Politics
The character of the Penguin, particularly as portrayed by Burgess Meredith, has often been used as a theme to mock public figures that supposedly resemble him. Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, has made numerous references comparing former Vice President Dick Cheney with the Penguin, including a laugh similar to the one heard in the 1960s Batman series. In a similar manner, Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, called Franklin D. Roosevelt a criminal and told his audience to "ask Batman" "if they don't believe him," showing a picture of Meredith as the Penguin next to one of the former President; Roosevelt and the penguin are both pictured wearing a monocle and sporting a cigarette holder, suggesting a resemblance. Cheney was mocked in a similar capacity on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, while The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson chose to imitate John McCain with Meredith's Penguin laugh.
In May 2006, a Republican-led PR firm, DCI Group, created a YouTube video making fun of Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. The video portrayed Gore as the Penguin using one of his trick umbrellas to hypnotize a flock of penguins into believing in the existence of global warming and climate change.
In October 2008, an internet meme surfaced when YouTube users posted videos that compared Republican Presidential candidate John McCain with the Penguin. Most of the meme focused on a scene from "Dizzoner the Penguin", an episode of the 1960s Batman TV series, in which the Penguin and Batman debate as opposing candidates for mayor of Gotham City.
Read more about this topic: Penguin (comics)
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)