This blog is closed
In case you thought the right had cornered the market on stupid
The praise rolls in for my hack job on Michael’s book.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
No, I didn’t think the right had cornered the market, exactly. But I will say that they have seen remarkable productivity gains in this sector in recent years, while keeping wages artificially depressed and making many stupid producers work overtime without due compensation. Whereas we on the left stand for a living wage for the production of stupid!
By: By Michael Bérubé on 2006 09 20
You didn’t catch that during April Fool’s I: The Psychedilic Malkin experience?
By: By Roxanne on 2006 09 20
This threatens to outdim (that’s my word and you can’t have it) the great Harry Hutton - Kos kerfuffle of June, initiated by this post;
http://chasemeladies.blogspot.com/2006/06/life-saved-by-kos-boris-johnsons.html
and with some follow-up here;
http://chasemeladies.blogspot.com/2006/06/attention-daily-kos.html
By: By Rob G on 2006 09 20
Good point!
I’m chuckling over the fact that even when people grasp — finally, hit by clue-by-four — that the subject matter is satire, they then turn to my obvious pretentiousness at calling it a “graphic novel.”
And of course by “chuckling” I mean “shaking my head sadly, reflecting on the success of the right in dismantling public education in the US over the last 20 years.”
(Now the “boring” and “too long” and “not funny”? That kind of feedback I respect. I appreciate those folks’ willingness to at least give the thing a chance.)
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 20
Rob, that’s some good stuff.
I especially like the fact that all the relevant DKos pages have vanished mysteriously.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 20
“In case you thought the right had cornered the market on stupid”
Yes, because obviously those who deride your work of genius do so out of sheer ignorance and stupidity and not from a position of honest consideration.
There’s this thing called grace that separates the great writers from the mundane, obviously you cannot rise above your own emotional constructs to view these comments as objective criticism; instead you cherry pick what is a “qualified statement” and what is not, and you presume the mental state of many individuals when you reference the point in which they “finally grasp” the “concept”. Ripping off an old illustrated propaganda piece and captioning it in comic-sans is hardly worth being defined as anything; so the argument is entirely moot to begin with. What’d you assemble this with, MS Word? The design really flows!
“shaking my head sadly, reflecting on the success of the right in dismantling public education in the US over the last 20 years.�
Again, not only is everyone else substandard peons but they are doomed to this eternal cycle due to the grand overarching domination of education that you so willingly decry at every turn. If only we could all be so wonderfully perceptive as you, we might see this hack job as the pristine product of labor and intellect that it truly is. I don’t think you could dig yourself any deeper.
You also may not have considered the general political references made by the user who posted your work of beauty; recently he has occupied his time in heated threads decrying the “Looney Tunes” nature of the liberal influences that have become so pervasive and oppresive throughout MetaFilter; a nefarious site that obviously retains his presence through the sheer force of its inescapable gravitational field.
By: By lollercaust on 2006 09 20
lollercaust, if you turn about 73 degrees to your left, look up about 34 degrees, and use your binoculars, you might actually catch sight of the point.
Or is this parody nonsense getting totally out of hand?
By: By Rob G on 2006 09 20
Now Rob, Lollercaust has a valid point.
lollercaust, you seem to have skipped the last paragraph of my comment above. I value criticism. I’m just laughing at people who missed the point so badly. Or is my criticism of THEIR writing somehow off-limits?
And it wasn’t a work of genius. It was something I tossed off in an hour to make a friend laugh. Had I known it would get forwarded all over teh internets, I’d probably have emailed it to him. I’m not looking forward to the conversation with my ISP about bandwidth.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 20
For instance, Klingklangston’s comment in that thread:
Satire, but too long and without enough, y’know, punchlines. Having just sat through an excruciating lecture on satire this morning, and having had to deal with “oppressed” conservatives, I can say that a lot of it was pretty close to the weltanschung that they believe in. Still, that’s the reason that you draw new art to go with your writing— so you’re not stuck with the clumsy vagaries of an appropriated text.
is not only critical but also utterly apropos, perceptive, and very much agreed-with by yours truly.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 20
You know, I’m beginning to get the sense that lollercaust hasn’t even read my book. But rest assured, Mr. Caust, Chris did indeed make me laugh, and yesterday morning my laughter could be heard all up and down the halls of the People’s Revolutionary State University. I wasn’t the only one, either. Really, everyone who’s followed David Horowitz’s recent career (2002- present) got the joke.
But Chris, now that we’re on the subject, I have to say that I wish you would stop drawing those boring “Day by Day” cartoons. They’re just the same stock figures over and over again in the same poses, and most of the time there isn’t even a punchline, just a woman lying down somewhere in a tiny bikini. What do you assemble that stuff with, MS Word?
