Conservative Jones Is Ill-Equipped To Battle Doxxing & Other Post-Truth Phenomena

It's been a while since Conservative Jones and Moonbat McWacky graced this blog, so here's a refresher:

[x Wikipedia]
Conservative Jones

Beginnning in 1963, Donald J. Sobol created Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown, boy detective, in a long series of children's novels. Only his parents and teachers call Leroy by his given name (which he dislikes); the rest of the neighborhood children refer to him as "Encyclopedia" because of his penetrating mind. "This Modern World" is a parallel universe and in that world, Tom Tomorrow gives us "Conservative Jones," Boy Detective. Jones has a trusty sidekick, "Moonbat McWacky," just as Sherlock Holmes had Dr. John Watson. ###

And then, Tom Tomorrow added this comment when he posted today's 'toon: Longtime readers may recall that Conservative Jones was inspired by the self-styled internet detectives of the blogging era, circa the mid 2000s — the people who pored over pictures of a poster child for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and condemned him as a fraud because his family had what appeared to be granite counter tops in their kitchen, and therefore couldn’t possibly be financially strapped enougn to need government help. These days it’s morphed into what we now call doxxing, and it’s everywhere, so-called “pizzagate” being the latest example. If you haven’t heard of this, it’s the theory that Conservative Jones outlines in the second and third panels — I’ve taken minor liberties, but these nutjobs from 4chan and Reddit seriously deduced from references to pizza in Podesta’s hacked emails that something fishy was going on... and naturally enough it must have something to do with a CHILD SEX RING RUN BY HILLARY CLINTON. Don’t ask me to explain that one. It would all be amusing enough, if it hadn't inspired somebody to show up brandishing an AR-15 (fortunately no one was hurt).

I haven’t used Conservative J. in a while, but you might remember that he’s generally a pretty cheerful sort, with a big winsome grin. I think that’s over now. He’s the perfect character for the Trump era of trolls and doxxing and weaponized social media, but I think he needs to grow angrier to really match the moment — I’ve never seen such a bunch of sore winners as Trump and his supporters.

Of course, as is quickly becoming standard in the Trump era, this cartoon already seems outdated as we move on to the newest chapter in the Russian hacking story. Which also seems like something C. Jones would investigate....

Until next time,

Dan (aka Tom)

If this is (fair & balanced) debunking of the Post-Truth Era, so be it.

[x TMW]
From The Files Of Conservative Jones
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

Tom Tomorrow/Dan Perkins

[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow". His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Daily Kos. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly. Perkins, a long time resident of Brooklyn, New York, currently lives in Connecticut. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political blog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. More recently, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning. Even more recently, Dan Perkins was a runner-up for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.]

Copyright © 2016 This Modern World/Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)




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