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Acceptable Professional Targets: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}{{cleanup|The major sections need to be sorted alphabetically.}}
{{quote|'''Dromiceiomimus''': Oh! Why don't [[Trope Name|PROFESSION MEMBERS]] play hide and seek?
'''T-Rex''': Why?
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Inevitably corrupt, often an [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]] and puts their reelection ahead of everything else. The stereotypical politician is willing to promise voters the moon, and then [[Did You Actually Believe?|give them the shaft]] as soon as the election is over. The word "politician" even used to be an epithet!
* See also [[Acceptable Political Targets]].
=== Web Comics ===
* [https://sinfest.xyz/view.php?date=2004-06-26 This] ''[[Sinfest]]'', where Slick starts his campaign to become President.
{{quote|'''Monique''': What happened to becoming a porn star?"
'''Slick''': I thought I should aim a little lower.}}
== [[Straw Critic|Critics]] ==
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* '''Vietnam Veterans''': The [[Shell-Shocked Veteran|traumatic flashbacks]] of said group are quite often played for laughs. Try depicting the same thing occurring to soldiers returning from the war in Iraq under the context of comedy and see what kind of response you'll get.
** Even among the [[Media Watchdog|"how dare you criticize our troops" crowd]], recruiters are, sometimes, free game.
** Considering that recruiters [https://web.archive.org/web/20130826180341/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1889152,00.html kill themselves with some frequency], one has to wonder about where [[Media Watchdog|their]] sympathies lie.
* Generally, the officers rather than the enlisted men or draftees are the true demons here. Draftees get the most sympathetic portrayals: [[Punch Clock Villain]] at worst, but more often than not simply hapless dupes.
* '''[[Drill Sergeant Nasty|Drill Sergeants]]''' are usually treated as less than human machines made simply for demeaning and putting the trainees through [[Training from Hell|hell]]. While this face is mostly true, they'll never push a soldier to the point of causing them life-threatening difficulties. And if one of their squad is feeling depressed and/or suicidal or just received heartbreaking news (such as a death in the family), they'll show them all the moral support they can muster.
== [[Morally-Bankrupt Banker|Banker]]s ==
Bankers have always generally been portrayed as greedy and amoral, believing they can always get their way if they throw enough money at the problem (and it will rarely be their money they're throwing). They obviously overlap with Accountants and Loan Sharks.
Typically, this mostly applies to [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|higher-ups]] in the banking industry, while the local teller attending the [[Take a Number|slow-moving queue]] is generally closer to [[Service Sector Stereotypes]].
* However, beware of running afoul of [[Once-Acceptable Targets]], given the strong associations banking conspiracies have with anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe.
** In American Media they tend to be aged white [[Fat Bastard]]s or [[Corrupt Hick]]s.
** This seems to have recently extended to [[Misblamed|anyone working in the financial sector]], with everyone from trading software developers to stockbrokers to commodities traders apparently responsible for the housing market collapse and bailout from 2007 onwards.
** It has taken on a new lease of life in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis a.k.a. the Great Recession, starting from around 2007. Since then, it
=== Film ===
* The [[Bank Run|run on the bank]] appears in a few films, with portrayals ranging from supportive or sympathetic to downright hostile. The Fidelity Fiduciary Bank in ''[[Mary Poppins]]'' is made to look greedy and reckless, while the Bailey Building and Loan in ''[[It's a Wonderful Life]]'' is portrayed with sympathy. Invariably, the big fish will be the first to be portrayed as the robber barons, stopping at nothing to bankrupt every other business in the community for their own gain.
=== Web Comics ===
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Addressing someone as "a clown" when they're not actually engaged in live artistic performance as one is a fairly common pejorative.
* [[wikipedia:Charlie Brown (The Coasters song)|Charlie Brown]] by The Coasters ("Charlie Brown / Charlie Brown / He's a clown / that Charlie Brown / He's gonna get caught / Just you wait and see / (Why's everybody always pickin' on me?)") dates to 1959.
