Tuesday, January 20, 2009

“Stupidity... stupidity finds a way...”

The beginning of the post-Bush era may be in sight, but that won’t mean the end of conservative war on science. This is going to be pretty disappointing to anyone who thought that W’s last day would be followed by earthquakes and cave-ins that swallow his hordes of supporters a-la Return of the King- I know that’s how I saw it happening. Some of the best evidence of ongoing Bush-style thought right now comes in the form of editorial cartoons.

Take this cold winter weather some parts of the US have been experiencing, for example. Other parts of the country are actually unseasonably warm, but I don’t think anyone would deny that it’s pretty chilly in the East and South right now. From this fact conservatives have drawn one conclusion: “GLOBAL WARMING IS DEAD. SURE, YOU LIBERALS MAY HAVE YOUR SCIENCE AND FACTS AND THEORIES AND EVIDENCE, BUT… IT’S COLD OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW!” This cartoon here, drawn by LARDY WRIUTS (?), contains all the tell-tale signs of a shitty global warming-debunking editorial cartoon:


Morbidly obese version of Al Gore? Check. Smug insinuation that Al Gore, not thousands upon thousands of climatologists, is responsible for discovering global warming? Check. Bizarre rambling text bubble, leading to an unfunny punch line? CHECK. Cartoonists have been submitting these at such a feverish pace that any clod who tried to find each instance published each day across all of the myriad newspapers in the US would surely go mad and kill himself. Luckily a SomethingAwful goon started a new blog collecting all of the cartoons, mockingly entitled “If Global Warming is Real Then Why Is It Cold?” Take a quick look, and see just exactly how little originality newspapers require of their cartoonists. “What’s that, literally 78,345,734,573,948,754,723,048,234 of them have been published in the last week? FIT TO PRINT, GREAT JOB!”

The only thing both funnier and sadder than the cartoons themselves would be the reaction from the right, most of whom don’t seem to realize that the cartoons have been collected for their shittiness, not for being fantastic examples of speaking truth to power (or whatever they believe people like conservative cartoonsts and oil-funded “scientists” are paid to do). Persistently clueless freepers, for example, took a few moments out of their busy days to snicker over their favorite ones and polish off the old nicknames for Al Gore. I’d register there and point out what they’re missing, but wouldn’t that be a bit cruel? It’s going to be a long 4/8 years for them, if the joy of misspelling Al Gore is what it takes to get them through the day then who am I to take it from them?

2 comments:

  1. Did you watch? Amazing! Obama's address was awesome! I'm sitting on pins and needles for the overturning of executive orders.

    By the way the real Al Gore was there, and all I wanted him to say was ManBearPig. But it didn't happen.

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  2. What an awesome idea for a blog! The saddest part about the vast majority of the cartoons is there complete lack of funniness.

    I get it. Al Gore is fat. He created global warming. It's him, and not tons of scientists who believe this to be true.

    You'd think that would get old after a while.

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