Our Dumb Century - Running Gags

Running Gags

There are a number of running gags through this supposed history of the twentieth century, which are not immediately apparent. One is the existence of a piece of farmyard equipment called 'The Chicken Raper'. Another is that every major celebrity trial, from Fatty Arbuckle to O.J. Simpson, is referred to as 'the trial of the century'. A third is the newspaper fear-mongering by drawing a caricature of America's enemy du jour (among them, Spaniards, Nazis and hippies) sexually assaulting an anthropomorphized Statue of Liberty.

Three consecutive pages show a fictionalized end to Richard Nixon's presidency which loosely parallels the end of Gary Tison's life: First Nixon is arrested for his connection to the Watergate scandal; the next week's headline says he then escaped and is on the lam; the third says he was gunned down in a shootout with cops (but Spiro Agnew is still at large).

A more subtle satire is the rise of a (fictional) company called 'Global Tetrahedron', which first appears as a small business in the first decade of the century and gradually grows into a multinational behemoth.