Friday, August 1, 2008

Ouch

Bizarro is brought to you today by Victims International. "If anyone does anything to anyone for any reason, they do it to us."

As I knew it would, this cartoon got a bit of negative mail from people who wanted to defend the dyslexic. But I am not attacking dyslexic people, just poking fun. In today's "PC" society (this kind not this kind), there is no longer a distinction.

To recognize a minority is to ridicule it, to tease is to attack. Humorists hate the PC movement because it cuts the feet out from under satire.

Not all Americans are incapable of distinguishing between comedy and carnage, however. I suspect that many of us understand that the value of laughing at ourselves sometimes outweighs the importance of protecting our feelings.

Not that I need street cred to draw a cartoon like this, but I've got dyslexia in my own family and have had a few friends who suffer from it. As far as I know, they all have the sense of humor to laugh at this cartoon and their predicament, rather than fire off a letter to me about my insensitivity. Humor is an age-old means by which humans deal with tragedy, ill fortune, discomfort of all kinds. I think we should be careful about condemning that impulse for the sake of would-be victims of hurt feelings.

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, wow, wow. Lame. Who was the guest cartoonist this time? Leigh Rubin?

kerrikoo said...

I guess it doesn't take much to amuse me.. because I think this one is sooooo funny!!!... I just can't believe that people get so sensitive over a cartoon... Are you serious?.. you received mail over this one?... who can't see the humor in this?.. Maybe they were reading it backwards?..

JIMBOJONES said...

Dan, have you figured it out. This julie is Franceso..

um um do you smell shit...Wait wait thats todays bizarro

Anonymous said...

Yes! Callahan! I was thinking about his work all through reading this post. He gets a lot of flack but his stuff can be brilliant.

Anonymous said...

Piraro is no Callahan.

doug nicodemus said...

wow suddenly your blog explodes with comments i can not understand...this one is pretty funny in its improbability...did not mean to kick off so much guff by saying your replacement sucks. i should have said he inhales copious amounts of air...in fact humor is a very personal thing...maybe i should have said not my cup of tea.

homepage: www.censys.org

JIMBOJONES said...

Piraro is callahan....but for a more excepted audience

JIMBOJONES said...

No Doug his replacement sucks beyong belief you are correct.

SAYOTTE316 said...

Guys,

Im a lady and i had a problem with Dans pal this week. At least i had the guts to send a letter directly to Dan telling him the new guy blows.

Anonymous said...

"Exceptional." Or perhaps, if you meant to say "excepted," you should just use "illiterate" instead.

Anonymous said...

Wow Sayotte, you have some guts. Have you no fear of the repercussions of such an act?

JIMBOJONES said...

Anonymous:::::::::::
Everyone is sad that your so ashamed of you work you have to bust Dan. But come on man get a life.

Anonymous said...

Hold on - let's get things straight. Am I the guy doing the guest art or is Julie? Or are we the same? And keep your response brief - I don't want you to get overwhelmed with an big sentence.

Penny Mitchell said...

Again it comes down to our society of "If you don't see everything MY way, you're wrong." We've turned into an utterly humorless wad of whiners. :-(

And whether or not I personally
found Dan's replacement funny is BESIDE THE POINT. God forbid Dan be allowed to take a couple of days off. God forbid he cease operating for our enjoyment 24/7. And apparently, God forbid that he do anything that doesn't exactly sit well with every person who has wandered by this blog.

If you didn't like the replacement guy, who the hell cares? Shrug it off and get on with the rest of your day. Not everything on the planet is supposed to be serving your every whim. Yeesh. We're as whiny as the rest of the world, and I was drawn to this blog because I thought it was populated by intelligent people. A few comics that don't exactly yank your crank run in the paper and all of a sudden it's okay to come here and crap all over the good intentions of a guy who just wanted to take a few freaking days off?

I hate to sound like my Mother, but really, I'm so disappointed in what I've seen here.

Anonymous said...

It's such a shame to see so many forms of social ignorance congregating on one man's blog. Please limit your childish antics and random bashings to another blog of which I am not a fan. Remember kiddies, Bizarro is THE show and we are all merely peepers in the grand scheme...if you know what I mean. Peace to all. Take it easy.

JIMBOJONES said...

listen penny, When Charles Schultz was alive i read an article that the income from the strip alone brought im in $2 million a month. Not everything produced and made from characters were based on but just from the strip. Given Dans comic runs in maybe 1/5 the papers and schultz has been dead almost ten years. Im guessing Dan makes close to $400,000 a month. Of course hes aloud days off mam but get a funny replacement huh.

Anonymous said...

"Allowed" Don't worry, Jimbo, we'll work with you here.

JIMBOJONES said...

No No No no in this case aloud is allowed

Mel2 said...

