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Straw Character: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:simpsons_gop_hq.jpg|link=The Simpsons (Animation)|right|Members of the Springfield Republican Party include [[Dracula]], an attempted murderer, [[What Do You Mean
{{quote|''"Oh my God! The dead have risen and they're voting Republican!"''|'''[[The Simpsons|Bart Simpson]]''', in "Sideshow Bob Roberts," on finding the tomb of a [[Vote Early Vote Often|"registered voter" who died in 1909]]}}
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The American strawmen sometimes fall into one of these categories (see [[Political Stereotype]]):
* 1. Liberal. An [[New Age Retro Hippie|aging hippie]] who refuses to believe his movement is dead, a [[Straw Feminist]] who loathes anything with a Y chromosome, a [[Malcolm Xerox]] who thinks [[Everything Is Racist]], a self-righteous hipster (or [[Bourgeois Bohemian]] if they're older) who worships Michael Moore and is utterly convinced of his/her own moral superiority, or an insane environmentalist who will do anything to further his crazy agenda. Invokes First Amendment protection whenever people try to [[Its Not Porn Its Art|censor pornography, no matter how graphic and/or obscene]], yet wishes to purge all references to [[Family
* 2. Conservative. A sneering, racist [[Good Ol' Boy]] who's seriously behind the times and is morbidly obese, a [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] who only wants money, or a strict [[The Fundamentalist|Fundamentalist]]/televangelist (bonus points if they're evangelical or Mormon). Takes the opposite stance to the Liberal regarding Censorship and the First Amendment: wants to protect [[Violence Really Is the Answer|depictions of violence]], but [[Sex Is Evil|calls for the banhammer on any work where people kiss a second too long or reveal even the slightest amount of skin]]. Listens obsessively to [[Rush Limbaugh]].
* 3. Libertarian. An insane survivalist with a stockpile of guns and supplies who smokes copious amounts of marijuana, or a [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] who obsessively follows [[Ayn Rand]], a snotty rich WASP teenager who thinks he's a member of the intellectual elite after reading Heinlein and Rand, or an overzealous activist who spams Internet message boards with ads for [[Ron Paul]]. Worships either [[Ron Paul]] or [[Ayn Rand]], one or the other, never both.
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The strawman is a relative of the [[Windmill Political|Windmill]]. While a strawman is a dumbed down version of a real enemy or threat, a windmill is not at all the threat it's believed to be - if it even ''exists'' in the first place. A person who [[Windmill Crusader|honestly fights such windmills]] can be used as a [[Straw Loser]], while a [[Manipulative Bastard|dishonest person]] who tricks others into fighting windmills typically is a [[Straw Hypocrite]].
{{examples
== Please don't add [[Real Life]] or [[Truth in Television]] examples. [[
== Comic Books ==
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** Jack Chick outdid himself in a Crusaders and Alberto comics, where the main characters meet new political strawmen every issue who state things such as the Catholic Church is really a front for [[The Illuminati]] or Communism is actually a form of Satanism.
* Goldilocks, from the Vertigo comic ''[[Fables]]'', seems to be this at first, with every negative stereotype about liberal feminists you can think of, spouting Communist rhetoric, exclaiming "Oh my Goddess!" at every turn; however, it turns out it's all an act to cynically manipulate her followers. Also, she's insane.
* In an issue of'' [[Preacher (Comic Book)]]'', Jesse was listening to a late-night debate between a Straw Feminist and a Straw Conservative which was so stupid he got pissed off, called the radio station, and used his [[Compelling Voice]] to make them confess what each really wanted. They ''both'' said they want cock.
* The [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] version of [[Lex Luthor]] occasionally edged into Strawman Conservative territory, though when the character actually ran for president the writers were careful not to describe his political leanings at all. Though it's worth noting that at one point, Green Arrow decries something President Luthor has done with "This would never happen with a Democrat in the White House!" (Green Arrow's own leftist strawman status is debatable; make your own decision on whether his statement there was meant as a strawman's or dead serious.) In his defense, approximately 100% of Democrats ''aren't'' Lex Luthor, so he's probably right. Although the whole "supervillain" issue is probably more relevant.
** The animated "Batman/Superman: Public Enemies" avoids this by making Luthor a third-party independent.
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*** Given the time period when these comics were being written, it sounds like most of the authors were trying to turn Iron Man into George W Bush (or Dick Cheney) and disagreed about whether or not Bush was right.
** Made worse when ''the same writers'' started using Tony as a punching bag, for example JMS, the writer of most of the above, would later have Thor beat up Tony.
