With Enemies Like These . . .

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

—Voltaire, 1767


While in the process of surfing around the other day, looking for odds and ends of Daria stuff to scribble about, I accidentally discovered a message board frequented by neo-Nazis and people who like to argue with them, and the thread to which the search engine led me concerned White Nationalists' opinions about the Daria show. I admit to being vastly astonished that neo-Nazis would spend any time at all away from their book burning and immigrant beating and religious vandalism to watch cartoons, but who am I to judge? At any rate, the one thing that most perturbs neo-Nazis about Daria, it seems, is Mack Mackenzie, because he is black and smart, and Kevin Thompson is white and stupid. Neo-Nazis believe this is not possible, even in a cartoon, and object to it mightily as propaganda put forth by Jews. Now, that's a surprise.

One learns a lot about a person or thing by studying its enemies, and if Daria has enemies like this, that says something. This line of logic cannot be carried too far because of a certain innate fallacy in doing so. Just because Hitler loved his dog doesn't mean that loving your dog is bad, although Hitler did poison his dog, too, so maybe it wasn't a kind of love we're normally familiar with.

By a strange quirk of fate, Daria took shots at Nazism in a manner reminiscent of what was done with Adolf "Elizabeth" Hitler in The Producers. Tad Gupty proclaims that "Hitler ate sugar" to prove how bad it is, and in "Fat Like Me" we are treated to an ad for a Sick, Sad World episode called, "There's Something About Hitler," in which Der Führer is said to have been reincarnated as a "madcap leggy blonde." Daria isn't the only cartoon to bash Hitler (Daffy Duck did it, literally, in 1944, as did Donald Duck two years earlier), but the irony of Daria's situation is pleasing.

I brought this issue up in another forum, but it is better treated here in a comedy-oriented blog, where it belongs. The neo-Nazis vs. Daria thread died long ago, the n-N's doubtless having moved on to protesting some other cartoon's depiction of white people, and we will move on as well.

LATE ADD: It has been noted elsewhere that the reason Mack Mackenzie appears flawless in the show was because the show's creators forgot to give him flaws. In other words, he was likely meant to have "issues" like everyone else, but escaped that fate by sheer accident. Irony on irony. Still, most fans are fond of their Saint Mack and are willing for forgive MTV for making him perfect. Screw what anyone else thinks of it.