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Parody through Genre Shift: Carville and Liberal Man Comics

Some pieces implicate themselves as what we might call guilty pleasures - items which bring some furtive pleasure to the target audience, but only in a hide-it-under-the-mattress sense. The combination of relentless ribbing, acid political criticism, and comprehensive silliness make for an item one might expect more readers to enjoy than to admit to liking.

And, though the label "guilty pleasure" suggests a non-worthwhile pursuit generally devoid of meaningful qualities, defying a stereotype applied to political content can justify a work. If some tend to claim - with at least a little justice - that comics, where bothering to pursue political ideas at all, pursue left-wing ideas, a peculiar series called Liberal Man from the late eighties serves to argue that Steve Ditko holds no particular monopoly on material that pursues right-wing themes.

To move from the abstract to the particular, though, imagine, if you will, a superhero based on James Carville (or, more accurately, on a caricature of the man). Said hero gains his powers when meditating and praying for the death of all Republicans under some kind of giant crystal suspended over his head falls upon him. While not really clear on what the changes involve (did he, after all, get any powers in the bargain?), the sort-of-Carville finds himself physically transformed into a younger man with a natural toupee of black hair in a style suggestive of Superman's signature spitcurl. From there, he resolves to undo the horror of the congressional elections of 1994, and, in the process, embody the causes of principal Democratic constituencies, whereafter he blunders from mishap to mishap with somewhat less vision of the real world than Don Quixote possessed in his less lucid moments.

The Prototype

James Carville occupies a role in conservative conspiracy theory (and possibly in legitimate history) somewhat akin to that enjoyed by G. Gordon Liddy in Watergate-era political conspiracy lore, as a kind of Secretary of Dirty Tricks for the Clinton administration.

In the absence of my own, personal cadre of scrupulous investigators able to confirm or deny such claims, however, I must reserve somewhat any particular claims of fact about Mister Carville. Let it suffice to say that, in some circles, he enjoys the kind of reputation one might identify as "unsavory." This, naturally enough, resonates with the theme of corrupt and inbred southern politics well enough that, if Carville fails to live up fully to conspiracy theories that draft him into the role of Presidential goon, he nonetheless manages to resemble such a man well enough that hostile observers see no particular reason not to credit him as something of an achiever in that regard.

Much as the dark-and-unfriendly aspects of Richard Nixon's appearance and personality fit well with an image of him as the Darth Vader of Politics, Carville's episodes of verbal abrasiveness tended to draw the same kind of editorial cross hairs. So that he would provide the focus of a political caricature aimed less at him than at an entire political culture of the United States seems, if not inevitable, at least likely.

The Schtick

The core of the humor in the Liberal Man stories derives from the cognitive dissonance evoked by taking Carville (viewed in much of right-wing America as a kind of Machiavellian Dr. Moriarty of Democratic Party politics) and presenting him simultaneously as the ultimate innocent (in a kind of clueless Bullwinkle fashion) and as a superhero. Both transformations, to his critics, represent diametrical inversions of the Carville they understand. The merciless scheming and cynical jockeying for power that form part of his legend clash with the simplicity and lack of self-criticism attaching to the caricature. The formulaic superhero posture, furthermore, with the combination of impossible abilities, impossible anatomy, and impossible wardrobe, jar with the weasel-like qualities which define one public image of the controversial Carville.

Carville, to his credit, seems to have shrugged off the cruel parody in the form of Liberal Man, noting that the creators, at the very least, gave him some hair, though to the consumer's eye, this seems like a particularly cruel barb. We might expect a man endowed with a sudden set of superheroic abilities to retain the hair he had before his improvement; or to develop a youthful, virile set of Samson locks. We would not, however, expect him to develop a patch of hair that combines the most memorable features of Superman's spitcurled coiffure and a bad toupee. And, given the context, we need not appear surprised that the bad toupee aspect remains the most prominent.

The Pious Posturing

Whenever confronted with the unexpected, Liberal Man has at his disposal some inane political cliche with which to misinterpret his immediate circumstances. So, though theoretically moved by the purpose of protecting his President and standing as a kind of human dam against a (mostly imaginary) oncoming tidal wave of virulent conservatism, he finds himself frequently doing no one very much good in his perpetual crusading to defend his own political credentials.

