Larry Penner vouches that “the Democrats could run Mad magazine’s ‘What, Me Worry?’ Alfred E. Neuman for president and still carry the Empire State by a wide margin” (“True blue New York,” Queens Chronicle, August 27). That’s a harsh assessment … of Neuman. Unlike Democratic politicians in solidly blue states, or Republicans in their red-state counterparts, he had real rivals to contend with.

For decades, the dimwitted mascot of the irreverent humor institution risked losing customers to comparably foolish competitors, like Cracked magazine’s Sylvester P. Smythe and Sick magazine’s Huckleberry Fink. “Mad‘s Maddest Artist” Don Martin found gainful employment in becoming “Cracked‘s Crackedest Artist.” Fink’s “Why Try Harder?” is a more fitting slogan for political machines that have minimal incentive to serve their electors than the “What, Me Worry?” which obviously inspired it.

Cracked may have cracked jokes about how it had “a fan base primarily comprised of people who got to the store after MAD sold out.” Yet while it competed with Mad for the same pool of pocket money, customers who picked both, neither, yet another funnybook, or candy would get their choice. If they wound up wasting their time (and money), it would not be due to having to settle for a lesser-evil imposition.

Only reader loyalty could ensure the permanence of such perennial Mad features as the Fold-In or Spy vs. Spy (which long outlived the Cold War it originally satirized). Even a feature as mild as Dave Berg’s “The Lighter Side Of …” did more to keep up with the times than politicians who yearn for a return to the staidness of the 1950s (minus such upstarts as the early Mad to skewer it).

Alfred E. Neuman For President mock campaigns have always had self-deprecating slogans like “He’ll keep all his promises because he promises nothing!” and “At least he’s honest about his idiocy!” But moving more of the scope of social interaction to the realm of free association and voluntary choice — and not only, but especially, activities far more serious and consequential than gag magazines — would be a very smart thing to do.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a contributing editor at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Voters can’t get mad enough to get happy,” by Joel Schlosberg, Creston, Iowa News Advertiser, 09/02/20
• “Voters Can’t Get MAD Enough to Get Happy,” by Joel Schlosberg, CounterPunch, 09/03/20
• “Voters Can’t Get Mad Enough to Get Happy,” by Joel Schlosberg, Roundup, MT Record Tribune & Winnett Times, 09/09/20
• “Can’t get Mad enough to get happy,” by Joel Schlosberg, Greater Southwest News-Herald [Summit, IL], 09/11/20
• “Political control’s a joke,” by Joel Schlosberg, Queens Chronicle, 09/17/20
• “Voters Can’t Get Mad Enough to Get Happy,” by Joel Schlosberg, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 09/22/20

“Facebook Employees Are Outraged At Mark Zuckerberg’s Explanations Of How It Handled The Kenosha Violence,” reads the headline at Buzzfeed. One such employee asks “[a]t what point do we take responsibility for enabling hate filled bile to spread across our services?”

The apparent outrage and the specific question both conflict with Facebook’s mission statement (“to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”) and the second half of its vision statement (“to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them”).

The outrage is also very selective.

“In an effort to prevent and disrupt real-world harm,” Facebook proclaims in its community standards on violence and criminal behavior,  “we do not allow any organizations or individuals that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence to have a presence on Facebook. … We also remove content that expresses support or praise for groups, leaders, or individuals involved in these activities.”

The mission of the Marine rifle squad is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver or to repel the enemy’s assault by fire and close combat. If that doesn’t sound violent to you, you’ve probably  never fire-team-rushed across an open area under small arms fire.

The Marine Corps maintains an official page on Facebook, with 3.5 million “likes.”

It has a separate page dedicated to recruitment of individuals into the organization (and its very violent mission), with 4.1 million likes.

There’s a Marine veterans’ group with more than 20,000 members.

Facebook’s stated policies forbid those pages and groups. Yet there they are.

I’ve personally had Facebook posts deleted, and gone to “Facebook jail” for supposedly violating “community standards.”  But never has that happened to me for sharing the Commandant’s Marine Corps birthday message on my timeline, as I try to remember to do each November 10.

There’s clearly a secret or hidden clause in Facebook’s violence policies: Those policies don’t apply to people, organizations, and viewpoints the company and its enforcers either like or consider themselves beholden to.

The Marine Corps gets a free pass. The Islamic State doesn’t.

Black Lives Matter? Good to go. Kenosha Guard? Go directly to Facebook jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Unlike some — President Donald Trump and US Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) to name two — I oppose government action or regulation in the name of rectifying this kind of bias.

But it’s obvious to me that this bias is becoming a damaging business practice.

People join Facebook to say the things we want to say to the people we want to say those things to. The service has great built-in tools for personal control of who one hears from (“friend”) or doesn’t hear from (“block”).  Users neither need nor want supervision by hair-trigger scolds.

Requiring users to walk on eggshells with every post, hoping we haven’t offended the “community standards” gods, isn’t just fundamentally incompatible with Facebook’s stated mission and vision. It subtracts value rather than adding it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

A common complaint among Republicans is that their opponents are mainly in the business of manufacturing victims and turning those victims into Democratic voters.

That complaint is true as far as it goes. Yes, Democratic politicians work overtime to get out the vote for their party by portraying society at large as having wronged members of particular racial, religious, ethnic, or gender/sexual groups, and by promising reforms that end the discrimination and compensate those discriminated against.

But grievance-based politics is nothing new, nor does America’s political “left” enjoy a monopoly on it. For proof of that latter claim, one need look no further than the case of Nick Sandmann.

“I’m the teenager who was defamed by the media,” Sandmann told the Republican National Convention on August 26. But, he said, “I would not be canceled.”

Leaving aside the question of precisely how turning him into a celebrity (with stories that, while initially mildly inaccurate, were almost instantly corrected as more information came in) constitutes an instance of the “cancel culture” he decries, let’s be clear about what he, and his handlers, are up to:

Nick Sandmann publicly plays the victim for money. That’s his job, and it will probably remain his job until he’s stretched his proverbial 15 minutes as far as they can be stretched.

After participating in an anti-abortion protest in Washington, DC, Sandmann went through a tense moment with some other protesters, who were agitated about other issues, and his motives were (mistakenly, but not libelously in any sane universe) misinterpreted by journalists based on partial video.

Lawyers Todd McMurtry and Lin Wood offered Sandmann a lucrative career opportunity, representing him in frivolous/malicious defamation lawsuits that media companies settled rather than fight.

The settlement amounts weren’t publicly disclosed, but while they likely came to pennies on the demanded dollar, they also probably brought Sandmann more wealth than a life of real work would have. It’s hard to blame a teenager for jumping on a get-rich-quick con as presented by two experienced ambulance chasers. Especially one that’s actually worked out for him.

Now the Republicans are attempting to parlay Sandmann’s faux victimhood into votes by creating a new victim category: “Whiny, white, Christian abortion opponent.”

Not that such a bloc would vote Democrat absent the attention. But Republicans are afraid the people resembling that description might not bother to vote at all. And they need every vote they can get.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY