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Acceptable Political Targets

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A subset of Acceptable Targets. This one deals with demonized political groups. It's gonna be a Long List, because politics is one arena where (in a democratic society, at least) all groups not only have to compete against each other, but have to publicly compare themselves with each other. This too easily leads to making the other guy out to be a Strawman Political.

You don't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference...
—Richard Nixon -- losing a race for governor in 1962, six years before becoming President
First rule of leadership: Everything is your fault.
—Hopper, A Bugs Life

It is important to remember that your opinion on how (un)deserving of ridicule or hatred a given political group is has nothing to do with whether it should be listed here; this is merely an index of how the group is treated in popular culture. (So ideally examples shouldn't be "These guys suck lol" or "We deserve to be on here because we're so persecuted.")

This is not That Other Wiki, so we're not concerned with what groups actually believe. It's also not just about groups that are disagreed with or controversial—the group has to be among the Acceptable Targets for mockery and derision.

See also Strawman Political. And do not forget the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment.

Examples of Acceptable Political Targets include:


Politicians as a group

Sleazy, corrupt, and willing to lie to their grandmother to get elected. Ultimately, politicians are about the easiest group to make into an acceptable target - just about any politician has a topic that they can be attacked on legitimately, and the profession as a whole tends to disproportionately attract sleazeballs only interested in power. It generally takes several years of cleanliness, honesty, and competence before a politician is truly respected by most people - and then, to paraphrase an old Disney song, you're not a politician anymore, but a statesman.

Video Games

  • Dragon Age 2 allows Hawke to make 'politicians' jokes at every turn, and at one point if you tell Varric that you are going to change the way Kirkwall works he tells you that entering politics is either "idealism or madness...so, either way, right up your alley."

Film

  • In "Blazing Saddles", we see Nazis in line to try out for Hedley's army of thugs, and a (heavily implied) Jewish actor playing the dictator appears briefly. He is also visible repeatedly giving Nazi salutes in the background of the Great Pie Fight, as well as during the swearing in scene.
 

Hedley: RIGHT hands!

 

Western Animation

  • In The Simpsons Sideshow Bob, who has tried to kill Bart many times, had a tattoo saying 'die Bart die'. To explain it to his parole board he says it means in German "the Bart the". A woman exclaims that it's not like anyone who speaks German could be evil.

Real Life

  • Public service announcements were directed at English fans traveling to the 2006 World Cup in Germany not to mention the war. Special attention was paid to the fact that the German authorities wouldn't take kindly to people doing Hitler impressions and the like.
    • Imitating stereotypical Nazi behavior is usually understood by modern Germans that a person believes these behaviors are still common in Germany and that rules and standards of society are still the same. Which is probably the single most guaranteed way to piss about every German seriously off. And the English are particularly infamous for doing it. In fact, it is illegal in Germany to make the Nazi salute in public.
    • Also, being Hitler. Seriously, there is a Eddie Izzard routine that goes like this:
 

Hitler ended up shot in the head, drowned in petrol, set on fire, buried in a ditch. So...that's fun. I mean, it's funny...Because he was a mass-murdering fuckhead...as many eminent historians have pointed out. And it was his honey-moon too!

 

The Ku Klux Klan

(Blazing Saddles and South Park both have excellent examples) because of the hoods, ostentatious rituals, and racist actions and beliefs.

Literature

  • Sherlock Holmes is a good example for how this trope changes over time. At the time people complained over how Arthur Conan Doyle demonized the KKK, but no one raised a eye-brow over how the Mormons were painted as a Church of Evil in the first Holmes-story.

Radio

  • Notably, they were featured as the villains in The Adventures of Superman... back in the '40s, when they were still considered kind of respectable. Well, the villains were called "The Clan of the Fiery Cross," but it's very clear who they meant. That show helped expose the truth about their racist agenda, which led to the organization as it was then being eventually completely disbanded. (Klansmen nowadays are pretty much all imitators) That's right, Superman defeated the Klan.

Film

Film

  • This paranoia was brilliantly mocked in Stanley Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove. Also, chillingly, portrayed in Fail Safe was the dire consequences that many feared would be a result of the tensions between the USSR and the US.