* [[Bob Rivers]]' parody of [[Bruce Springsteen]]'s "I'm Goin' Down" (as "The Dow is down, down, down, down / The NASDAQ's down, down, down, down / Greenspan's a clown, clown, clown, clown / My stocks are down...") is more of the same.
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** For bonus verification points, "[http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/should-the-times-be-a-truth-vigilante/ Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?]"
=== Live
* In ''[[Community]]'', Annie has stated her reason for being on the school newspaper is to mitigate the fallout to a previous drug addiction.
{{quote|'''Annie:''' No one will think about my time in rehab if they think I'm a writer!}}
=== Web Comics ===
* [https://xkcd.com/2512/ This] ''[[xkcd]]'' strip shows a journalist asking whether he can share a quote from [[The Bible]], apparently thinking it was a new phrase.
== Economists ==
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=== Live-Action TV ===
*The Ferengi in the Star Trek Franchise are something of an example of this stereotype. Though in DS9 it is downplayed and they come off as more [[Adorkable]] then distasteful. Even Ferengi Arms dealers are [[Adorkable]].
== Postal workers ==
There are three different, independent stereotypes involving delivery people or the various neighbourhood workers who come to the door.
* One is that whatever they're delivering arrives invariably late, damaged or not at all. (Or, conversely, in some [[Parallel Universe]] everything shipped arrives yesterday.)
* Another is the [[Cheating with the Milkman]] trope, which (like [[Pizza Boy Special Delivery]]) seems to get applied as a [[Porn Tropes|porn trope]] to every one routinely sent to the house. The mail man, the milk man, the pool boy, the grounds keeper, the parcel courier, the repair man — just so long as they're [[Totally Eighteen]], all are fair game for the wayward house wife. In porn, their [[Distaff Counterpart]]s (such as the [[Gag Boobs|silicone-breasted]] pizza delivery lady) are even more sexualized.
* And then there's [[Going Postal]], where the targets of all of these tropes abruptly cease to be gruntled, unexpectedly snapping and opening fire on everything and everyone. OK, ok. I'll put down the tropes and back away now... just so long as no one gets hurt. I didn't mean what I said. Any of it. Really. Just please don't shoot. Please?
Most often, the derision and the stereotypes are directed against the overall system, not the individual letter carrier — who occasionally gets a friendly or sympathetic portrayal and who, alas, must trudge through hail and snow and sleet<!-- or "heat", in the wording on the main NYC post office in [[Miracle on 34th Street]] --> and dark of night to complete their appointed rounds. In most nations, the main post office is run by the government — and in some places the "swivel service" in general is (or is perceived to be) inefficient or just plain unreliable.
=== [[Film]] ===
* The two ''[[Back to the Future]]'' sequels play with the stereotypes about mail being delivered late. In 1885, a message is [[Product Placement|placed with a Western Union agent]] for delivery to a specific named person at a seemingly-arbitrary highway crossroads in 1955. It arrives exactly on time. In 2015, a weather forecast predicts rain ending at some very exact time, down to the second — which proves correct. Doc Emmett Brown then exclaims "If only the mail were this reliable!" (playing on stereotypes that neither was reliable in the era the films were shot, 1985).
=== [[Live-Action TV]] ===
* One of the [[Wayne and Shuster]] CBC TV specials in the [[The Seventies|late seventies]] opened with "We're already getting hundreds of letters of mail from people praising this episode." When questioned "We're getting mail? About this show?" the immediate response is that, as soon as the post office started operating more like a private business<!-- as a Crown corporation, instead of a government department--> the mail is moving!
=== [[Music]] ===
* Songs about someone eagerly awaiting a letter from a loved one, or a lover, are historically commonplace; the song "Please, Mr. Postman" has been re-made by many musicians.
** [[Bob Rivers]], as a [[Song Parody]], has "Please, Don't Shoot Mr. Postman" which plays directly into the [[Going Postal]] tropes, complete with incompetent police ordering the Uzi-toting letter carrier to "put down that letter opener".
{{reflist}}
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