Rotogravurism*

     People keep doing it.  It's supposed to be funny: you get an unflattering image of some outgroup or person you don't like, especially some "candid" snapshot, and you slap it up on the Internet, maybe with some stereotyped caption or a little Photoshopping.

     As an exercise in team-identification, I suppose it works fine.  But it's really not all that funny.  Yeah, yeah, George Bush or Hillary Clinton next to movie villains or venomous creatures, aren't they so much alike?  Black Lives Matter protesters or Ferguson rioters with minstrel-show dialog, open carriers or rural protesters tagged by lines filched from Hee-Haw, what the hell does that prove?

     Yeah, they look like jerks.  Trip the shutter at the wrong moment and we all look like jerks, stereotypes, half-wits -- because sometimes, maybe a lot of the time, we all are.

     People who feel desperate, people who think they're unheard, often choose annoying, wrong-footed ways to try to get heard.  Others just like to watch the world burn, and want to snatch what they can from the flames.  It's not funny, it's tragic.  It's even tragic when you disagree with their message or think it's grounded in fallicies.  It's more tragic when they're just looters, scaring -- hurting -- the innocent and vulnerable.

     You don't have to like 'em, you don't even have to respect 'em much and I sure hope you're willing to present alternative opinions -- but cheap jokes are just cheap.  Leave that stuff for the Three Stooges or Abbot and Costello.  They were willing to be their own saps rather than mocking random strangers.  "Ooo, them guys, they're just stooooopid," isn't debate and it doesn't stop genuine malefactors, it's just more hostility heaped on the fire.

     How badly do you want to watch the world burn? Isn't that where you keep all your stuff?
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* As in rotogravure.  Don't ask your Mom, she won't remember either.