Meta

  • Stalin is mentioned along with Adolf Hitler on the Godwin's Law page. Calling someone a Stalinist is seen as worse than just a Communist (in Western Europe, Communist is not seen as that bad. Stalinist, for similar reasons to the Nazis, would be.)

Theatre

 

"I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a Congress!"

 
      • Bear in mind that this comes from the mouth of someone who is both a member of Congress and a lawyer.

Film

  • To a large extent they've replaced the USSR as the Communist Big Bad (see, for example, Tomorrow Never Dies). Interestingly, for a few years after the fall of the USSR the new Russian Federation (often incorrectly called things like the "Russian Republic") became a brief stand-in for the USSR due to the common misconception that it remained as powerful. Crimson Tide and Goldeneye were good examples of this.
  • This was very much a Cold War era trope. Consider the James Bond films: the Red Chinese are Goldfinger's backers (1964), and in they tolerate Scaramanga operating out of their country (1974).
  • And then there's The Manchurian Candidate...

Live-Action TV

  • How bad is North Korea? It's like this: Jon Stewart had on a guy who wrote about his experiences helping North Koreans escape to the Freedom-Loving paradise that is...The People's Republic of China.

Video Games


Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF


Feminists

Tend to be characterised as shrill misandrist harpies who twist any kind of male / female interaction, no matter how innocent, into a warped representation of male domination and violence against women and who, at the furthest extreme, actively wish to see men eradicated. They're also often presented as utterly humourless, absurdly politically correct and hypocritical lesbians who actively hate sex, especially if it involves a man. For such characters, feminism is a kind of reverse-chauvinism, rather than a movement for equality.

Real Life


The Canadian Senate

Held in particularly low regard because Senators are appointed by the party in power and there is no input from the voting population. Since Senators also have very little actual power, they are generally perceived as useless party cronies with no redeeming traits. People outside of Canada may notice this stereotype echoed in Canadian-made shows.

Real Life

  • Similarly the British House of Lords, largely made up of political appointees but formerly with many hereditary aristocrats, is generally portrayed as full of incredibly ancient out-of-touch people who're either permanently asleep or actually dead.
    • To some extent, this reputation was even brought to American awareness when Saturday Night Live did a sketch about it (or was it the House of Commons?) where, among other things, Will Ferrell's character kept pushing a resolution to declare Oasis the greatest band ever. The other points of order were equally trivial and/or outright rude.
    • Recently the opinion of the House of Lords seems to be improving, because they're spending most of their time opposing nearly everything the government passes to them. The fights between the two are referred to as Parliamentary ping-pong, as both houses have to agree on something before it becomes law. (However the Commons can invoke the Parliament Acts to push laws through. There is also the Salisbury Convention which states that if something is in the ruling party's manifesto, it should eventually be allowed to pass.)


People who vote for major parties

Characterized as broken down or unable to think for themselves. Obviously these people are brainwashed, there's no other reason they wouldn't vote for the right party.


People who don't vote for major parties

Characterized as stupid, naive or college students who only do it because they want to be different. Frequently overlaps with Communist and Libertarian stereotypes.


Moral Guardians

Let's face it, trying to get media censored, often for sometimes trivial reasons, won't ever endear anyone to you. Especially nowadays.


Orly Taitz


Liberals and Conservatives in general

Due to The War On Straw, people perceived as being, or who defend even a single position that is, far to the left or right of center politically are often portrayed as crazy or evil.

Real Life


Greens (as in the U.S. political party once represented by Ralph Nader)

Single Issue Wonks who don't care about anything but their overly naive brand of environmentalism. Their platform is actually a lot broader than that. In fact, the word "green" in their case might be said to stand for reform or renewal rather than the "woodsman-spare-that-tree" cliche.

  • Ralph Nader himself is also frequently made fun of as a politically irrelevant miscreant who gave the 2000 election to George W. Bush. (Although technically he was was unaffiliated with the Green Party after the 2000 election.) One joke told by Conan O'Brien: "Ralph Nader announced he's running for president again. Immediately after the announcement, the guy sitting next to Nader on the park bench told him to shut up."

