Comic 535: xkcd is not a political comic, no sir

If I may quote Randy's endorsement of Barack Obama (and by the way Blogger, it's really time to add those two words to your spellcheck dictionary), way back when he was just Senator Obama - "I’m a political junkie, but I’ve largely kept that out of xkcd (other than occasional cracks about science and net-related issues)." And later: "I’m disabling comments because I don’t want xkcd to become a place for ongoing political argument, anger, and hurt feelings. The internet has enough political discussion threads."

Now I know that this is not the first time Randy has broken his own rule - for example, making fun of Sarah Palin, looking to 2012, and That Stupid Mr. Hat Goes To Washington thing. But this one is nothing more than plain old topical commentary. Nothing wrong with that in principle - the Daily Show and the Onion do it well - but a week of lag time is a little too much. The whole incident - which I don't think anyone, anywhere, considers a big deal - seems much too tiny to warrant making a joke off of. It's not like this comic says anything more than "ha ha, roberts fucked up in front of a whole lot of people." Oh sure there's all that "what if Randy had done the presidential oath" but that's not the point. The humor comes from Roberts fucking up (if you don't believe me, imagine the exact same comic had everything gone fine - or, for that matter, change "presidential" to "vice-presidential" and "john roberts" to "john paul stevens"). No humor there.

This is also another comic where we lose a lot by not having anything more than stick-figure art. I think that a nice picture of the Capitol and a throng of people behind them would have made the comic at least more interesting to look at, and would not have left us with the sense that these are just two (white) guys standing in a bleak room somewhere. However - I think that had Randall made Obama's skin brown but not had any facial features, it would probably have ended up just looking creepier. Are eyes really too much to ask? I can ever draw them if you want.

This is a textbook example of a comic that will not stand the test of time. It's topic is pettier than usual, more specific than usual, and quite frankly, makes me think Randall should just stay our of political humor altogether. People think that you can make fun of politics by going "ha ha, isn't this person stupid??" but it needs to be so much more than that. At the very least, "ha ha, isn't this person a giant hypocrite??" is a good place to start, but Randall "I'm not going to put politics into my webcomic" Munroe is hardly the person to start talking about hypocrisy.