The nominees for Worst Metaphor are:
- Anybody Seen Bob? - Americans, at least under President Obama, are wimpy little Herbivores and our enemies are scary Carnivores. If we try to talk with them, they'll just kill and then eat our ambassadors.
- Dinosaur Religion - See, dinosaurs hold their own Protestant religious beliefs and Global Warming is an opposing religious viewpoint, and then there's the fossil fuel thing...Look, people, this makes total sense!
- You just don't get it - The Caveman is change. But he's also the status quo. And a caveman. Q.E.D.
- The Natural Order of Things - Hate crimes are completely natural, just like eating.
- Turkeys - Americans are simple-minded turkeys who are about to be slaughtered and eaten by hungry Pilgrims, which represent Europeans, obviously enough.
19 comments:
We are off to a truly disgusting start, with incredibly offensive candidates!
Numers one, and five use the same theme: That everyone outside of America is evil, and, therefore, plotting against us. Either would be a perfect choice for the award--in any other year. This year, however, Tinsley surpassed his usual horrors, as I will demonstrate below.
Number two shows Tinsley's complete misunderstanding of science--science is about refutation, not belief--but it is not as neophobic as his usual work, so it cannot surpass the others.
Three, though contradictory, is inoffensive, and somewhat accurate.
Number four is where everything goes to hell. Tinsley, previously, stated that racism was dead. This comic, however, expanding the theme, exclaiming that racism had never existed, and what we perceived as racism was, simply, our nature. This is the most offensive possible statement, and I, sincerely, know it to be more racist than saying, "I want to kill everyone who is, slightly, different from myself." Nothing will surpass this comic, until sometime this year, when Tinsley, the most delusional, racist man in the world, finds an, even, worse thing to say.
Jesus fucking Christ. I genuinely have no idea which to vote for.
Any particular reason why all but one are prehistoric metaphors, other than "Liberals the Early Years" being an easy crutch for Bwoosie to fall back on?
Okay, dumb question.
Tough call. I appreciate IHCA's logic, but the award should really go to either one or five, as those are the most patently ridiculous. They're pretty much the same comic, but I have to give the nod to Turkeys, if for no other reason than Tinsley seems to be suggesting that we're being threatened by the Norwegians.
I voted for the turkey one, because Tinsley appears to be suggesting that we're all going to be murdered by Norwegians, which is really kind of transcendent. "Change the Early Years" comes next--the unbelievable fucking laziness of pretending that you're putting some sort of clever spin on an already-lame joke by make the character a caveman for no discernible reason should certainly be acknowledged.
Crud. Great minds.
Actually, I think there IS an explanation for that comic, and it's quite simple: Tinsley has the classic winger conception of America vs. The World, so while say "Really? Bloodthirsty Scandinavians? WTF?" it all makes sense to Tinsley and his ilk: A-Rabs, Yurpians, whatever; they're all ebil foreigners. This looks insane to rational people, but obviously that's not an issue for wingnuts.
Way to come out of the starting blocks strong, DaveyK. These are all so amazingly awful.
I'm going with the turkeys, because it warns us of our eminent demise at the hands of the Norwegians.
i.h.c.a.: Jeez, can you tone it down a little? And I don't mean with the commas, I mean the vitriol. This is a snark blog, not the Two Minutes Hate. Tinsley is an ignorant ass, but the most "racist man in the world"??
Is it any wonder that the most nonsensical comics in the strip almost always feature prehistoric creatures?
It's like he get so drunk that he thinks he writes and even more unfunny version of "B.C."
I have to go with the predator one. It's so bad, it actually got a reader to protest.
The whole caveman thing in general is ironic in ways he'll never know. If there were no progressives/liberals among the cavemen, we'd still be them. Granted, their version of liberal would make the current version of conservative look positively marxist, but the political definitions are relative to what society has already accomplished, thanks to progressives, and what society has kept thanks to conservatives.
I'm going to go with Dinosaur Religion. With most of them, at least you can see the message he was trying to go for, even if he completely missed it by a mile.
But Dinosaur Religion, I honestly have no idea what the metaphor represents, which is total fail for any metaphor.
I can't bring myself to vote for four, the hate crime one, because I don't think it's too hard to figure out what he means in that case. The message is atrocious, but the metaphor itself isn't hard to see through.
Aw, we were SO close to a Prehistoric Yahtzee!
What is worse in metaphor: to mangle your allegory so badly that it is indecipherable, as in the "global warming" strip, or to lack allegorical meaning altogther, as in the "status quo" strip?
I'd have to go with the Presbyterian dinosaur one: It's premise is so tortured I'm not sure even the Tinsh really understands what his point is, beyond "librul envir'men'lists, hur hur hur..."
Jesus fucking Christ. I genuinely have no idea which to vote for.
Seconded. I'm a little dumber just for having read all five. (And four of them were Sunday strips. If either of my local papers ran MF Sundays, pretty soon neither of my local papers would be running MF on any day.)
WV: kettlia, what Bruce re-distills his research in.
I went with the pilgrims. If anybody besides him had called Americans 'turkeys,' he'd be standing next to Sarah Palin, demanding an apology. Well, unless Rush said it, because then it's witty.
I'm with Lolsworth and or Neo Tuxedo.
In Catholic school, we were taught that when we were feeling badly, to just "offer it up to Jesus" on the theory that we get time off in Purgatory for our sufferings here on Earth. This edition of "Worst Metaphor" suggests that Bwoosie is a secret angel among us, seeking to eliminate our Purgatory time altogether!
While the confused Americans-are-turkeys, Norwegians-feasted-on-Obama's-flesh metaphor was truly aweful, I must go with the gay dino marriage (not that there's anything WRONG with that!) because the whole metaphor was spoiled by my brain shrieking "The Ozone layer problem is not Global warming!"
(Although I can't help recalling Issac's Asimov comments on the advantage of science if you chose to use it for your religion: something about its miracles, such as they are, being testable and repeatable.)
Turkeys
I've changed my vote to the Natural Order of Things, because it actually offended my sensibilities when I first read it.
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