-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
The Oatmeal re-posted an old comic to argue against religious extremism and it really hasn't aged well
- Thread starter UnpopularBlargh
- Start date
- Status
I suppose it's trying to say politicians don't want to talk about (and by extension the public doesn't have the attention span for) policy details and instead just want sound bites that conform to their existing beliefs.
I was reading the full version and not having any major problems until I got to the "every time someone has gay sex god lets nickelback release a new album" which is just obviously not true and a bad joke.
That whole lengthy comic seems to be mostly dumping on the worst parts of religion though? Is that panel really meant to be illustrating an equal extremism?
Am...am I personally responsibly for the entire nickelback discography
Holy fuck
OP
OP
Pretty sure they're not politicians in those panels but voters.
And I dunno. This just seemed ill-informed especially after the Supreme Court ruling.
Maybe I'm over-thinking it.
Yeah, it doesn't really read that way, especially when viewed within the full context.
I didn't realize you cut off the two relevant panels preceding the ones you posted. Yeah, they are voters and now with the full context the punchline isn't what I originally thought.
Reminds of how BabylonBee started out as some fundie dipshit ripping off The Oatmeal's style. I bet this was the cartoon that jumpstarted that asshole's 2 neurons.
OP
OP
I guess this one panel from a larger comic that's overall 99% dunking on religious fanaticism and conservative values hasn't aged so well, but I'm not sure that posting it entirely devoid of its context and making an outrage-bait thread while omitting this context is a honest and productive use of anyone's time. 🤷‍♀️
OP
OP
Even in context it reads off (to me) compared to the rest of the comic.
Thats why I posted about it.
The context doesn't help. Unless you think caring about gay marriage and hybrid cars on the left/liberal side is equivalent to whatever conservatives are always shouting about.
I think this is not indicative of meaning these issues are equivalent, but of two mindsets that many people share:
- political decisions should primarily based around economical decisions
- you should vote for the party that offers you personally the largest (economical) benefit
I do not agree, especially with point 2, but this is still a very common view on politics.
- political decisions should primarily based around economical decisions
- you should vote for the party that offers you personally the largest (economical) benefit
I do not agree, especially with point 2, but this is still a very common view on politics.
Aside from the OP deliberately removing this decade old comic from its overall framing and context as some kind of "gotcha"(?), I don't see how this is some "both sides" take on the issue.
Liberalism =/= progressive politics. And now sure ain't the fucking time to be defending Dems if this is the lens we're supposed to be viewing your point. Not with how insultingly feckless and ineffectual we've seen them be in literally just the last week.
Liberalism =/= progressive politics. And now sure ain't the fucking time to be defending Dems if this is the lens we're supposed to be viewing your point. Not with how insultingly feckless and ineffectual we've seen them be in literally just the last week.
The comic is not great in general. It's pretty basic edgy internet atheism, but it goes on way too long to be funny. The political equivocation is a relatively small part of it and might've made some kind of sense to "apolitical" types in the pre-Trump era, when GOP culture war bullshit was more abstract and not an imminent threat.
I dunno, it kinda sucks but it's also not making me mad.
I dunno, it kinda sucks but it's also not making me mad.
Yup, its this.
The 2 voters in the strip are both spouting 'big picture' talking points that (most likely) wont actually have a big impact on their everyday lives, but are still going to vote for 'their guy' even though the less exciting economic policies of 'their guy' will hurt them directly.
10 years later and abortion rights are back on the table, and the climate catastrophe is clawing at humanities face, so those big picture issues don't seem quite as irrelevant to your everyday life anymore, but the point still stands..... I guess...... mostly.
Worth remembering the comic was written during the time of 'Islamic Panic', so that's the point is was actually trying to get across. Climate Chaos and The Culture Wars hadn't really gotten going back then, but people were still reeling from 9/11.
I mean, there was still an issue back then with sidelining equality and freedom of choice as 'big picture' ideas, as if voters can't be women or LGBT. It's pretty daft in its framing of 'common sense in politics is men thinking carefully about their vote regarding potential small financial impacts on their small business, why are all these people so angry about something as minor as equality when it's only a vague, indefinable big picture thing'. Inequality has tangible financial costs to some voters as just one result of unequal policies too.
Still, it's ten years old, I can see the point it was trying to make as a flawed panel in the context of the whole strip as well as laughing at the panel in isolation, in the context of today. There's a lot from back then that feels like ancient history now.
Last edited:
The comic isn't trying to say they're equivalent. Not sure why you would think that.
This all day. Up and down the street. Shout it from the rooftops and the mountains. Scream it across the prairies and the plains.
Some jokes don't age. It's just dumb today, not relevant in the salient points.
