Friday, April 17, 2009

American Genius

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Peace of Mind.

I got an email about this cartoon from a reader who wanted to inform me that "just because something is a conspiracy theory does not mean their aren't real conspiracies." Even though this person went on to identify himself as one of those meatheads who believes Obama was not born in the U.S. and is turning the country socialist, you can't argue with logic like that.

Along the same line of thinking, just because a TV network tells you it is a "news" channel, does not mean it is reporting facts. And just because that network claims to be "fair and balanced," does not mean it isn't demonstrably controlled by a political party attempting to control your behavior, take your money, and poison your environment. And just because that network's comical tag line is "we report, you decide," does not mean that you have much choice in what you decide based on their reporting. Sort of like the magician who says "pick any card," but always manages to get you to pick the card he wants you to have.

So thanks to the reader for alerting me to the existence of "real" conspiracies and for reminding me that there are always a handful of angry, uneducated, bigoted nitwits you can convince to waves signs and throw teabags while complaining about rising taxes when their own rates have been untouched for 16 years and are about to go down.

Fortunately for the rest of us, their numbers are lower at the moment and relatively few people showed up for the comical Fox-Network-GOP-instigated-and-promoted "grass roots" tax revolt last Wednesday. I have little faith that their numbers will continue to dwindle, but for the time being, the desperation of the GOP and its "news" network is humorous to watch, anyway.


DISCLAIMER: This blog is not intended to insult educated conservatives who mourn the loss of their party to the neo-cons.

21 comments:

Snowflake said...

Oh, Dan... when will you ever learn?

Anonymous said...

Hey, if there weren't hardcore conspiracy theorists, who would watch all those shows and read all those 'newspapers', tabloids, supporting their theories, Mr. Piraro.

Please don't put all those people out of work. ;) TC.

ur Fan,
Dee Sh

doug nicodemus said...

educated conservatives are now in the democratic party....richards nixon's "southern strategy" has turned into a grave stone for the party...pretty funny actually...

but then look who worked for him buchanan, rumsfeld, cheney..."we are not crooks" all of them...

Urban Garlic said...

This is, to my mind, still the most amazing thing about the 9-11 conspiracy folks. The terror attacks that day were a conspiracy, by Al Qaeda, to kill Americans.
How many conspiracies to we really need, anyways?

Rick said...

Dan, I love your strip and sense of humor, but get real. You are no better than "Faux" News when you print a panel saying that now that stem cell research is "legal", etc....it is not and HAS not been "illegal." There was a ban on using federal funds on embryonic cell research, but nothing prohibiting funding of adult stem cell research, which has shown increasing promise. Nor, for that matter, any restriction on privately-funded embryonic stem cell research. Yes, I am a conservative and you are a liberal, but only one of us is honest on this issue.

Xyling said...

An adult Henri Toulouse-Latrec posing as Lincoln is a massive anachronism (was born during the Civil War), but this is hillarious nonetheless.

Piraro said...

@ Rick...
You're right, there are nuances and details to the stem cell research issue that I didn't feature in the cartoon to which you refer(from a while back.) But I'm not claiming to be a news agency, nor do I have the space in a single panel comic to address those kinds of details. On this blog, I don't hide my political views but I also try to be honest about what I know – that these are my impressions and I am not an expert. Perhaps I should be more diligent in those efforts. Thanks for the comments.

Chriss Pagani said...

Mega dittos, Dan. :)

Waldo said...

I love the Obama commie bumper stickers when W got rid of our personal freedoms - secret prisons, police coming to get them in the middle of the night, holding without representation, wire tapping without cause, etc... (Mao would be proud)

Plus, the Dems are more Socialistic than Communistic but I am not going to try that discussion with an idiot who believes that Faux news is "Fair and Balanced".

Karl said...

Although the government did not consider stem cell research illegal, they did their best to make it sound immoral and sinful. This message was sent loud and clear from a White House full of chicken hawk conservatives who sent thousands of brave young men and women into an illegal (sorry not illegal but one with questionable and suspicious motives) war and many ultimately to their death. I suppose having a direct link to the almighty, makes it right.

Sorry, can't be convinced that god is only on the side of the Republicans. If there were a god, I'm sure he or she wouldn't be taking sides.

I'm not either a Democrat or Republican or an Independent or a Libertarian. I'd rather be considered an antagonist with no beliefs, and future resident of hell if there's still rooms available.

Waldo said...

Just read this on Huffington Post... (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/whats-left-of-texas_b_188033.html)
Note: Did not do the HTML programming to let people know it is not a photo of someone's colon.

