No
b00m, it's not your fault at all, which is why I took responsibility. You did
not inject any heavy-handed political commentary into your entertaining strip,
O.T. Katie, you merely employed a rather light, humorous satire of government greed as part of a story whose primary purpose was, to repeat, entertainment. No one could reasonably mistake your incidental (and legitimate) targeting of government excess for the heavy-handed agitprop of
Oliver Stone or
Dick Wolf. The 150% tax was incidental to the story, a means to a greater end (and I don't just mean Katie's rear

), and not an end in itself. Nor was it particularly partisan - there is no implication that Democrats are the bad guys and Republicans the good guys. Contrast that with the execrable television series of Dick Wolf, where Conservative Republicans are always evil (sometimes even being mentioned by name, for example John Ashcroft, even though the work is supposed to be
fictional) and Left-wing Democrats are always the heroes.
No, it was
I who simply couldn't resist a sly poke at the Democratic Party, which I frankly despise, and even though my tone wasn't strident, my remarks could still have been considered provocative by members of that party or their sympathizers abroad (say European Social Democrats or Liberals). And the problem with that is I want all spankos everywhere regardless of political affiliation to feel welcome here at CSR, and to enjoy the spanking material we have to offer. Lefty Democrats should be able to enjoy
O. T. Katie even if they believe a 150% tax to be only
slightly excessive rather than the outrage to decency it is in my view. So if anyone felt my comments were
inappropriate to this forum, I apologize, although not for the comments themselves, which were dead-on.
As a matter of fact, there is little or no conservative advocacy in literature or movies, and the reason lies in the nature of conservatism itself. The Left wants one thing primarily - power - and that means a centrally-planned economy. But for central planning to have any hope of working, it is essential that everyone agree with the plan. (This was one of Hayek's great observations). Dissent is therefore dangerous to the leftist, who then seizes upon the arts as tools of political persuasion, or given the dishonesty of the presentation involved, the better term would be political propaganda. That is why you will never see, for instance, a television drama in which a man is able to save lives because he's carrying a concealed handgun, even though
thousands of such incidents occur every year in real life (and are studiously ignored and unreported by the left-leaning news media). Conservatives (and Libertarians) are not fundamentally interested in organizing society along any particular plan, and therefore tend to separate politics from art. An important exception would be Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged, which was primarily political philosophy dressed in the clothing of an old-fashioned thriller plot. (Rand didn't see herself as conservative or even
like conservatives, but that's another matter).
But politics can't always be completely separated from art, and there are good ways and bad ways of bringing it in. The satirical elements of
O.T. Katie or the musical
Of Thee I Sing (1931) are the good way. So b00m - none of this is your fault. Please go on telling Katie's stories, even if politics must enter into them a little. And I'll try to leave my political views in more politically-oriented forums.