B.C. is funny

Funny peculiar; not funny ha-ha

There's an election going on, you know. It's time for humor to take a back seat (way, way in the back) in favor of trenchant political analysis. Our nation's future is at stake, so who better to sound the alarm and speak truth to the masses than the imaginary cave dwellers of Johnny Hart's B.C.? Hart is already on record as disdaining those wicked political pollsters who dare to question the divinity of God's anointed president, but smiting them once is not enough.

In his October 12, 2006, comic strip, Hart cuts through the statistical propaganda of national polls and reveals their true nature: The polls that reveal President Bush's unpopularity are slyly crafted by his enemies to make him look bad. Fortunately, the cartoon characters are here to rescue us from the misleading impression that no one likes our Dear Leader. Here are the first two panels from B.C. (don't worry about the third panel; the supposed punch-line in it is just filler):


Who are these political adversaries of our beloved president? How have they deftly phrased their questions so as to defame him in our nation's hour of need? Well, one such enemy is the notoriously liberal Wall Street Journal:

Bush's Approval Ratings Slip

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
October 13, 2006

President Bush's job-approval rating fell, with 34% of Americans voting him “excellent” or “good,” down from 38% in September, according to a new Harris Interactive poll.

Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults now have a negative view of Mr. Bush's job performance, compared with 61% who ranked him “only fair” or “poor” in a similar poll last month. The drop follows a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that showed the president's job approval rating fell to 39% from 42% earlier in October.

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These are shocking numbers, which B.C.'s neo-con caveman says are due to the way that pollsters frame their questions. How exactly do these arch-fiends phrase their clever questions so as to fool their subjects into denouncing a president they actually adore? Behold!

“How would you rate the overall job President Bush is doing as president: excellent, pretty good, only fair, or poor?”

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This is an outrage! The question virtually reeks of radical-liberal cant and bias! Could other polling organizations be as blatant in their contempt for Dear Leader? Unfortunately, the answer is yes, as demonstrated by the Pew Research Center:

“Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?”

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As you can plainly see, this is a horrific trap for the unwary respondent, making it a fifty-fifty choice between loyal support for our president and treasonous opposition. If either polling organization were willing to give our president a fair shake, surely they could find someone to craft a more fair and balanced question. The Wall Street Journal, for example, has a wonderful staff of patriotic editorial writers. They might come up with something along the following lines:

“How wonderful do you think President Bush is at his job: supremely wonderful, remarkably wonderful, very wonderful, or simply wonderful?”

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See the refreshing contrast between this alternative and the questions from the Pew Research Center and the WSJ/Harris poll? President Bush would undoubtedly fare much better with the responses to the alternative question, proving irrefutably that the pollsters' questions are biased against him. QED!

The Popeye Party

Caveman Curls also notes that Bush's fellow Republican's dine on “Wimpy burgers.” For the uninitiated, permit me to explain the two-fold significance of this charge. First, the classic cartoon character Wimpy is famous for cadging money from his friends and acquaintances so that he can buy hamburgers. He always promises to pay back the loan, typically on the following Tuesday, although he never does. However, it would be a mistake to think that this subtle reference to the Republican tendency to loot the nation's pocketbook tells the whole story.

The second component of the allusion is Wimpy's endomorphism. As a plump weakling, Wimpy is, well, wimpy. Today's Republicans are highly deserving of that criticism, since they never bestir themselves to defend the president or attack his critics. Observe some of their pallid responses to the assaults of Democratic traitors:

David Horowitz: Make no mistake about it, there is a war going on in this country. The aggressors in this war are Democrats, liberals and leftists who began a scorched earth campaign against President Bush before the initiation of hostilities in Iraq.

Ann Coulter: Democrats long to see American mothers weeping for their sons lost in a foreign war, but only if the mission serves absolutely no national security objectives of the United States. If we are building a democracy in a country while also making America safer—such as in Iraq—Democrats oppose it with every fiber of their being.

Representative Patrick McHenry: And Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel, I asked them two days ago in a letter, to submit themselves under oath and say clearly, yes or no, did they have prior knowledge of the instant messages and/or emails, and if they did, they're an accessory to this crime because they allowed to keep a pedophile out on the streets.

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See? Wimps, all of them!

Clearly the president needs more stalwart supporters like Johnny Hart, a man who is willing to sacrifice the sporadically humorous content of his comic strip just so he can defend the man anointed by God to lead our nation. And if you don't believe me when I say Hart will sacrifice anything to prove his devotion to George W. Bush, gaze now upon the third panel of his October 12 strip. He boxed himself in with the ranting of the first two panels and left no way out, so he punted with a random punch-line. But that's okay: these are humorless times—especially in the last panel of a contemporary B.C. comic strip.