In designing a costume shortly after the accident with the giant pyramid-shaped meditation crystal that clobbered him while he chanted a mantra about his own compassion and the need for the horrible deaths of the political opposition, he first tended to the sewing task in a green fashion, via an archaic foot-treadle sewing machine. Seeing the first costume as having insufferable patriotic themes, Liberal Man quickly abandoned it amid visions of his fellows setting him aflame like an American flag when they saw it.

Then, after more abortive experimentation, he enjoyed the inspired idea of cutting and pasting together various emblems of various causes that frequently come into vogue among the left wing of the Democratic Party. Even so, the lack of chest space to include all of these caused him to shed melodramatic tears onto the cloth before he settled for a combined emblem containing a peace symbol, a recycling emblem, an AIDS awareness ribbon, a frolicking whale and a NOW button.

A Safety Net of Enablers

Throughout the Liberal Man tales, the role of various characters as enablers and enabled in a kind of political codependency recurs. Where this role pertains to the President himself, the entire mechanism of government, with the willing aid of a collusive media establishment, serves to protect the cartoon Clinton from the consequences of his own malfeasance.

A dubious figure named "Donaldson Jennings" plays the central role in the useful disinformative function of a captive news culture throughout the series. Liberal Man quickly christens this arrogant blob of expensive suits and blow-dry hairstyles "Media Man." Media Man serves as a straw man representing a corrupt journalistic ethos that has abandoned the belief in telling unfiltered truth.

Instead, sees fact as raw material from which to extract news stories and statements for public release that serve as a cumulative apologia for ill behavior none in his business dare admit actually happens. This ethos, as he states it, begins with the assumption that the Man in the Street lacks the fundamental reasoning faculties necessary to derive the point of raw fact and therefore requires Media Man and his kind to render the meaning from seemingly irrelevant detail. He sees his duty, stripped of euphemism, as the need to make his political friends look good and his political enemies look bad.

While Media Man plays one kind of enabler's role, one can read between the lines of his statements to hints that he knows, on some level, the degree to which he willingly pulls truth like taffy. However, another and somewhat larger crowd of enablers dot the countryside, including Liberal Man himself and others such as Sixties Man, figures corresponding somewhat to the "useful idiot" often mentioned in discussions of techniques by which foreign subversion can penetrate the public psyche of a targeted culture. These figures believe not what the facts suggest, but what someone wants them to believe; and, like Chamberlain when Hitler disproved to him the notion that the nasty little Austrian wanted nothing but peace and political stability, they can do little but shake their heads and attempt to blame the failures on whatever scapegoats most conveniently dovetail with their current political delusions.

The Impermeability to Facts

Liberal Man's inability to glean the truth of situations stands both as his most ridiculous trait and the one most likely to absolve him of the moral taint of more aware, but more cynical and opportunistic, individuals such as Media Man and the President himself.

The worst symptom of this shows in a sequence at the end of the series, when his partner "Equal-Kick" comes clean on her own conversion to a conservative worldview. She comes close to winning an argument with the normally unmovable Liberal Man, who, afflicted with doubts brought on by his pretensions to pacifism and the cognitive dissonance brought about by his role in a number of Clinton-era military adventures, turns first to Media Man, then to the President himself, to answer.

The President, of course, immediately launches into "please feel my pain" mode, self-gossiping to a sexual disorder that turns the confrontation into a male-bonding crying jag. Liberal Man thus convinced that, even though perhaps some of the rumors of corruption might begin to resemble the facts, the common purpose of standing against the oncoming tidal wave of political reaction must unite them in a single cause. The President convinces him to get in a car with some Secret Service goons, who blindfold Liberal Man, make him sign confessions to having done everything anyone ever accused Clinton of having gotten away with, and leave him sitting in the car as a bomb goes off.

When Sixties Man and Equal-Kick find the smoldering wreckage of the automobile, one might assume that the mismatch between Liberal Man's faith and the President's evil ways had finally brought an untimely end to our hero. However, once pulled from the wreckage, Liberal Man recognizes the whole business as a terrorist act by plutocrats and tobacco companies, refusing, once again, to believe ill of his idol.

