsays
I was at a convention yesterday and attended a panel called “Writing Diversely”. One of the suggestions given was “Aim up don’t punch down” which pretty much summarizes this comic strip.
One of the big things about conservatives telling jokes is that they’re too privilege-blind to tell that they’re punching down.
The part of the brain that can detect irony, parody, sarcasm, is burned out in conservatives by constant hypocrisy and exposure to hypocrisy.
robrosays
While conservatives might be unable to tell a joke, they can sure be surreal. As Sparky the Penguin (of Tom Tomorrow fame) once said, the real comedians and comic strip artists will never run out of material.
This is making the rounds, so pardon me for repeating what I’ve said elsewhere. This is only half right: to conservatives, mean = funny. Punching down = funny. Sadism = funny. Think of John McCain singing “Bomb Iran” and snickering, right along with his conservative audience. Another less infamous anecdote that has always haunted me: during an interwiew, Bush (as governor of Texas) mocked a death row inmate about to be executed, making a crybaby face and whining “‘Please don’t kill me Mr. Bush’, heh heh heh.” And I can think of countless examples from my own life. : |
throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamblesays
Yeah, I know what you mean irisvanderpluym. They’re (McCain and Bush, et al.) the type who would lament the fact that hell isn’t real, or that someone they thought should go didn’t qualify in their god’s eyes.
microraptorsays
Or Mitt Romney’s hair cutting excursion. Yeah, I hear you.
kreativekaossays
Have to smile….. In this strip, Doonesbury addresses a question that I have wondered about for a long time. Now I have a reasonable analysis as to why there is little–in fact, virtually no–popular conservative humor/comedy or humorists/comedians out there in ‘comedy land’ (thank goodness).
Makes perfectly good sense. I feel confident that we won’t need to suffer any conservative humor or entertain any conservative comics any time soon.
vaiytsays
Not just conservatives, but untalented comedians in general love to punch down, because it takes zero effort – just regurgitate stereotypes everyone knows by heart, and extract some cheap laughs out of moldy jokes.
Unfortunately, this truth gives whiny right-wingers the excuse to complain that only left-wing comedians ever get air-time and that right-wing comedians are clearly discriminated against.
I need to watch that movie again. It’s go so many great lines:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053946/quotes
+++
+++
+++
+++
+++
+++
A lot of Doonesbury is “keepers”.
Oh… yeah… I too am so biased: conservapod=’no sense of humor’. They spout humorous quips while thinking it is a serious statement, without ever smirking or bursting out laughing. “Grumpy old man”=conservapo; to my liberal biased thinking. Humor is the fundamalogical difference between libs and conservs. Libs got all the humor sense and conservs got nuthin (no wonder, they’re grumpy).
I was at a convention yesterday and attended a panel called “Writing Diversely”. One of the suggestions given was “Aim up don’t punch down” which pretty much summarizes this comic strip.
Ranmore @1
Just tell them it’s a coincidence: you only hire good comedians and it just happens that none of them happen to be
blackwomenconservative. They’re used to accepting that argument.@ranmore #1: Yes, but “X being unpopular gives conservatives an excuse to complain about a conspiracy to treat conservatives as they want to treat others” is a generally applicable statement.
While the target of conservative “humor” is one reason why it’s not funny, it’s not the only reason. They really can’t seem to make a good joke. Their idea of funny is to restate what they believe with extra sneering and sarcasm.
My hypothesis, which is mine, is that it’s due to conservatives having lower integrative complexity than liberals on average.
I think the lack of conservative comedy is due to many conservatives’ inability to break taboos. And if some do manage to do so, they often do so didactically.
One of the big things about conservatives telling jokes is that they’re too privilege-blind to tell that they’re punching down.
The part of the brain that can detect irony, parody, sarcasm, is burned out in conservatives by constant hypocrisy and exposure to hypocrisy.
While conservatives might be unable to tell a joke, they can sure be surreal. As Sparky the Penguin (of Tom Tomorrow fame) once said, the real comedians and comic strip artists will never run out of material.
This is making the rounds, so pardon me for repeating what I’ve said elsewhere. This is only half right: to conservatives, mean = funny. Punching down = funny. Sadism = funny. Think of John McCain singing “Bomb Iran” and snickering, right along with his conservative audience. Another less infamous anecdote that has always haunted me: during an interwiew, Bush (as governor of Texas) mocked a death row inmate about to be executed, making a crybaby face and whining “‘Please don’t kill me Mr. Bush’, heh heh heh.” And I can think of countless examples from my own life. : |
Yeah, I know what you mean irisvanderpluym. They’re (McCain and Bush, et al.) the type who would lament the fact that hell isn’t real, or that someone they thought should go didn’t qualify in their god’s eyes.
Or Mitt Romney’s hair cutting excursion. Yeah, I hear you.
Have to smile….. In this strip, Doonesbury addresses a question that I have wondered about for a long time. Now I have a reasonable analysis as to why there is little–in fact, virtually no–popular conservative humor/comedy or humorists/comedians out there in ‘comedy land’ (thank goodness).
Makes perfectly good sense. I feel confident that we won’t need to suffer any conservative humor or entertain any conservative comics any time soon.
Not just conservatives, but untalented comedians in general love to punch down, because it takes zero effort – just regurgitate stereotypes everyone knows by heart, and extract some cheap laughs out of moldy jokes.