Posted by
Right is Right on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 11:03:38 AM
I read about
Lil' Bush, the Comedy Central cartoon about Bush + friends. On one hand, I'm always up for a good joke. On the other hand, I think this may be a bad thing because:
1) political comedies tend to push straw man arguments.
2) political comedies make it very natural for cheap shots.
3) The subject matter (Bush) is setup to be very one sided.
4) making people laugh is a standard technique to avoid making people think.
I find political comedy shows tend to enter important debates, but always fall back to saying "Hey, we're just a comedy show" when they fall below the intellectual quality bar. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
There are a lot of real and serious issues here to be discussed, and I doubt that cartoons like Lil' Bush will help. Maybe I'll be pleasently surprised.