The Australian federal government

Subject to the usual vitriol, but state and local governments in particular are often seen as incredibly corrupt and/or comically inept, and either way painfully underfunded and of questionable use.

Real Life

  • Former South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, the sole reason Australia doesn't have an R rating for video games. Unfortunately, his seat was pretty secure thanks to the votes of other old people who think video games are all Pac-Man. After he resigned, much progress was made on moving toward getting that R rating in place.
  • Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband and the Digital Economy, is rapidly becoming a target of scorn and laughter from virtually the entire internet, and even the American government, among others, got in on the scorning action! It's not just because he is pushing a plan to instate a mandatory internet filter across Australia. It's not just said filter has been proven in tests to be ineffective and detrimental to internet performance. It's more to do with the fact that he's still pushing the filter plan at every opportunity even though it's overwhelmingly unpopular and at this point has no chance of becoming a reality.
  • John Howard, who somehow managed to be the second longest-serving Prime Minister in history (possibly because his opponents were either devoid of charisma or Mark Latham). Considered a toady to George W. Bush (who was an Acceptable Target overseas long before he was in the US), racist, miserly and looking kinda weird. It was a moment of glorious schadenfreude for a large part of the Australian public when not only did his party lose the election, but he lost his actual seat in the House of Representatives—becoming only the second Prime Minister in Australian history to suffer this (the first being in 1929).
  • Speaking of hated Australian political figures, Pauline Hanson and One Nation are considered the national mascots of racist, xenophobic, idiotic, trashy bogans led by a fish-and-chip shop owner and 'celebrity'. Even long after the One Nation furore blew over, Hanson was still pretty much everywhere milking the "celebrity" for all it was worth, memorably leaving Australia to emigrate to England... because she didn't like Australia's welcoming attitude to immigration... and then returning to Australia within a matter of months...
  • The Family First party have a rather deserved reputation for being fundamentalist, homophobic, heavy-handed and a large part of its leadership coming mostly from the congregation of a church that is very exclusive and selective of its members. They're also known for issuing contradicting statements and flip-flopping between sides on an issue depending on whether being deeply conservative is fashionable with the public. Their press conferences are very much a case of Think of the Children personified.
    • Though not a political party, the Australian Christian Lobby is derided for similar reasons, and also for its support for the internet filter and opposition to the R rating for games, again both cases of Think of the Children. More than that is their audacity in claiming and acting like they represent the interests of all Australian Christians, which they kind of don't. Their leader also gained some infamy for using ANZAC Day as an opportunity to denounce immigration and the legalisation of gay marriage as "unAustralian".
  • Julia Gillard, the current Prime Minister, is susceptible to this owing to the circumstances which led to her taking the role; she's widely seen as The Starscream to her predecessor Kevin Rudd. The federal election which soon followed didn't help - her campaign was widely poked fun at for being inconsistent and unfocused, to the point that partway through she declared everything so far to be a mistake and said she'd change that and start being the "real Julia" (cue every Australian comedian trying to figure out who the "old Julia" was and what the "new Julia" did to her).

Convicted Criminals


Political Muslims

Can end up being painted as people who want everyone to be Muslim and take us back to The Dark Ages, or are all considered to be in league with Osama Bin Laden (no Sunni/Shia divide here!) who is mentioned on Godwin's Law for this very reason. The fact there are a number of political parties opposed to Islamic immigration that paint a view very similar to this doesn't help much.

Real Life

  • They are quite infamous for imposing Sharia Law. "Strictly". Immigrants in other countries rally to impose it. While they say they're doing it peacefully, they're quite mean to those who think differently.

Film

  • The film Network is all about satirizing these organizations.

Live-Action TV

Web Original

  • The Onion is pretty much a satire of news in general.

Western Animation

  • The Simpsons mocked Fox News about their political leanings a few times which was so acrimonious that Fox nearly sued itself over it.
    • For example, Not racist, but #1 with racists.
    • We're unbalanced and it's unfair!
  • Family Guy had an entire episode mocking Fox News.

Comic Books

  • This Sluggy Freelance strip demonstrates that sometimes you don't even need to specify what political group you think is living excrement.
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