** ''Invincible Iron Man'' has been averting -- or maybe reverting? -- this trope by portraying Tony in a sympathetic enough light that it's plausible to write off his most [[Anvilicious]] moments from ''Civil War'' as the actions of a [[Well
** And as of ''Dark Reign'', Stark is now [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|a pathetic figure]], in that everything he's tried to build has simply allowed psychopathic opportunists like Norman Osborn to usurp control of Stark's apparatus and become a vastly corrupt secret dictator. Granted, its not Stark's fault that he wasn't able to anticipate the entire population of the United States being reduced to having the intellect of algae, that being how stupid you'd have to be to give Norman Osborn control of anything, let alone ''everything''.
** Characters like [[The Scrappy|annoying twit Sally Floyd]], who would be an obvious strawman liberal under most other writers (If you don't know anything about NASCAR or Myspace, you're hopelessly out of touch with the American public? Really?). [[Word of God]] says we're supposed to take her seriously. Captain America writer Ed Brubaker delivered a well-deserved [[Take That]] in Young Avengers Presents: Patriot, in which Cap's sidekick Bucky points out how stupid this line of reasoning is to fellow Cap-inspired hero Patriot. Amusingly, his phrasing matched something he said in an interview ''word for word''.
* ''[http://accstudios.com/f/synopsis1.htm Liberality For All]'' is summarized as such: ''It is 2021, tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9/11. America is under oppression by ultra-liberal extremists who have surrendered governing authority to the United Nations. Hate speech legislation called the "Coulter Laws" have forced vocal conservatives underground. A group of bio-mechanically enhanced conservatives led by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and a young man born on September 11, 2001, set out to thwart Ambassador Usama bin Laden's plans to nuke New York City.'' As hard it may seem to believe, this series does contain one or two strawman liberal depictions.
* ''[[Normalman]]'' has both a Strawman Liberal ''and'' a Strawman Conservative, and they're technically the same character. That is, the malevolent, overzealous reactionary nutjob Ultra-Conservative, and his alternate personality, the radical, chaotic anarchist Liberalator. Ultra-Conservative eventually suppresses the transformation by thinking about "commie agitators", "pinko faggots", and the "death penalty" while shouting that he "will not '''''change!'''''"
* The various ''[[X-Men]]'' and spinoff series semi-regularly feature intolerant, hate-preaching [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purifiers fundamentalist groups] obviously based off televangelists and Southern Baptists with some Ku Klux Klan thrown in for good measure as villains. Several major arcs featured a Reverend Stryker becoming a major threat to the X-men. Less common, but still present on rare occasions, are religious folk shown opposing the extremist fringe. (Anti-mutant discrimination is often played to echo historic discrimination against Blacks in America. That the actual emancipation movement first took root in religious circles is not similarly reflected.) They also, especially in the last few years, represent gays, so religious persecution makes perfect sense. That's the X-Men - they stand in for every minority group ever. Any political view can be justified with the right interpretation of a religion.
* In [[Warren Ellis]]' ''[[Black Summer]]'', [[Well
* [[Green Arrow]] Oliver Queen was shown as a hero for the people in his earlier stories, and had a majorly left-wing agenda, referring to rich conservatives as fat cats. Occasionally though, in more recent stories writers will let Queen's negative qualities such as his self-rightiousness or his contempt for aforementioned "Fat cats" get the better of him, and he comes off, intentionally or not, as something of a Straw Liberal. This is taken to extremes (and possibly played for laughs) in ''[[The Dark Knight Strikes Again]]''.
** Miller went overboard rather strongly in DK 2, but Queen had taken to cynically gaming the system in ''[[The Dark Knight Returns]]'', which might explain his later histrionics as a means to keep a smokescreen up lest his cohorts turn on him like Superman had when {{spoiler|he burned off Queen's arm with heat vision in the backstory}}. Like Ollie said, "You have to make the bastards work for you."
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*** And that a literal hippie blacksmith is an integral heroic character in the novels, And runs {{spoiler|a secret free-slave operated intelligence network during his imprisonment}}.
* Being a staunch socialist, Upton Sinclair's books are chock full of capitalist straw men.