The Self-Defeating Obsessions

With the possible exception of the long moment when Liberal Man succumbed to doubt - and received the reproach of Media Man and the near-execution at the hands of the President - this hero's cognitive powers remain thoroughly reined to ideological concerns.

Thus, when confronted with the prospect of locating a partner in crime-fighting (or whatever he might label his generally pointless ongoing adventures), he approached the problem not on issues of merit but in the form of the most trite kind of bean-counting, precisely what the most vehement critics of affirmative action policies might expect of those who adhere to the philosophies of Liberal Man's political faction.

Indeed, his intellectual processes - if one can dignify the caricature's sad attempts at ideation as such - seem less like analytical reasoning and more like an endless concatenation of slogans representing the political fads common to the American left over the past thirty years, with the most recent, naturally enough, enjoying priority.

So, when confronted with a Nigerian cab driver or a crowd of beggars, Liberal Man must invariably put aside his immediate purpose - even that of running for his life - to make some symbolic gesture of solidarity (frequently the transfer of money) indicative of a unilateral brotherhood that does not interest the target(s) at all. Or when faced with what seems like an indecent proposal from the President himself, he must admit his own personal shame at his unfortunate heterosexual urges that disincline him (to the detriment of his character) to same-sex unions on short notice. When eating, breathing, sleeping, bathing, or crawling out from under a mound of ashes, he obeys the formulae.

Naturally enough, as required by the editorial tone of this short series, Liberal Man's heroic efforts to bend over backwards to please those whom an unexamined liberalism requires him to appease seldom, if ever, have the desired effect. One may find mention of a "Law of Unintended Consequences" in monographs criticizing social programs and cultural experimentation driven by legislative fiat, and the plots of these stories generally attempt to validate the principle: Liberal Man's meddling, where it does not make things worse, neither accomplishes its intended goal nor makes friends of those he seeks to honor via a combination of self-degrading grovelling and outright bribery.

Choosing Between Sparkle and Substance

Aside from an obsessive desire to protect Bill Clinton and undermine his critics at whatever cost, Liberal Man does not, truly, resemble his prototype. One might describe him better by saying James Carville's body, transformed into a rather dubious superheroic form, has become Liberal Man by the absorption of a consistent straw-man personality attacking the perceived follies of Clinton-era Democratic Party politics. Given the context, the humor to some degree rotates around the manner in which Liberal Man behaves in a manner unlike Carville; for instance, he perpetually tries to ingratiate himself with somebody (whereas Carville has a more contentious character and has no particular reputation for shying away from confrontation). Again, the overall innocence and cluelessness fit no particularly common view of Carville. Towards the conspiracy theorist end of the axis, we see a vision of the man dedicated to character assassination and a slash-and-burn strategy to destroy enemies and empower allies; towards the more friendly views, Carville tends to recognize his friends and enemies and have few illusions about whether someone intends him ill or not.

However, a straw man has to have some kind of body, and for a superhero who serves to parody a faction or philosophy, one can see some propriety in picking from among the more ill-reputed of high-visibility political celebrities attached to or serving this faction. The flesh-and-blood Carville, having some small exposure to this work, seems to have shrugged it off with some remark like "at least they gave me some hair," a rather mature reaction to criticism and parody (compare, for instance, to the reputed surly funks into which Richard Nixon may have sunk when viewing political cartoons by Herbert Block, who always showed him with a heavy five-o'clock shadow).

In court, someone who litigated over a treatment like Carville's here in order to press a libel or defamation claim would have a very difficult time making much of what appears on these pages. The stories do not truly target Carville as the true object of ridicule, nor as a reader. Thus, despite many pages of ridiculous bombast aimed at undermining the dignity of the shallow end of the political left, as with the case of DC Comics' treatment of a character based on Rush Limbaugh, one finds not much to become angry about.

Return to the Quarter Bin.
Email the author at ouzomandias@mailexcite.com.

Column 263. Completed 15-JUL-2001.