You may have seen this “Bizarro” comic strip in your local paper yesterday:
On his blog, artist Dan Piraro elaborated on his comic with a level of honesty you don’t expect from a syndicated cartoonist:
Millions of people all over the world are so dedicated to the belief that this one man [the Pope], elected by other men, is divinely ordained by GOD that they will do anything he says, no matter how foolish or dangerous. The most conspicuous of these dangerous edicts is the condemnation of birth control and condoms. If but one man in a very fancy dress said it was okay to use birth control, millions of babies each year would not be born into poverty and subsequently die of malnutrition and disease. If he encouraged the use of condoms, untold numbers of people would be protected from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, thus avoiding the suffering and death of millions more. These facts are undeniable and serve to illustrate in gory detail how dangerous the human inclination toward superstition can be.
Which prompts this question: if he is willing to let millions of followers take their chances with nature and “faith,” without protection, why does he ride around in a bullet-proof box? It isn’t difficult to see the Popemobile as a four-wheel condom.
Amazing. Hilarious. And very, very accurate (even without the Popemobile line).
And there’s more where that came from, too.
If every comic strip had this sort of hidden backstory, I might actually read the funny pages more often…
(Thanks to Barry for the link!)