By: By Michael Bérubé on 2006 09 20
MacPaint.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 20
No wait, I mean HyperCard.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 20
I posted the link to whatslib.pdf on metafilter—innocently, I swear and affirm. I ran across it today, decided it really was (per metafilter’s charter) best of the web for this 24-hour period anyway (the fellow madly galloping past the “Kandinsky mural” totally slew me) and used up my one-post-per-day ration linking to it for that reason. It seemed pretty obviously a joke to me when I first encountered it, not someone seriously raging about how academics are all dedicated members of the international Marxist-Leninist-Maoist conspiracy, and it was a bit of a surprise to see the early responders in the thread apparently take it seriously as a real anti-academic, anti-Commie rant in Fisher Price colors. It’s like you have to include a big dollop of Butch Assurance when you market hair products and man-bags to straight guys, and this particular piece didn’t come with quite enough up-front Lefty Assurance for readers who maybe aren’t so quick on the uptake.
But on further and more charitable reflection I expect I am responsible for this particular conclusion jump. As Lollercaust implies up above I am one of the very few regular mefi posters who are even vaguely right-wing (in that company anyway; it’s like being a wit among lords.) There is on metafilter (and on most message boards, not to mention the internet in general) a certain habit of considering the messenger rather than the message, and I imagine the folks who came across as so irony-impaired simply assumed that anything jfuller posted must automatically be Hitler Youth propaganda or worse.
More interesting to me were the later posters, the ones who had the benefit of your clue-by-four but who still didn’t care for the piece. (“In. Sip. Id.” and the like.) The fact is, though it is satire and though you might fairly say it’s more or less my crowd that’s being satirized, it didn’t leave me feeling particularly bitten—more warm’n'fuzzy, to tell the truth. “Heh heh,” I thought, “Yep, if I were going to exaggerate how I actually feel about the on-campus culture wars just a little bit, for effect, it would probably come out looking pretty much like this.” If it had that effect on me I can imagine genuine lefties reacting as if the joke were, au fond, really at their expense after all and hence not all that funny. Cheers!
By: By James P. H. Fuller on 2006 09 20
What’s that you say? Criticism of the graphic novel version of What’s Liberal?
Two words: Spiegelman sockpuppets.
By: By Amanda French on 2006 09 20
I’ve decided the phrase “Graphic Novel” is no longer dignified enough to describe my work. From now on, you will refer to this adaptation of the original work as a “Linear, Semi-Verbal Essay in Pastiche.” Please make a note of it.
James, to be fair, there is a certain amount of in-joke in WLATLA:TLS-VEIP that both amplifies appreciation of the thing in-house and obstructs it in the outhouse. I mean out-group. Really, the ideal target reader of the thing is a person who:
1) has followed the Bérubé-Horowitz slagfight
2) has followed the Althouse-Decency slagfight
3) Has read Maoist propaganda
3a) ...without believing it
4) has been a graduate assistant
5) is no longer a graduate assistant
6) is somewhat deranged
7) has read Michael’s book
I don’t even qualify, really.
Two words: Spiegelman sockpuppets.
You think maybe we should get all Ted Rall on their asses?
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 20
Not that I haven’t met some lovely people from MeFi
Names! I want names.
Wow, lots of people I like named Amanda in this comment thread allofasudden. Or two, anyway. If we get Marcotte over here we’ll have a trifecta.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 20
I think this is my week for wading through lots of Internet stupidity. That MetaFilter thread was…I don’t know, just depressing, not funny. People who confidently say one thing, suddenly realize the premise of what they’ve said is wrong, and don’t change their opinion one iota.
By: By Timothy Burke on 2006 09 20
Yeah, MeFi seems to suck more as time passes.
By: By the_bone on 2006 09 20
Timothy, that’s the second time this week I’ve seen you write something unreservedly negative.
I’m not saying you don’t have the right to do so. But I’m half expecting to go outside and see seven seals playing seven trumpets.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 20
I dunno, for some reason this week the stupid is really getting me down.
By: By Timothy Burke on 2006 09 20
This whole kerfuffle is very reminiscent of Usenet Trolling and Crosspost Wars of the early ‘90s (and they may still be going on today.) It is very easy on Usenet to simultaneously post an article or comment in multiple newsgroups. As a result “crossposting” was used (and overused and abused) to incite and gull those who were reading in a completely different framework (and since by default their subsequent comments went to all of the original groups, it was both a spectator and contact sport). At times whole groups would devolve into (mis)adventures in contextual reading as, say, rec.pets struggled with crossposts from alt.tasteless.
