For those like me who like to have more context and enjoy learning about things, there is a Snopes article describing this cartoon (and many others) from the 1969 issue of Mad Magazine. I found it an interesting read.
this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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oh god some of those caricatures didn’t age the best
Yep, you get it pretty clearly that the creator was an edgy centrist.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Next you'll be calling out 'Blazing Saddles' for it's offensive language and sexism.
Blazing saddles isn't really centrist, more just anti-rightwing from my memory of it.
Let's talk about the chapters shown in the snopes article above.
Chapter 3 is making fun of (an) American Student(s). This was 1969, in the middle of the Vietnam war. He's saying they were idiots and that they shouldn't have been protesting the Vietnam war.
Chapter six - The Yippies. The action they are doing is the fighting against two things. The first would be gentrification which is always an issue driving the poor into homelessness. The other was the bulldozing of entire neighborhoods to make way for the highways from 1957 to 1977, an act which displaced 1 million people.
Chapter seven - the Black Militants. This would include Malcolm X and the Black Panthers along with the Philadelphia organization MOVE. Hell, this was a year after MLK Jr was assassinated, and the white general public probably still saw him as an agitator. These were a movement in opposition to very overtly racist cops supported by a largely pro-apartheid populace. And the Author completely misrepresents every view they had from a brief skim over.
We could talk about the looters but I don't think we're ready for that convo.
First, it's funny to me that you care so much about a comic book that's over 50 years old.
Second, the magazine had a long history of attacking everyone and everything, including themselves.
You cared enough to challenge 'centrist' as a bad thing, so I explained why I viewed it as bad.
Comedy is always used as a political tool, and that was the case then too. Being critical of all media, including comedy (even when satirical). We have the
MAD was highly influential back then and no doubt formed in part the current centrist white liberals who are now opposing anything outside the status quo given its large teen audience back then.
Blazing saddles isn’t really centrist, more just anti-rightwing from my memory of it.
There's the problem right there.
There are plenty of books and articles about the making of the movie. I've read a few and don't remember anyone involved talking about trying to carry a political message. Plenty of people thought it was offensive, but no one thought it was going to change minds.
What I'm challenging is you trying to put things into history that just weren't there.
The people at MAD weren't trying to influence a generation's politics, they were trying to make a buck. If yippee jokes were popular they'd print them.
Why would anyone deny something like that?
Jack Davis, the artist here, was just a complete bad ass. He used to frustrate some of his editors because they felt like he could do a much better job if he would slow down and take his time. Like, a lot of his work you see was apparently his lazy ass, 'I want to go home' rush jobs! Amazing. One of my personal favorites.
Except they now love the very rich and lick their boots at every opportunity.
Only the ones who share their political opinion. They love Musk and Trump, while demonising Gates and Soros.
Which is telling, because Gates isn’t even liberal. He’s just not conservative.
Reminds me of a saying "conservatives don't have policies, they have enemies"
Me an intellectual: I hate them all
Mad Magazine not mad max, my bad, typo in title
You can edit titles on lemmy
wow thank. Just migrated from reddit and I’ve got to say I’m impressed.
Welcome to Lemmy! Thanks for bringing quality content!
Wild that being able to change titles to be more accurate is a feature instead of the default right?
Welcome! What do you think so far?
I’m very impressed. I’m going to fully migrate here for anything to do with News and Politics. Reddit feels like it’s been taken over by far right bot and troll farms in that regard.
Also privacy-wise, I started to feel really unsafe on reddit. Additionally the community there is really toxic on most subs and can easily get racist, homophobic, ableist etc.
I’m obsessed with things being open source and free and so lemmy just tickles me in the right way in that regard :).
Obviously I see two main cons with Lemmy, but time may solve them:
- For specialised communities, some aren’t really active here. Ie. the community about the illness I suffer from has about 100 members here and is dead, while on reddit it has 50k members
- It was a little complicated choosing a node and signing up. This may be due to my cognitive difficulties due to the illness I’m suffering from though.
Here you'll get to experience something that wasn't on Reddit -- far left bots and trolls!
privacy-wise, I started to feel really unsafe on reddit
Definitely. Reddit is trending toward a much more privacy-invasive posture as they lean into advertising and prepare for their IPO. I was a regular Lemmy user by the time they started blocking users behind VPNs, but that particular move was shockingly anti-consumer IMO.
I’m obsessed with things being open source and free and so lemmy just tickles me in the right way in that regard :).
Same :) I'd add "distributed" to that list, too-- It's comforting to know that the Lemmy ecosystem isn't one private entity that can make arbitrary decisions, or be bought out by any eccentric billionaires. Reddit has this army of mods and contributors that make it work, but as we saw in the API fiasco last year, the power dynamics there are really lopsided... Lemmy is much more empowering to the people who use it.
For specialised communities, some aren’t really active here. Ie. the community about the illness I suffer from has about 100 members here and is dead, while on reddit it has 50k members
Definitely a disadvantage, yeah. Reddit still has that scaled network effect that is hard to replicate. Lemmy is less lurker-friendly, but if you're willing to participate, I find that people actually show up. You can often post in those "dead" communities and find that there are lots of folks to talk to, they just haven't been posting there. It's much more like "if you want a warm fire, you gotta chop wood," here than on Reddit. Less convenient, but more satisfying IMO.
It was a little complicated choosing a node and signing up.
Yeah, that's a big barrier for people :\ Tech companies spend TONS on minimizing sign-up friction, but that "What is an instance? How do I pick one?" thing is a) frictionful, and b) intrinsic to any Fediverse system. I always tell people "don't overthink it, just pick one," but it's still a barrier.
I read the whole interchange of your experience, and thank you. But even from my own perspective (left Reddit during the API debacle), it felt like, "hail traveler! What news from yonder?"
It was nice. Thanks haha
Let’s take a minute to appreciate the real victims of patriotism, the “very rich”
Substitute "liberal elite" and you have your 21st century bogeyman
Thats probably a more accurate and charitable meaning of what they are referring to here, I’m just being cheeky. Cause that’s the thing, all the “rich” people that conservative middle class people are mad at are upper middle class people lol it’s people that have it slightly better than them, ignoring / simping on the mega rich
all the “rich” people that conservative middle class people are mad at are upper middle class people
They also hate wealthy actors and musicians.
🎶One of these things is not like the others!🎶
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I literally could not even tell you who tf George soros is or what he’s known for besides triggering conservatives for being rich and donating to dems
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I love looking through these small windows into our near past! It shows that some people were definitely as based then as many are now!
I realize this is only slightly related, but I really miss Don Martin.
It's always intrigued and annoyed me when the term "liberal" is used in this manner. I generally assume that, when the term is used, it isn't being used to refer to the political science concept of "liberalism" — I would guess that it is being used in place of something like "leftist" (which is a rather nebulous term in itself). At the very least, I would hope that any person, who is currently enjoying the fruits of relative civility, and prosperity in the western world understands that they are doing so because of liberalism.