Well, maybe. I wasn't suggesting "the comic" as a specific modality, rather just some alternative to the ATC style of covers of marching people and sloganeering covers. It wouldn't have to go as far as the Economist, which would involve a total makeover. As for getting ATC to change its style in any way, whether by performance or otherwise, you try it. My own "performance," which involved six years of publishing a good, cool-looking, accessible mass disarmament journal in AA, had zero impact. Neither does my dry sense of humor, if I may use the word, in my own writing, invite imititation. Alas. --jks
If anyone wants to encourage the comic as the rhetorical mode of choice among leftists, it defeats the purpose to say: "I have yelled at ATC about this for years, for all the difference it makes. The problem is that people on the left are earnest, dull, and irony-impaired. --jks." The comic has to be performed, not declaimed.
BTW, many American leftists I know are masters of ironic self-deprecation, as comics from marginalized groups (like women and gay men) often are. It's a tactic of survival popular among us, because we have had to overcome (literally or figuratively) an experience of showing up at a demo of only a handful of individuals, so it's full of pathos. The other tactic also favored by leftists is witty put-downs of fellow leftists, or, more accurately, attempts at such.
Modern comedies are often tragic.
Yoshie
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