Where'd all the Zonkers Go?
Background: The celebrated life of Zonker Harris
Music: Dean Gray - Dr. Who on Holiday (about)
One thing I miss about the internet is that there are no real Sunday Comics. (That and the Fry's Ad, but this blog is about political activism, not technology.) As a child, we always had the daily paper, over anything else. And the one thing in the paper that was in highest demand was the Sunday Comics.
Through the 70's my favorite comic was Peanuts. Around 1980 and after, I started reading Doonesbury. The character I most identified with was Zonker, because he maintained his moral standards by ignoring things that didn't fit into his universe. If you followed the comic strip, you know what I'm talking about. The rest of the world around him was worried about real issues in politics, and life, but Zonker maintained focus on the pure ideals, and because of that seemed to get more accomplished than many of the other characters.
Anyway, The demise of the newspaper hasn't killed news, but it has killed the political comics. It is HARD to find them online. When the net was young, most of the major portals had comics, but you don't see them anywhere anymore. The demise of the political comic and the demise of political activism seem to go hand in hand. There doesn't seem to be any real replacement either. very few of the political commercials, or flash animations come anywhere near to what the comics did with a 1 frame line-drawn black and white image.
As the graphics we get are more and more realistic, we use less and less of our brains. And we seem to be less and less inclined to get up and get out and do something about the ills and injustices. "You are what you eat" is what they said back in the 80's, and it is true. Whatever you let into you affects you. If you take in the super-polished and over-thought stuff they are pushing at you now days, it does tend to incapacitate you from action. As the political comic was a return to the simpler form of communication after the advent of photography, I'm sure there will be a similar return to the simple line drawing in some way to spark the imagination again, but I can't say when.
On the other side of the logic, limiting the input has an effect too. About a year ago I threw out my TV, and in it's getting harder and harder for me to sit on my hands. The problem today is that I seem to be such a minority. Without critical mass, 'activists' tend to get singled out and picked on.