Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but there is some validity under the humorous hyperbole. Hit the jump and I'll explain.
My wife crochets (quite well!) and usually turns on some sort of mindless TV program as background noise. She's recently taken to watching Futurama via Netflix. Two episodes in particular leapt out at me recently as being poignantly relevant to today's political dialogue. Forgive me that I do not remember their names.
In the first of these episodes, Bender (a robot, for those who don't watch the show) and Amy (a human) fall in... um, pheromones. Seriously, it wasn't love, Amy was just going through a "falls for the bad boys" phase. So the two (not-)lovebirds discuss marriage idly, and of course everyone's against it. Because, you know, "robosexuality" is BAD! The debate becomes a huge interplanetary issue, then a campaign to allow "robosexual" marriage. Here's where it gets startlingly relevant: though presented with tongue firmly in cheek, every single argument used by the opponents of "robosexual" marriage could have been lifted word for word from today's opponents of marriage equality. I promise you I'm not exaggerating - every bloody word, and perhaps most significantly, the egregiously laughable slippery-slope premise of thoroughly unconnected data-points which tends to underlie every "serious" conservative opposition to marriage equality. What happened after (for the record, they won the right to get married, but didn't) was far less relevant than the simple fact that a show made in (around) 2000 was bang-on with regard to the foolishness still going on today. I was reminded of a sign I saw a protester carrying on a Women's Rights march: "I cannot believe I'm still having to protest this shit." (Bravo, sister.) Futurama's creators managed to make a (maybe) more relevant political argument than the current crop of left-leaning ad writers: these anti-equality arguments are stupid. They're not relevant by any stretch of anyone's imagination. They don't make sense. Positioning it as humor didn't take the sting out of the punch at all - not that the people who should be feeling it ever will, unfortunately.
In the second episode, which might have been called Clockwork Origins (not sure), the evolution debate is played out in microcosm when daffy Professor Farnsworth drops some cleanup-nanobots in a nutrient-rich chemical soup and they, well, evolve. It's all as silly as the rest of the series, and none of it was as relevant as the first five minutes of the show. Farnsworth showed up at an Anti-Evolution rally (something so stupid it could only exist in a comedy cartoon... right?) and ridiculed the rallyers as, well, idiots. During the resulting diatribe, a former colleague of his (who happened to be an English-speaking space orangutan) stepped out of the crowd and debated the merits of Evolutionism versus Creationism with Farnsworth. I wish I could remember the debate word-for-word, but briefly, the orangutan doc challenged Farnsworth on the basis that there was no known linkage between men and apes. Farnsworth promptly cited said link... so the orang doc said there was no link between apes and the link. Farnsworth cited such... repeat, repeat, back to Australopithecus Africanus. When Dr. Orang challenged that, Prof. Farnsworth reluctantly admitted that they hadn't actually found the link between apes and Africanus yet. Dr. Orang promptly gloated that this invalidated the entire theory of evolution (you're laughing, aren't you? ...you shouldn't be). When Prof. Farnsworth replied, "The link is there - we know that we'll find it," Dr. Orang replied, "Pshaw, just believing in something doesn't make it true... so sayeth the mighty Creator-being in the sky!"
You couldn't miss the irony if you tried, but I couldn't find either of these shadow-plays seriously funny. From around 12 years in the past, author Matt Groening managed to put his finger squarely on the pulse of current (and, obviously, then-contemporary as well) "conservative" craziness. I wish I were surprised. Maybe I wish I weren't appalled.
Do I have some kind of message waiting for you in here, other than that so-called "conservatives" (I no longer believe that term legitimately applies, for reasons described better by others) are basically arguing out of their asses and relying on what Stephen Colbert called truthiness more than facts? Sorry, but no. I can say it genuinely terrifies me that intelligent, educated people are as susceptible to this as anyone is - and that's from personal experience. I know a gentleman who has a doctorate in Physics, who will tell you that no unconditional love existed in the world until Jesus Christ came and brought it. He'll also tell you that President Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist, if you sit still for it. This is a man with 15 years of schooling who can do, in his head, math problems so complex I have no idea what I'm looking at when he writes them out.
This is why I have to agree with another post I've recently read here, titled something like No, we can't talk - not now, now ever. (Apologies to the author if s/he reads this; I genuinely tried to find your article for credit, but couldn't locate it. Feel free to link if you do read.) This is no longer a debate; it's become the equivalent of a food fight with words. I'm not wise enough to suss out a workable, actionable countermeasure, but conversation and debate clearly isn't it.
I did just want to highlight the (to me, remarkable) fact that a comedy writer could so specifically and accurately skewer the flagrant inaccuracies and blatant appeals to emotion over reason of the "modern-day" (now there's a misplaced epithet) Republican party. Not like others haven't, it just struck me as perhaps the most worthwhile thing about Futurama that I've ever observed.
Well, Katey Sagal is quite cute without that awful red wig. That was in the running.
Thank you for reading.