On The Family Guy:
On a T-shirt:
Comments
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Rica
Family Guy had a similar gag in their Star Wars special. A Bush/Cheney bumper sticker was on the back of an imperial ship. There’s a gap of course between Darth Vader and the Nazis but the joke is essentially the same; pure evil/ the bad guys love republicans.
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Bret
I don’t see anything wrong with this at all.
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Chris
My first reaction was “it’s comedy”. Both examples give the target audience a chuckle. Sometimes comedy stings, but I would rather be the butt of somebody’s joke than live in a society where everyone is afraid of possibly offending someone, somewhere, some time.
My second reaction was that the McCain/Palin bit looked like it had been inserted. The Bush/Cheney bumper sticker was part of the scene, this was a quick, static closeup of the brown shirt’s shirt. I wonder if something recent triggered the insertion.
My third reaction is that it does raise valid, if uncomfortable, questions. Many people consider the McCain campaign to be remarkably ugly for the modern era, are alarmed by the race-baiting and characterization of political opponents as “anti-American” deserving investigation (and then what?), etc.
There’s clearly an attempt to marginalize opponents, arguably far more than in the past.As former Secretary of State Powell said recently, the answer to false statements that Obama is Muslim isn’t “no, he isn’t”, it’s “so what if he is?”
There’s McCain surrogate and MN represented Michelle Bachmann calling for the intense investigation into the many “anti-American” members of Congress. Who decides who’s “anti-American”, especially when “the other side” has a numeric majority of both Houses of Congress? Governments can and have gone astray, but who get’s to claim that?
Finally, there’s evidence of GOP voter suppression efforts that will disproportionally affect Democrats and younger voters. (E.g., requiring driver’s licenses or other state-issued IDs. That might be universal among suburbanites, but Robert Kennedy Jr. claims that 20% of black Americans do not have these licenses. How many have other suitable ID? How many know this, or how many will just not bother trying to vote? There are efforts to reject recent voter registrations (mostly Democrats) over trivial, easily remedied errors. E.g., an individual has Sarah Mary Smith on her driver’s license but registered to vote as Sarah M. Smith.
I’m not suggesting that politics be discussed here or in the classroom, but I think there’s enough here to ask when comparisons to other political entities exist, how those comparisons can provoke outrage, how that outrage can prevent honest discussion of disagreements (e.g., that stupid Godwin’s Law that all discussions inevitably lead to comparisons to the Nazis and further discussion is pointless — something that’s been used to shout down honest discussions of the recent essay on the 14 defining characteristics of fascist governments).
If a 5 second clip from a comedy show popular with students can prompt this discussion, it sounds like a very good thing!
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Jaykay
It’s “Family Guy,” not “The Family Guy.”
I also don’t see anything wrong with this.
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Will
I think it goes too far. If we’re going to allow calling McCain a Nazi then we have to allow calling Obama a terrorist, and I can’t approve of either of those blatantly false statements.
On the other hand, this comes from a comedy show which is unaffiliated with the campaign. Lies about Obama have been spread by the Republican candidates themselves.
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Laura
I don’t think it is about whether or not it is “wrong,” morally, but it is highly inaccurate. While I don’t know if we can expect a satirical show to be accurate, they did lose Godwin’s law.
And because it is so inaccurate and without basis, it really made the joke fall flat for me. I was watching the episode in its entirety the other night, and I just rolled my eyes.
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Matt K
Laura,
Godwin’s Law only applies on the Internet, if I remember correctly.
I found the joke mildly funny, but the problem I have with it is a definitional one. Calling people Nazis who clearly aren’t (even if they might be anti-immigrant, or authoritarian, or what have you) muddles the term.
Same reason I don’t like it when people hurl the word “fascist” at whoever isn’t popular with them (see GW Bush). It takes meaning away from the word and reduces its impact when it actually does apply.
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Village Idiot
Would it invoke Goodwin’s Law to say the Nazi’s would’ve liked McCain/Palin rather than to call McCain/Palin Nazi’s?
I think that’d be a ‘no’ or a ‘who cares’ since Goodwin’s Law is something someone named Goodwin just made up (it’s not an actual law or anything) and it’s fairly specific: “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
Hmm, it makes no mention of any requirement to stop such a discussion, or that it’s invalid; it sounds like a somewhat cynical view of usenet discussions and that’s about it. Others have appropriated it and added implications to it’s being invoked (how ironic!), such as the idea that mentioning Hitler/Nazis invalidates someone’s argument outright, but just because something is a tired cliche doesn’t mean it’s invalid.
Fascism is a trickier term, and I think most people don’t have a clear definition for it so it’s an “I know it when I see it” kind of thing, though if the definition presented in the Doctrine of Fascism is used (and it’s probably a better definition than most since it was written by the Fascists themselves) then it does seem that the US Government in general and this Administration in particular have been heading in that direction. “Fascist” sounds worse than “Nanny State,” but its’ hard to tell if there’s a difference. Totalitarianism for our own good by any other name…
“The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. Doctrine of Fascism 1935″
I think we’re in a transition period between the actual existence of Nazi’s and Fascists (as political movements with very specific tenets) and the evolution of those terms into less-specific adjectives so it’s bound to be confusing when the terms are used interchangeably.
What those words mean when used as adjectives is obviously still unsettled, kind of like the word “maverick” which at first referred to a specific family in Texas who didn’t brand their cattle (and who are currently annoyed by McCain’s improper use of the word) but has long since evolved to be a synonym for nonconformist, and few people using today it think of cattle when they do.
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OP Minded
As a Family Guy fan and a Republican I think I am uniquely qualified (on this site at least) to lend an opinion. All is fair when it comes to comedy. If it’s funny, it’s okay for me. A comedy writer making jokes about a politician being a Nazi doesn’t bother my at all.
However, calling someone a Nazi in a serious political discussion is vicious and disgusting. Note above how Chris tries to equate Senator John McCain with Nazi tactics. It is so gross and untrue that it defies commonsense. If the McCain campaign wants to ask questions like “Why is Obama friendly with Bill Ayers, an admitted terrorist?” or “Why did Obama participate in a race-baiting church for 20 years” or “Why is Obama providing support to illegal registration of tens of thousands of voters through ACORN” he has the right to ask those questions without be likened to the third most murderous regime of the 20th Century (Stalin and Mao running neck and neck for the first and second slots).
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Sociological Images » SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ROUND-UP!
[...] stranger to derision. See also our post in which the McCain/Palin ticket is said to be favored by Nazis, another in which Palin effigy is lynched, and a third that discusses ageism in the [...]
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