From just the panel and no other context, this more seems to be a point that politicians aren't willing to debate on the details of policy and how it affects people, but rather, rush to the corners of their culture war. Whenever this comic was published for conservatives that cultural corner was abortion and jesus, for liberals gay rights and hybrid cars. I think that wider point is mostly still right, but it has truly gotten much, much worse over the last 15 years (or w/e that was published), as the center of the right has shifted more and more to the right/populist/authoritarian extreme of the culture wars, largely I think as a result of that being their most effective electoral strategy. Would anybody on the right talk about policy to attack inflation? Of course not, and the one or two times they have it's like "No, no shut up" from the whips, get back to the culture war. Policy is a losing issue for conservatives, it's why the GOP -- for the first time in it's ~165 year history -- did not present a party platform at their 2020 convention. The first time that neither major party in a convention didn't have a platform.
What year was this published? Regarding gay rights, if this was like pre-2008, marriage equality was not mainstream, and there was not an even split of "progressives vs. liberals," or something within the Democratic voting tent. It was a complex electoral issue within the Democratic tent 15+ years ago, and doesn't neatly fit into today's ideological breakdown of the party. Many white coastal elite liberal democratic voters supported marriage equality, which is why you saw marriage equality first break through in ... unsurprisingly ... white, coastal elite states (Massachusetts) dominated by neoliberal democrats, but it really kinda took those (or I should say "That" because lets be honest, the rest of ya'll were 5+ years behind) states proving that there could be marriage equality without the disintegration of society for others to start to move the needle on. BUt, even in 2008, Obama -- who was perceived to be a new progressive, running against the old liberal Hillary Clinton -- was against marriage equality, and, sort of ironically, the old guard liberal Joe Biden spilled the beans ahead of 2012 in what was thought of as a gaffe moment, loose lipped Joe, coming out in favor of marriage equality.
I think there is a better point here... The cultural issues for liberals in this panel? Marriage equality and hybrid cars. COmpletely fucking reasonable things that a majority of Americans support. For conservatives? Anti-abortion, things that a large majority of Americans are against. The panel is demonstrative of just how fucking out of the mainstream conservative cultural issues are.
From just the panel and no other context, this more seems to be a point that politicians aren't willing to debate on the details of policy and how it affects people, but rather, rush to the corners of their culture war. Whenever this comic was published for conservatives that cultural corner was abortion and jesus, for liberals gay rights and hybrid cars. I think that wider point is mostly still right, but it has truly gotten much, much worse over the last 15 years (or w/e that was published), as the center of the right has shifted more and more to the right/populist/authoritarian extreme of the culture wars, largely I think as a result of that being their most effective electoral strategy. Would anybody on the right talk about policy to attack inflation? Of course not, and the one or two times they have it's like "No, no shut up" from the whips, get back to the culture war. Policy is a losing issue for conservatives, it's why the GOP -- for the first time in it's ~165 year history -- did not present a party platform at their 2020 convention. The first time that neither major party in a convention didn't have a platform.
What year was this published? Regarding gay rights, if this was like pre-2008, marriage equality was not mainstream, and there was not an even split of "progressives vs. liberals," or something within the Democratic voting tent. It was a complex electoral issue within the Democratic tent 15+ years ago, and doesn't neatly fit into today's ideological breakdown of the party. Many white coastal elite liberal democratic voters supported marriage equality, which is why you saw marriage equality first break through in ... unsurprisingly ... white, coastal elite states (Massachusetts) dominated by neoliberal democrats, but it really kinda took those (or I should say "That" because lets be honest, the rest of ya'll were 5+ years behind) states proving that there could be marriage equality without the disintegration of society for others to start to move the needle on. BUt, even in 2008, Obama -- who was perceived to be a new progressive, running against the old liberal Hillary Clinton -- was against marriage equality, and, sort of ironically, the old guard liberal Joe Biden spilled the beans ahead of 2012 in what was thought of as a gaffe moment, loose lipped Joe, coming out in favor of marriage equality.
I think there is a better point here... The cultural issues for liberals in this panel? Marriage equality and hybrid cars. COmpletely fucking reasonable things that a majority of Americans support. For conservatives? Anti-abortion, things that a large majority of Americans are against. The panel is demonstrative of just how fucking out of the mainstream conservative cultural issues are.
Considering you removed the context it kind of feels like you're just looking to stir people up here, OP. And/or you were just looking for issues to be mad about so you could then rule other people up too.
Not really sure how this is productive.
Not really sure how this is productive.
Do you think it's implying that conservatives like monster trucks because of their religious beliefs?
The conservative yelling "Monster trucks!" in that last panel's really ringing to me, funnily enough. I'm pretty sure it's meant to contrast with the liberal yelling "Hybrid cars!", i.e. that liberals want environment-friendly cars while conservatives want big manly gas-guzzlers. But nowadays with so many anti-woke movements especially going after sports and movies it comes off more like an inadvertent "Fuck off with your green shit I just wanna watch the derby!", which goes into the wider point of the "culture wars" wasting so much time and energy and oxygen on entertainment media.
OP at best I think you misunderstood the concept behind the entire comic using a not so clear snippet to bring up some yet abstract reaction..
- Status