* ''[[Mercy Thompson]]'' has coherent and dangerous hate groups spring up every time a new supernatural species [[The Unmasqued World|leaves the masquerade]]. Often overnight. They are always religious, conservative, and popular enough to push a federal bill to declare werewolves -- at this point, going out of their way to only out their [[Friendly Neighborhood Vampires|everyday heroes]] [[Phlebotinum Rebel|using their curses to help others]] -- as non-citizens and [[What Measure Is a Non
* ''[[His Dark Materials]]'' makes out that the Church is a dominating, overbearing, malicious institution that likes to break children away from their [[Our Souls Are Different|daemons]]... [[Utopia Justifies the Means|to save them from themselves.]]
* In the novel ''Prayers for the Assassin'', nuke attacks on American cities as well as Mecca result in blue America converting to Islam out of fear and compassion for the poor victimized Muslims, forming the Islamic Republic of America. Meanwhile, all the conservatives in those territories emigrate to the red Christian States of America. It's also a possible subversion as neither of the two are shown to be working particularly well, as they are overrun with armed religious extremist militias, ravaged by global warming and are being invaded by both Mexico and Canada.
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** In "Stranger in a Strange Land," Heinlein once again goes back to libertarian views involving a rich and famous [[Mary Sue]] writer/doctor/lawyer, protecting an even ''more'' rich and famous [[Mary Sue]] Martian/Changeling/cult-leader from a human society of fascist-politicians and religious-fanatics who want to stop/control/kill him -- sort of an interplanetary version of ''Atlas Shrugged,'' along with arguments comparing humans to monkeys and God.
* [[Kurt Vonnegut]] was also quite the [[Strawman Political]] writer - using absurdly simplistic extremes which make a strawman look like [[Iron Man]]: in ''Welcome to the Monkey House'', he attacks population-control with a society that forces people to take drugs that kill their sex-drive. Meanwhile in ''[[Harrison Bergeron]]'' he attacks egalitarianism by featuring a society where everyone is forced to handicap themselves so that everyone will be ''truly'' "equal," with strong people being forced to carry weights, smart people being forced to wear noise-making headphones to disrupt their thinking and marry stupid ones, and good-looking people being forced to marry ugly ones etc.
** Harrison Bergeron [[
** The society in ''Welcome to the Monkey House'' is not very strawman, when you realize that there really are many people who do believe that abstinence is the only "moral" form of birth control. The Catholic Church, with 1.2 billion members, just happens to believe this, among other religions. The story also has suicide parlors with "hostesses" who dress like dominatrices. It's really a wacky, off the wall story that pushes all kinds of buttons.
* Iain M. Banks of the Culture series portrays religion and traditional societies as one dimensional and morally grotesque...in a way only an anarchist could.
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* [http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page RationalWiki] is a direct reaction against Conservapedia that takes constant potshots at conservatives, fundamentalists, Conservapedia, and ''especially'' its founder, Andrew Schlafly. Unlike Conservapedia, though, they make no claims to objectivity.
* The [[YouTube]] Video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaGgpGLxLQw Beware the Believers] plays the straw evolutionist for laughs.
* [[
* [http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c0cf508ff8/prop-8-the-musical-starring-jack-black-john-c-reilly-and-many-more-from-fod-team-jack-black-craig-robinson-john-c-reilly-and-rashida-jones Proposition 8: The Musical]. You tell a group of Straw Conservatives when you see them.
* The Year Zero ARG, which promotes the [[Nine Inch Nails]] album of the same name, depicts the United States after 15 additional years of rule by Strawman Republicans and gets absolutely ridiculous. It's stated they're forbidding women to work, have genocidal bands of Christians killing non Christians in certain suburbs, they make their soldiers take drugs to both combat the drug the evil neocons poisoned everyone with (yes, that's what they did) and get Special Forces to take even worse drugs that forces the body to equate killing with sexual excitement, the local [[Mega Corp]] exploits drug addicts to boost their profits, and they make up "terrorists" by creating a virus. This is what Trent pulled together when he decided to stop [[Broken Aesop|taking drugs himself and get back to making music]], so it was forgiven. Given how [[Anvilicious|over the top it was]], it wasn't all that convincing.
* Youtube series ''Epic Rap Battles of History'', any time politics is even mentioned and always against the right. (Among other things, Lincoln slams Chuck Norris for voting for John McCain... no, that's it, voting for a Republican for President is apparently insult enough.) Probably the height of this was the John Lennon versus Bill O'Reilly battle, where the rapper playing O'Reilly does a verse about how evil he is and how black his heart is. Exact words.