A frequent use of crossposting was to troll in
its original sense on the Internet. [and still only ideolgicaly pure use - the “sisters” would understand.]
The more likely derivation can be found in the phrase, “trolling for newbies”, popularized in the early 1990s in the Usenet group, alt.folklore.urban. Commonly, what is meant is a relatively gentle inside joke by veteran users, presenting questions or topics that had been so overdone, only a new user would respond to them earnestly.
...
These types of trolls served as a Shibboleth to identify group insiders
It is interesting that in today’s parlance the trollees have become trolls. (And I know this manner of “trolling” was certainly not your or jfuller’s intent - but the results were similar.) Without direct, easy crossposting, today’s “context” wars on blogs do differ somewhat as they rely on a relatively few of the participants crossing the divide to post in the other domain (or even no cross-domain posting, but only reading - while in the olden days it was all hand-to-hand.)
Sorry for the lengthy post, but your (brilliant) “joke for a friend” and its reception triggered a wave of nostalgia. (And my apologies if you are a seasoned Usenet veteran and this is all old hat.)
By: By JP Stormcrow on 2006 09 21
Beware, Chris. Somewhere in our files here in Hip City we still have a copy of Judge Porker.
Before Hypercard. When the AT&T 6300 was Speed Racer. The Post Sunday comics. Scissors. Glue. Whiteout. Maybe even a Rapidograph.
I need a nap now.
By: By ALotOfCatsAroundHere on 2006 09 21
I should splain.
Back before the parents of my new admirers at MetaFilter began dating, in 1985, I embarked on a prototype of my current annoying mashups of the Day By Day cartoon. Day by Day not being available at the time, I was forced to resort to the comic strip that most closely matched DBD’s clever dialogue and not at all repetitive art.
That strip, of course, was Judge Parker.
Back then Photoshop was not yet on computers. It had cut and paste functions, but no copy. I took a Judge Parker strip and rewrote the dialogue, then syndicated a few copies of it and ALotOfCatsAroundHere, to whom I lived rather closely in those days, posted a copy of it on his or her blog, which in those days we called “the refrigerator door.”
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 21
I read Judge Parker every morning for decades. My legally conjoined significant other just rolled her eyes (she seems do do that a lot). But a month or two ago a new artist took over and it is just not the same. Oh well, there’s still Mark Trail. He and Andy are trying to save the nice tame bear who was the nice man’s friend, but the nasty man is firing his big gun at Andy and the nice bear, and Andy and the nice bear have fallen into the water. I am clinging to the faint hope that somehow it will all turn out well in the end. Perhaps Mark will land a single well-placed punch to the nasty man’s chin and then the police will show up.
By: By Charles on 2006 09 21
OT but of possible interest:
http://www.ncccusa.org/news/060611nytad.html
By: By Ann Bartow on 2006 09 21
Well, nobody else seems to have shared my taking offense at the collateral damage that befell the true story of those brave little girls. Indeed, that concern was regarded as so bizarre that everyone seems to have presumed without a second thought that I was a real live Maoist.
Oh, well. Hold fast, dear little shepherdesses: I still care, though all the world betray thee.
On the other hand, I see a number of people agree with me that the same single joke did not benefit from being recycled through the entire 19 pages, and that helps restore my belief that I’m still onthe same planet with most of you.
Hint: “Hardware Wars” was a brilliant parody in large part because it was not actually as long as “Star Wars”.
By: By John M. Burt on 2006 09 21
You must be really fun on long road trips, John.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 09 21
Well, nobody else seems to have shared my taking offense at the collateral damage that befell the true story of those brave little girls. Indeed, that concern was regarded as so bizarre that everyone seems to have presumed without a second thought that I was a real live Maoist.
Getting misty over the stories of heroism to be found in Maoist agitprop will tend to give that impression, John.
By: By Kansas Anarchist on 2006 09 22
Fun on long road trips?
Hint: Don’t make the same joke over and over and over….
By: By John M. Burt on 2006 09 22
And about who is “stupid”:
Chris sat down and said, “I will create a satire which exaggerates the neocon idea—or their professed idea—of what liberal academics are like. Liberals will be amused by it.”
Liberals read it and some said, “Chris has done a good job of exaggerating neocon mythology.” Others said, “This is a vicious slander of liberal academics!”
Are the latter people “stupid”, or is Chris just a little too good at channeling the neocon zeitgeist?
That question might be answered if the satire gets good reviews over at the diaper filled with little green footballs.
By: By John M. Burt on 2006 09 22
Categories:
Blogging