Penny, I'm with you. I don't know why these guys think they're experts in art or satire, or why they're not content with having an opinion and keeping their mouths shut.

The anonymity that the Internet offers is one of the worst things to happen to civility.

JIMBOJONES said...

kind of like dan can vacation in an out loud way.....it can be allowed yes

JIMBOJONES said...

Has anyone noticed all these people who are defending Franceso and his sht are all new bloggers...i think hes sitting home creating all these

Anonymous said...

Check out Penny's profile, Melissa. Pretty anonymous. And yours isn't exactly upfront either. So lets put down those stones, eh?

Anonymous said...

Hey Mulder - you can put the brakes on your investigation. No one cares.

Piraro said...

Not even sure why I'm getting into this, but I just wanted to clear up the money thing. The way syndication works is complicated and I guarantee you I don't make 400K a YEAR, much less per month. I make a good living, but I'm not rich. Most cartoonists are not. Schulz was at the very top of his field, off the chart. No one short of Jim Davis has even come close to his income.

Anonymous said...

This really made me laugh good. I don't like PC myself. It makes humour boring.

Keep it up Dan.

Anonymous said...

Melissa, are you not content with having an opinion and keeping your mouth shut?

julie said...

Hey, "anonymous" - I'm sorry I had to dump you but wasn't working out, and you need to get on with your life and stop stalking me. Just because your cartoons suck is no reason to go after Dan Piraro.

BTW, the restraining order applies to online contact and harassment (and impersonation) too, you know.

Jeremy said...

I am glad you disabled anonymous posting to your blog, Dan. It probabaly hurt, but it is for the best. Sure, they can just create a blogger account and keep trolling, but at least you will have a user name to block at that point if it gets out of hand.

Censorship sucks, why do you have to abuse the system, Anonymous?

This all started happening when you put Jim Davis down, right? Maybe its someone from Paws, Inc.

Anonymous said...

My cartoons? So you think I'm the guest artist too? Wow, somewhere jimbojones is throwing his headgear into the air in jubilation. Way to go, tiger!

Anonymous said...

Exactly what have I done to "abuse the system"? Disagree? Critique?

Unknown said...

The comments have me totally lost, too, Doug. :)

I just wanted to chime in and say that my ex had very severe dyslexia, and he was the first person to crack jokes about it - he seemed to have an endless supply of really funny dyslexic jokes. If he sees this cartoon, he'll laugh.

Cheers!

Rebecca C. Brown said...

I have no idea what all these toolsheds are talking about (I think Francesco's guest cartoons are hilarious...the evolutionist goldfish slayed me), but it doesn't seem to be about this post. Keep it on-topic, children!

Dan, you seem to be running the gamut of writing cartoons about ailments my romantic partners have. My second boyfriend has fairly severe OCD (see July 27 post), and my husband is dyslexic! My first boyfriend had alcoholism, which I'm sure you've tackled before.

Marrying someone disability isn't the same as actually having that characteristic yourself, but I know that my "offended" antennae weren't activated when I read your OCD or dyslexia strips.

I get offended at things like racism and misogyny and animal abuse and George W. Bush, not acknowledging that certain psychological quirks exist.

Sara Benincasa said...

God, you guys, seriously, Ces really is such a talentless bastard. Did you know they give out Emmys and guest-cartooning stints and TV development deals to talentless bastards now?

It's true.

And I can tell you from experience that Ces, while being quite in touch with his feminine side, is no Julie (or Penny, or Rebecca). He doesn't post under any name other than his own, and he does not in fact have a vagina. Which is why I'm dumping him for a Thai ladyboy.

Jezzka said...

this one is great, i did a double take. at first i thought the muggeee was the mugger, the way you drew the gun so close to the muggee's hand. i enjoy your astute attention to subtle details of how our eyes work. me likey this one, mostly for that reason alone, i loud laugh...oh noh maybe i've got aixelsyd. shoot.

julie said...

No, I'm not Ces. And in this thread the way it stands, this is the only post by me... all the others are someone else. I did originally post here, but the comments were a bit hostile, and therefore, they went poof. Just as well.

blackbird390 said...

I have dyslexia and I found this cartoon quite amusing;-)

B.A.D. said...

Too be fair I believe most people assumed the Obama Sketch was racist as they weren't used to finding humour (satire or other wise)within the New Yorkers comic depictions.


(yes, that was a joke)

TARDISGirl78 said...

i find this amusing and i have an online friend that i recently found out was dyslexic i just assumed his misspelled words were because most males i chat with on AOL make typos and he asked me one night when we were role playing if he was misspelling my character's name (mind you it was one of many characters) and i told him he was and he apologized and explained that he's dyslexic.

Melissa