* [http://www.landoverbaptist.org/ The Landover Baptist Church], which, along with Christwire.org, [[
** Ms. Betty Bowers, a fictional member of said fictional church, has her own [http://www.bettybowers.com/ website] and [[YouTube]] [http://www.youtube.com/user/MrsBettyBowers channel]. She spends a good deal of her videos [[Rich Bitch|extolling her own opulent lifestyle]] and tends to feature [[
* A [[Let's Play]] of "Life and Death 2: The brain", the Lets player does a subdural Hematoma operation...and intentionally holds the suction pump in the brain too long so part of the brain is sucked out. The player then proceeded to say "Oh, she was a Tea Party candidate! She wasn't going to need ''THAT''!"
* The site [http://www.derailingfordummies.com Derailing For Dummies] is dedicated to providing a snappy generic response to counter a variety of tangential, emotion-based arguments. But the strawman? It's in the very intention of the site. By using this site, you ''invoke the strawman'' that paints your opponent as a [[Insane Troll Logic|common troll]] who argues with only the over-the-top prescribed fallacies featured. And unless you are responding to a post that uses those arguments exclusively and word-for-word, you've just [[Derailing|obstructed any valid arguments from being addressed]]. If the irony isn't quite potent enough, just consider when it's used in advance to address [[I Know You Know I Know|"arguments I hear all the time"]].
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'': [[General Ripper|General Eiling]] is shown to have sinister straw-conservative leanings, he's eager to drop [[Nuke
** However, like the comic books, they avoid hinting which political side Lex Luthor leans toward in his policies when he runs for president. A quick line of dialogue revealed he was running as an independent.
{{quote| "Polls among likely voters place Luthor within striking distance of both major party candidates."}}
* ''[[Batman the Animated Series]]'' features a villain not taken from the comic pages, Lock-Up, who is a straw-conservative and vigilante who despises the "liberal media" and enjoys throwing everyone he doesn't like into prison. Lock-Up may have been an attempt to make Batman seem more liberal by comparison, since Batman, a rich private citizen who succeeds where the corrupt public system fails, has been accused of being a conservative-friendly character.
* The villain "Looten Plunder" on ''[[Captain Planet and The Planeteers]]'', a completely amoral capitalist who dreams of "stripping entire continents" for monetary gain, was a strawman conservative (At least [[Card
* ''[[South Park]]'' sometimes does this with its social and political-themed episodes. Not when both sides are made to look like asses (how the show normally deals with these issues), but when one side is unambiguously set up as wrong based on faulty pretenses, for the sake of dropping the episode's moral. Like the episodes about hate crimes and alcoholism.
** Though, as implied, [[South Park]] has no qualms with building a strawman of ''both'' sides in the same episode. This is exemplified in an in-universe TV debate (which might have been intended mostly to satirize how news channels tend to do this) between "Pissed-Off White-Trash Redneck Conservative" and "Aging Hippie Liberal Douche". As their ''actual names''. [[It Makes Sense in Context|They were discussing immigrants from the future.]]
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* ''[[Harvey Birdman]]: Attorney at Law'' featured some Animal Liberation Nut Strawmen in "Free Magilla"; they freed all the animals from Mr. Peeble's pet store, even though this seemed to cause the creatures more anxiety than relief. When Magilla Gorilla later reunites with Mr. Peebles, he asks him to "Take me home- home to my nice, safe cage", the group who stole him splashes red paint on him and shouts "Animal freedom now!"
* ''[[Futurama]]'' takes a crack at the Strawmen who surround the whole, "Gay Marriage" issue(s). This is particularly Anvilicious, because the issue is whether or not robots should be able to marry humans. It was explained in a previous episode that dating robots (and getting the cheap thrills of a robot programmed to love you) caused the collapse of society and the wiping out of life on earth by an alien species. Following this analogy, one might suppose that ''allowing gay marriage could wipe out all human life, [[Straw Man Has a Point|actually justifying the strawmen]]''.
** The argument in the episode about dating robots was ''itself'' a strawman. It was presented as an [[Very Special Episode|after school special]] designed by the [[Moral Guardians]] to [[Scare
** The argument in the "Robot Marriage" episode was not "cheap thrills of programmed love", and instead about people (and robots) who honestly (with the exception of Bender, obviously) love each other being able to socially express their love. Or did I make up the parts where Amy and Bender had sex despite not being married?
* ''[[American Dad (Animation)|American Dad]]'' is this trope incarnate. Or at least it used to be. Originally, the show seemed to be created solely for this, but eventually [[Seth Macfarlane]] switched all of his strawmanning and [[Author Filibuster|soapboxing]] back over to ''[[Family Guy (Animation)|Family Guy]]'', and apparently allowed ''American Dad'' to actually have a purpose other than "Conservatives are evil".
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