PrintJanuary 22, 2011
Laughter as the Cure for Liberalism
"Liberal" and "unfunny" are perhaps the two best words to describe most political cartoons. But a rare conservative series is helping to change this.
Diversity Lane is a political cartoon series that follows the exploits of a hyper-liberal family and their eight-year-old conservative daughter. Since 2008, Diversity Lane has been the only conservative cartoon series that continually and convincingly skewers the PC left. It has been praised by Brent Bozell and Laura Ingraham and has been featured on such sites as Politico, FrontPage Magazine, The American Thinker, and World Net Daily. It is currently available on the web and at various conservative websites, where it has a growing cult following.
The characters of Diversity Lane are the highlight of the series. Regular characters include Alex, the ponytailed ACLU lawyer with a heart of gold -- but only if you're a criminal. Allison is the politically correct wife always on the lookout for the latest multicultural trends. Devon is an angry leftist intellectual with no sense of humor or irony. Sierra is a middle-aged hippie who boarded the New Age bandwagon in the 1960s and never got off. Diversity is the star of the series. The conservative eight-year-old daughter is quick-witted and sarcastic. She is never at a loss to undercut the ongoing madness in her family with a dose of sanity.
Zack Rawsthorne is the creator of Diversity Lane. A professional artist, Rawsthorne started the cartoon series to "get America laughing at the left." Diversity Lane puts the author's views of the liberal left on center stage, told in a series of single-panel cartoons. At the Lane household, even choosing a babysitter and what toys the children play with take on political overtones. For instance, one cartoon shows Diversity saying to a friend, "I don't have a Barbi's Dreamhouse anymore. Devon made me give it away because if I kept it that would mean I was a materialist capitalist pig." No topic is safe from Rawsthorne's biting humor, whether it's the president, mainstream media, protesters, global warming, biracial adoption, or the education system.
Rawsthorne was inspired to start Diversity Lane as a way to speak out against the leftist abuses of our freedoms and leftist hatred of America. The visual style is inspired by the old Addams Family comics, of which Rawsthorne is a fan. He recently told Frontpage magazine:
My regularly re-stated chief goal is to get America laughing at the left. I'd like to help people- through my cartoons- see the left for what it is: a twisted, anti-rational, often anti-human world-view which, through its widespread spokesforces in the mainstream media, has come to dominate our cultural mindset to a dire degree. And all through cleverly devised arguments and theories which routinely represent good as bad and bad as good. In their extreme ideological gyrations they can be not just dangerous but funny, and this needs to be more fully explored. If enough people can come to comprehend the laughingstock essence of leftist thought we'll go a long way to undermining it as the pervasive, destructive force that it is.
Another interesting inspiration for the series is talk radio and conservative websites such as American Thinker. While these institutions are currently under attack by the media for supposedly spreading "hate," the author -- a former Democrat -- specifically thanks these outlets for helping to broaden his worldview and to sharpen his critique of liberalism. He writes:
Derided by a largely under-educated mainstream culture as ‘mere' conservative authors or talk show hosts, these individuals ... turn out to be thoughtful, ultra-informed professionals ... their oft-touted ‘scary right wing bent' turns out under scrutiny to be essentially a font of common sense and the benign, classically American values of the Founders of our country.
Rawsthorne is talking with a media group about syndicating the series to newspapers in 2011. In the meantime, Diversity Lane was mostly seen on the internet...until now.
This month, Rawsthorne will launch a new "best of" book of Diversity Lane cartoons. The glossy, 241-page coffee table book is sure to anger liberals and delight conservatives of all ages. The book is also called Diversity Lane: A Liberal Family Saga and can be ordered at Amazon or through the www.diversitylane.com website.
Over the past few years, Diversity Lane has mostly grown through word of mouth. But as its modernist artwork and inspired dialogue reach new readers, it is sure to become a mainstay in the world of conservative commentary.
If laughter is the best medicine for liberalism, then lefties should fear the spread of Diversity Lane.
Joe Hatton writes from Maryland.
