MODERATOR SUCKAGE CONTINUES: What the fuck is up with those Onion cartoons, anyway?
In reference to: I hate it when I suck at being a moderator which was in reference to What do you think of The Onion's editorial cartoons?
Again, I am sorry for not sorting the real comments out of the metric tonne of vagina-cream, horse-insurance and online-gambling comment spam in less than several days. I've been busy. Pout.
I'm just happy to see someone else wondering about this. The above comments make some good points, but what it boils down to for me is this - It's the onion, so it's likely very dry sarcasm... but I just don't really get it. That's not to say it's not funny or poignant, but I feel like if it's over my head it's probably over most peoples... I don't mean to sound like a jerk, just saying I usually understand the rest of the Onion stuff. The cartoon kind of mystifies me...
Posted by: Pete | December 5, 2006 10:49 PM
Ah the cartoons are meant to be ironic, but they're just too clumsy to work. Reminds me of amateur cartoons that show up in college newspapers, usually by some campus communist that believes him/herself to be so clever, but in reality produces dreadful cartoons that spit, sputter, and fall way short of their mark. In short these cartoons are hammy, unimaginative dribble for pinheads with delusions of being clever.
Posted by: G | December 8, 2006 03:35 PM
Sorry, but are you people serious? You're actually wondering if the Onion's "Kelly" cartoons are sincerely right-wing hate-doodles? I'll have to look around on Poormojo.org to find the threads where you debate how someone as stupid and stoned as faux-columnist Jim Anchower could possibly get such a high profile job at the Onion.
I mean, really. The entire publication is, and always has been, a piss take on mainstream media. The Kelly cartoons have executed this idea more effectively than any other method offered by the paper in years.
And thanks to the person above who used the Rumsfeld cartoon as a case in point. The OJ Simpson one should also be noted, although really, all of them are pretty damn obvious in terms of poking fun at mainstream right-wing political cartoons. (If anyone knows the name of the political cartoonist who actually does draw himself in the bottom corner, please post... I can't remember his name or the paper he draws for.)
Posted by: Brett | December 10, 2006 10:37 PM
I'm not really sure what they're satirizing. I doubt it's really aimed at actual, right-wing editorial cartoonists. It's too over the top, uncharactaristically so for the Onion. Granted, there are probably cartoonists who are every bit as hateful, jingoistic and artless as this guy, but they'd make too easy a target.
Mainly I think this is just the Onion making fun of itself. Remember Herman T. Zweibel? Featuring an ignorant, reactionary cartoonist is the same sort of humour as casting a nutty old crank as their editor.
Posted by: Dan | December 11, 2006 12:36 AM
I think Brett is thinking of Pat Oliphant in the New York Times.