Dear Abby: You're Obsolete. Part I: Syndication Is Bullshit

Dear Abby, You’re obsolete. Part I: Syndication Sucks.
I hate, with every quark, electron, atom, molecule, protein, cell, organ and inch of my body, advice columns. But of all of them, “Dear Abby” is the worst.

I’m sure that, in its hey-day, it was the best EVAR, but it really needs to go.

Since I know none of you assholes read the newspaper, here’s a Wikipedia reference because I’m a lazy alcoholic.

I’m sure a majority of us at least know of her existence in some subconscious plane of memory or another. The column [beginning in 1956] was taken over, when the original vaginal beach author died, by her daughter, and it is a shining example of the many reasons that syndication sucks.
Of course, I probably have to explain syndication, and give some kind of reasoning behind this, huh?



A couple of stellar examples outlining the reasons that syndication sucks total elephant balls for pennies that are cut in half are two comic strips: Peanuts and B.C.

Peanuts, a comic strip by Charles Schultz about a group of kids somewhere in Nostalgic America who repeat the same fate [read: lame jokes] day after year after decade, began in seven newspapers on October 2, 1950. I hear that the strip was actually funny at some point or another in the ancient and savage times of the mid-Twentieth Century, but I’ll have to call “bullshit” on that one [in 1962, it was named Best Humor Strip of the Year by the National Cartoonists Society; this is the same organization that gave Garfield the same award in 1981 and 1985, although it wasn’t at its apex of suckitude yet, but close to the summit], since I really don’t care enough to read the first four decades of strips; my dad had a few of the books, and although I got the occasional laugh out of the old strips, those laughs were few and far between.

Schultz died in 2000, shortly after the 50th anniversary of the strip and his announcement of retirement. By the time he bought the football farm on Feb. 12, 2000, his strip was published “in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries [link]. Yes, it was a very, very popular strip, and yes, it was probably good at some point, hence the wide domestic and international fan-base. It also spawned a few television shows and specials, and a whole shitload of marketing propaganda that haunts us to this day in the form of greeting cards, plush toys, key-chains, 9 mm “Red Baron” semiautomatics and “Peppermint [Ass]Patty Brand Strap-ons.”

OK, you guys got me … I made the first three up.

B.C., a strip that was funny back when it debuted in 1958 up until -- and this is a wild guess -- two weeks later, was written and drawn by Johnny Hart. The strip, which portrayed cavemen who talked a lot about Christianity [since Christianity existed when we were still trying to eat rocks and draw shitty pictures on cave walls with our feces … kind of blows a hole in the “Planet Earth is 5,000 years old flat a product of The Almighty and if you don’t agree with me you’re a heathen and we’ll beat you with rocks and threaten eternal damnation” theory, eh?].

Hart died this past year at the age of 76 “at his storyboard;” at its height, B.C. “appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers with an audience of 100 million.” Link. Despite the fact that the man died, his family will continue producing his strip:

Regarding [B.C. and his other, equally lame strip, The Wizard of Id], nothing will change. The Hart family has been involved for years, and both strips will continue without interruption. link.

Apparently, since dumbass consumers who wouldn’t know art / humor if it bit them on the ass can never let a bad thing die [*cough cough therepublicanparty cough hack Ralph*], his family is going to continue writing the strip using old computer databases of his drawings and an apparently genetic predisposition to having such dry humor that it would make even the sandiest in the land of soccer-mom snatch seem like being pushed into a pool in the middle of the Pacific.

Now, how can I hate both of these strips, besides, of course, the fact that they were shittier than a fat family’s septic tank after taco night? Because both Schultz and Hart are dead, and both of their strips are going to continue to waste all kinds of space on my newspaper pages, thanks to syndicators who are too pussy to take a chance on new cartoonists in fear of pissing off our nostalgic Baby Boomer soon-to-be-overpresent-overlords. B.C.’s continued presence doesn’t even piss me off as much as Peanuts; at least the family is writing “original” strips – even though the strip hadn’t had an original idea in decades … Peanuts is just rerun over and over again, every weekday and Sunday, like That 70s Show on FX. Case in point:



So, much like most television, my comics pages in the newspaper are apt to recycling the same “safe” garbage rather than allowing some new talent to come in and try to make itself a hit. Fuck, man, The Plain Dealer, the paper I torture myself with daily, will carry the same reiterated, reprinted comics day after day, but refuses to carry a comic strip by the very talented Aaron McGruder, The Boondocks because old people don’t get it and are the most apt to have nothing to do all day but bitch over not being able to reread the same comic strip they’ve read for the past fifty years. You want to read old, reiterated garbage? Well then buy one of the fifty million books, have a nice, tall, frosty, refreshing and smooth glass of shut-the-fuck-up, and make some room for the next contender for “longest running and most degenerating comic strip since the Huns finally sacked and destroyed the Roman Empire,” you know, the next Peanuts or

B.C.; one thing that I admire about Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, is that he retired before his comic became a source of recycled pollution rather than a source of fresh humor and ideas. I mean, what the hell? Peanuts gets repeated over and over again, and nobody has the decency to rerun even a good strip, like The Far Side? Unreal.

Christ on a cracker, bring in some new talent or plaster in advertisements … at least the ads change at some point in time or another … and at least they save me money.

/sometimes.