I have to say, I’m not a huge fan of using the literal punchline as the post title. I don’t think I’d be here if I didn’t enjoy reading comics. Still, I half-expected the joke to be “pushing the Overton Window,” which has been done a lot so I’m not too disappointed.
Ed, by definition the Overton Window doesn’t apply to bubbles. It’s specific to mainstream discourse. Different bodies politic may have different windows, but the range of acceptability within subcultures is described by the more general concepts of mores and norms.
Its lack of granularity is one of the major criticisms of the window as a concept: Some disagree whether “mainstream” is a meaningful yardstick. This is related to the debate over whether a political center exists at all or is merely a rhetorical concept.
Looks to me like an Anderson window, but that’s only because I keep getting flyers in my mailbox advertising Anderson windows, and that’s what they look like.
This comic strip doesn’t clearly signal that the cartoonist knows what the Overton window is. Is Clyde telling “Green Hat” by implication: “I never imagined that you would express a mainstream political view”?
I don’t know who Green Hat is. If he is established in the strip as a radical, the joke would make sense to regular readers of the strip. But if not, this joke doesn’t work at all.
Mark in Boston – As we get yet another Anderson window ad in the mail (and since they come from a variety of sources we can several in one day) our reaction is – “If they are having this much trouble that they need to constantly advertise them – they must not be good!”
Most we have gotten is 5 of them in one day’s mail, each from a different mailing source.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Yeah, I too had to look that one up. I think this strip’s sole purpose is to use that term.
It seems to me that the contents of the Overton window depend on which bubble one lives in.
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I have to say, I’m not a huge fan of using the literal punchline as the post title. I don’t think I’d be here if I didn’t enjoy reading comics. Still, I half-expected the joke to be “pushing the Overton Window,” which has been done a lot so I’m not too disappointed.
Ed, by definition the Overton Window doesn’t apply to bubbles. It’s specific to mainstream discourse. Different bodies politic may have different windows, but the range of acceptability within subcultures is described by the more general concepts of mores and norms.
Its lack of granularity is one of the major criticisms of the window as a concept: Some disagree whether “mainstream” is a meaningful yardstick. This is related to the debate over whether a political center exists at all or is merely a rhetorical concept.
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Andrew Millar, what is “mainstream”at any given time? What some call mainstream now was once radical right, Klanspeak.
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Yes, Boise Ed, what some call mainstream now was once radical. That’s what the Overton Window describes. That’s what it is.
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Looks to me like an Anderson window, but that’s only because I keep getting flyers in my mailbox advertising Anderson windows, and that’s what they look like.
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This comic strip doesn’t clearly signal that the cartoonist knows what the Overton window is. Is Clyde telling “Green Hat” by implication: “I never imagined that you would express a mainstream political view”?
I don’t know who Green Hat is. If he is established in the strip as a radical, the joke would make sense to regular readers of the strip. But if not, this joke doesn’t work at all.
LikeLike
Mark in Boston – As we get yet another Anderson window ad in the mail (and since they come from a variety of sources we can several in one day) our reaction is – “If they are having this much trouble that they need to constantly advertise them – they must not be good!”
Most we have gotten is 5 of them in one day’s mail, each from a different mailing source.
LikeLike