Relevant? Don't know, but since this is has gone politico and W is living in a Texan subdivision that reversed their CC&R's to ALLOW blacks to live in their neighborhood in the 1990's.

"Here are a few embarrassing tidbits about Texas ..."
1) 49th in teacher pay
2) 1st in the percentage of people over 25 without a high school diploma
3) 41st in high school graduation rate
4) 46th in SAT scores
5) 1st in percentage of uninsured children
6) 1st in percentage of population uninsured
7) 1st in percentage of non-elderly uninsured
8) 3rd in percentage of people living below the poverty level
9) 49th in average Women Infant and Children benefit payments
10) 1st in teenage birth rate
11) 50th in average credit scores for loan applicants
12) 1st in air pollution emissions
13) 1st in volume of volatile organic compounds released into the air
14) 1st in amount of toxic chemicals released into water
15) 1st in amount of recognized cancer-causing carcinogens released into air
16) 1st in amount of carbon dioxide emissions
17) 50th in homeowners' insurance affordability
18) 50th in percentage of voting age population that votes
19) 1st in annual number of executions

Penny Mitchell said...

I love you. So very much.

Jan b said...

Don't you guys find it scary how Fox and their likes take liberties in defining your language? Some time ago "communist" seemed enough for some of your citizens to reach for the double barrel. Now it's down to "socialist"!

Coming from fairly socialist Sweden that rhetoric makes me quite unconfortable. And what about some simple comparisons? Most comparable countries to the left of the US (oh, wait, that's like ALL countries) work just fine but with lesser gaps between the rich and the poor.

How Fox and the Reps manage to get the poor to vote for their richness is beyond me.

On an artistical note this cartoon got me wondering whether you ever draw characters from straight ahead =) Plus it would be a bit more legible from a distance, visually, if Abe had his lines in a brighter color.

Thanks for posting, sharing and doing the work u do!

Unknown said...

Dan: Fox news is biased and can be irresponsible, but the same can be said for CNN and MSNBC. Just remember that.

Unknown said...

One other thing: the Tea Parties were set up by Ron Paul and the Campaign for Liberty, not FOX News. Fox just gave it excessive promotion.

Piraro said...

@ Josh...
I disagree about the other networks. CNN and MSNBC do not recieve memos from White House operatives about what to say on a given day. Fox was known to have done this throughout the Bush Administraton. CNN and MSNBC do not willfully and knowingly misrepresent facts or simply make things up, as Fox has been caught doing.

All news agencies make mistakes, but it is wrong to place them in the same category as a fake news channel created to support a specific political party at any cost.

Regarding the tea parties; it doesn't matter whose original idea it was, it was advertised as "grass roots," which it clearly was not. Without FOX pushing to so hard, it would have had one tenth the turnout it did, if that. FOX and the GOP poured a ton of money and effort into it and were effectively the backers.

Penny Mitchell said...

Here is a good link on the whole stupid thing. My sister-in-law, who is a very nice person but not able to think for herself, got sucked into this tea bag nonsense by her in-laws. If they asked her to set her hair on fire and stroll to Walmart naked, she would. I have to figure most of the people taking part in this idiocy fall into the same camp.

Josh Duncan said...

So Fox was secretly created by the Republican party, and the news channel only exists to serve the GOP?

That sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.

Anonymous said...

"Along the same line of thinking, just because a TV network tells you it is a "news" channel, does not mean it is reporting facts. And just because that network claims to be "fair and balanced," does not mean it isn't demonstrably controlled by a political party attempting to control your behavior, take your money, and poison your environment."

Dan, likewise, someone can call what they draw a "cartoon" and it not be funny at all. As your "toons" have become--your glory years are behind you and you have become a bitter, bitter man.

And by the way, the hyphenated "Frenchman" in the lettering of this cartoon is very distracting.

Anonymous said...

Dear Dan,

I could not agree more. You are such a great voice for this age. We must evolve as a species, and we cannot and will not as long as there are barbarians about like Bush, the Neo-Cons, and the Fox News troglodytes (email me sometime if you want to hear a great cartoon idea about that one! haha). It's high time we began to take legal action or even more against these horrible people--they are the cause of so much evil. Their the evil-doers in the world! Let's go after them for a change!!

Unknown said...

Anonymous: Just because you think a person is wrong doesn't make them evil. It's that mentality of demonizing the other side that has permanently turned me away from the right AND the left. Both parties are far too hateful.