. . ."The brain child of a Jewish Connecticut Yankee named Alfred Caplan (AKA Al Capp), Li'l Abner took place in a backwater hillbilly village called Dogpatch. The drawing was superb, especially of the ladies. But the significance of the strip was that it is concrete evidence of a broader political environment that used to describe mainstream American media. Political correctness had not yet stifled creative endeavors. For example, the Soviet Union, during departures from life in Dogpatch, was renamed Lower Slobovia. In that environment, everybody was drowning in snow and living in misery." . . .
. . .Capp stopped drawing the strip in 1977, after it ran for 43 years. He died two years later. Other strips have outlived their creators, either by recycling the archives or by being inherited by a next generation of cartoonists. Not so for Li'l Abner. As such, the strip kind of serves as a bench mark for American culture and establishes the point of departure from what used to be its broad-based tolerance for biting satire. Since then, political correctness has been closing our minds. None other than Jerry Seinfeld has warned us that comedy can be considered dead since we can no longer make fun of the "wrong" people." . . .
. . ."Capp stopped drawing the strip in 1977, after it ran for 43 years. He died two years later. Other strips have outlived their creators, either by recycling the archives or by being inherited by a next generation of cartoonists. Not so for Li'l Abner. As such, the strip kind of serves as a bench mark for American culture and establishes the point of departure from what used to be its broad-based tolerance for biting satire. Since then, political correctness has been closing our minds. None other than Jerry Seinfeld has warned us that comedy can be considered dead since we can no longer make fun of the "wrong" people." . . .
