Shooting the Puppy

Retail provides today's starting point, taking us to much grimmer but not unrelated areas.

On a superficial level, Marla's right and you can't win and I got a good laff out of that part. 

People want to grind axes and be offended. "Happy Holidays" doesn't necessarily mean "Christmas and Hannukah."

For people living in less diverse communities, it can simply mean "Christmas and New Years," and, in recent years, Thanksgiving.

Which is irrelevant to those who are offended by the phrase, because their point is that they are eager to be poor, offended victims like the ones on talk radio.

Retail has, as a cornerstone gag, the petty grievances of selfish people and, fortunately for Norm Feuti, the world is full of jerks, looking for opportunities to feel offended and put upon.

As for those who exploit this fact of life for purposes other than producing a humorous comic strip, I am not a conspiracy theorist.

I don't think anyone sat down and said, "We'll soften them up with a 'War on Christmas' and then we'll switch them to full-throated Islamophobia and war on the poor."

I do believe, however, that broadcasters push at the edges of what is allowed, seeking more attention, bigger audiences, larger market shares and damn the consequences.

I also believe that when someone makes an artistically valid choice to have Rhett Butler say "damn," a thousand cockroaches push through that crack in the censors' wall, widening it until it collapses entirely.

In the early 80s, before Limbaugh, there was a Denver radio host named Alan Berg, who built audience by being confrontational, and, as it happens, proved that a liberal could amass an audience, too, by shouting at people and hanging up on them.

Berg bounced from station to station because management would finally say, "Okay, that's beyond the pale," or, in at least one case, "Okay, having angry listeners show up at the station with guns is a little more liability than we want."

And eventually, a white supremacist group murdered him, and everyone mourned, and then wiped their tears and looked for his replacement.

Chuck Barris of Gong Show fame used to say the ultimate TV show would have a small child with a puppy come out on stage, and the host would ask the audience if anyone would volunteer to shoot the puppy for a million dollars.

Hands would go up, and he'd drop the bounty to half a million, and then down and down until someone would come do it for free, simply to be on television.

But the critical point isn't that someone would step out of the audience to shoot the puppy. The point is that the ratings would be huge.

And the other point is that, back in the 80s when he was saying this, it was considered outrageous, while, today, it seems perfectly plausible.

Oh, everyone would tut-tut, yes. But they'd tune in.

And as long as people tuned in, some broadcaster or cable company would be willing -- eager -- to put it on the air.

Because, at long last, we have no sense of decency.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Candorville)

(John Branch)

All of which has brought us to this point:

It's not often that a strip and an editorial cartoon form a Juxtaposition, but Darrin Bell works on notoriously tight deadlines, which allows him to keep Candorville timely.

That didn't let him work in the Planned Parenthood shootings, but John Branch just posted this and I'm assuming is directly addressing the issue of responsibility.

For my part, I'd keep Carson in the "useful idiot" category, rather than group him in with those whose outrageous falsehoods have helped fuel active hate.

I honestly think his fact-free commentary is the result of innocent, arrogant ignorance and not malice.

Which puts him in the class of the person who has too many drinks, gets behind the wheel and plows into a crowd, as opposed to someone who does it on purpose.

Small comfort, really, though he did suggest yesterday that everyone tone down the divisive rhetoric, so, if his grip on facts is doubtful, he at least has some sense of decency.

Fiorina remains a puzzlement. Ben Carson may have said some silly, counterfactual things, but he never claimed to have gone into the Great Pyramid and seen the wheat for himself.

Fiorina has not backed off her false claim to have seen a non-existent video, much less tried to find out the validity of the videos that actually do exist.

And her most recent assertion -- that Planned Parenthood's decision to stop recouping the cost of donated tissue is an admission that they formerly sold them for profit -- brings her mental balance into question, given that she holds an MBA and presumably knows the difference between "cost" and "profit."

Fiorina also says attempting to link rhetoric to terrorist attacks is a smear tactic, which is echoed by enough people on social media to really frighten anyone with a sense of history.

If nothing else, if your grasp of the past doesn't go back more than two or three years, it's still fair to ask: If words can't inspire violence, why did we bother sending a drone after Anwar al-Waliki?

And if you suggest that American murderers are not terrorists because they are insane, how would you characterize the psychological health of someone who would blow himself up with explosives? 

The difference is exactly as the fellow at the Candorville bus stop explains: "They were them, and we're us." 

Meanwhile, Trump's recent posturings have been so over-the-top that Bob Englehart slipped out of his between-jobs silence to pen this accusation, though it will probably not convince anyone who wasn't already thinking that same thing.

Trump is so obviously and clearly a merchant of hate that, unlike Carson, he fully intended to plow his car into the crowd.

His fans post such hate-filled bile that their racism, paranoia and anti-social hostility are right out there and at least we don't have to question their motives.

But we still have to count their votes.

 

Now here's your moment of zen:

 

 

Comments

[Kathleen Donnelly]

I think Walt Kelly's phrase, "the confidence of ignorance", is apt for Carson. A surgeon's vanity keeps him going.

[Mike Peterson]

Yes, "vanity" is a better word than "arrogance" -- Arrogance seems more intentional. Vanity is clueless.

[Mary in Ohio]

A couple of weeks ago, on The PBS Newshour, Mark Shields said "Anyone who thinks there are no Christian terrorists has never heard of the Ku Klux Klan."

[Mike Peterson]

... or is a sympathizer.