Gawd, comic strips suck
Yesterday, reading the Comics page in the newspaper, I had a queasy feeling with the “Luann” strip.
The story in sum, an incomprehensible and implausible story. Um. So, they got the idea to have the class visit Washington DC for Obama’s Inauguration, a prospect that excited in particular Luann’s black friend, Delta. (Character name I had to get from the “Josh Reads” website comments here, and if you want the entirely predictable and rather dumb spoiler to be exposed, don’t go that link.) They raised money, but as so happens, ended up short of just enough money that one student in the class would not be able to go. Now, frankly in the real world a school class would not let this happen, but if it were to happen I believe they would find an academic reason (ie: the student flunking out is not going) or behavioral (the student caught sniffing glue in the boys’ room is not going) to disqualify a student. But in the Luann-world, the teachers had the class draw straws. The black student drew the short straw.
The story wound its way to even more ridiculous premises when Luann and her friend (the frizzy haired girl, I don’t know her name) came up with the perfect fund-raising tool to get that extra bit of money so Delta could go. See, the idea they hatched, which was accepted by the higher ups of this high school (how, I do not know) was getting the class bimbo (again, I’d have to look up her name, but that’s basically her role in the strip) to agree to be dunked into a tank for a buck (or five, I don’t recall) a ticket. This lead to the strip presented here, and I see that her name is Tiffany. From that strip, she was forced to put on a t-shirt, tied in a knot, and there were a few strips of a gaggle of guys waiting to dunk her, drooling over her. She quit, and — ha ha! — Luann filled in, and the lines dissipated.
This part of the story actually reminds me a bit of a part from this episode of “This American Life”, where the writer of “My Possee Don’t Do Homework”, the book the movie “Dangerous Minds” and the tv show that followed were based on, commented on the continued Hollywood debasement from book to movie and movie to tv show, commenting on an episode where her class had a fund-raiser at a strip joint with “I would not have approved of that.”
Anyway, they somehow or other get the funds. I think Tiffany ended up not going, maybe? And they go to Washington, and it leads to this strip…
To which I knew that my worst fears of where this rambling and disjointed story is leading were about to be confirmed. Though, my thought was “I hope that she’s about to have her long time dream of meeting Senator Patrick Leahy affirmed.”
It’s all a little bit nauseating, isn’t it?