Here's One I Don't Understand
I don't get it. Let's analyze:
OK, in panel one, the flower has a thought balloon, which, magically, the rock hears and responds to. Can the rock read the flower's mind??? In panel two, the flower whips its head around, and it's hard to tell what amazes it more --- the fact that the rock read its mind, or the fact that the rock spoke.
In panel 3, ANOTHER rock comes rolling up. This one doesn't talk so much as it displays messages -- flattering messages -- on its face. This amazes the flower. So much so that it exclaims, "Wow, a talking rock!" The first talking rock takes umbrage to this, and when it confronts the flower with its disgust, the flower calls the first talking rock "chopped liver."
OK, someone needs to explain why this is funny. "Chopped liver" isn't any sort of pun, as far as I can tell, on rock, boulder, pebble, or any other "rock word." I realize that "What am I? Chopped liver??" is a fairly standard idiom (one I've never completely understood, aside from the fact that chopped liver does, indeed, sound kind of gross). But it's not particularly funny, or, in this case at least, "punny."
So it's not a pun, and all I am left with is that the "joke" is this: The flower is more impressed by the sycophantic message-displaying rock than it is by the mind-reading talking rock. And I suppose that's a nice little message on human nature and the power of flattery, all tied up with nice little idiom. An idiom I just Googled to find is actually Jewish in origin. So, on top of all the non-punning, talking, flattering, message-displaying mind-reading rocks and talking flowers, we may also have one of Mr. Johnny Hart's anti-Semitic messages!
What we don't have is humor, that's for sure.
posted by big al at 2:22 PM
3 Comments:
When I saw the words "chopped liver" in a B.C. strip I had a feeling it had to be Jewish related, because you just know that Johnny loves my people as much as hurricanes and fires and other natural disasters. He IS trying to show his anti-Semetic side through a cartoon flower and rock. The reason B.C. isn't in my county's paper is because of all of his Jewish/Irish bashing, and Neo Nazi-ish propaganda.
Upon further analyzation you notice that Johnny makes the flower Christian because its beautiful and the Jewish character a rock. A rock. A boring rock that seems stubborn and sarcastic (like the Jewish stereotype).
Johnny, I may be a "rock," but I can crush that flower (which I'd like to think just represents you and not the other nice Christians)just as easily as I can break matzoh!
Hart is anti-IRISH???? Wow.
I knew that he had something against the Jews and the A-Rabs, but the Irish?? I sort of thought the Irish had been mainstreamed, and we didn't make fun of them anymore.
Them damn Popish Micks.
Seriously, though: How can one Christian have so much disdain for others? That's my main problem with the Evangelicals. They seem to hate so much, and that's not MY kind of Christianity.
Whoah. Too deep for this forum! Heyyyyyy . . . those Family Circus kids sure do drive me bonkers!!!
Bonkers is putting it lightly.
If you remember from Big Al's earlier posts, she commented about how Johnny hates the Irish too, because he called "irish gold" Chicken McNuggets. That sadly, is one of his less racist strips.
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