Equal Opportunity Offender
Cartoonists in the U.S. are painted as being from the left or the right. Some even as Democrat or Republican. Cartoonists are not partisan in Canada. We're not Democrat or Republican, we're just anti-stupid. We attack both sides. We just want to illustrate the stupidity.—Michael de Adder, on Twitter, July 2, 2019 (after three of his cartoons went viral)
Some authors like to play favorites making one side look good one, while making fun of the side they don't sympathise with.
Not in this show. In this kind of show, there is no such thing as an acceptable target. They either mock all sides of an argument or none.
This trope is never played completely straight all the time due to the fact that Most Writers Are Human and all humans are biased (at least unconsciously).
This trope applies when a show doesn't have bias for any side in a given situation. However, it can be used inside the story too, when a character is particularly offensive to everybody.
A number of people have called themselves equal-opportunity offenders when defending themselves from accusations of bias, bigotry, etc, and have had varying degrees of success. The less successful ones have helped make the phrase a tad controversial, if only by association.
In addition, it has been argued that if different groups of people are in unequal situations to begin with, then it's difficult to offend them all "the same".[1] Of course, this argument is itself controversial, and has been challenged as misguided, unfair, or patronizing. It's a heated debate.
Film
- Monty Python's The Meaning of Life starts with a long list of those who it will offend, working out to pretty much everybody.
Live Action TV
- Top Gear. They recently got trouble with the Mexican embassy for it.
- Frankie Boyle will attack anyone and everyone.
- Mongrels was very free about who it set out to offend.
- In-universe example: Dr. Gregory House.
Stand-Up Comedy
- George Carlin, moreso in his early days than his later ones. If you exist, he makes fun of you. Woman, man, black, white, left, right, didn't matter. To him, you sucked or someone was making you up.
Web Original
- The Straight Dope: Cecil Adams doesn't shy away from sensitive topics just because they may offend. In one column he said, "About the only people this column has failed to offend already in its checkered history are left-handed.
- Ansem Retort.
- Uncyclopedia
- What The Fuck Is Wrong With You?
- Subnormality
Western Animation
- South Park is famous for mocking every side in an argument.
- The creator of Family Guy has stated that his goal is to offend everyone. The writers on Family Guy, however, go much easier on certain targets than they do on others.
- American Dad is a better example, for example the main character and his daughter (who are right/left wing radicals respectively) are both depicted as complete hypocrites.
- Eris says this in her debut episode in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.
- Animaniacs. If it exists, it will be mocked.
- The Boondocks. Unlike the comic strip, which is unmistakably left-wing in its bias.
- Drawn Together
- ↑ An analogy: if you dealt out an "equal" amount of physical pain to every living human, say with a single punch to the gut, then some might feel nothing while others die a Death of a Thousand Cuts thanks to the previous actions of numerous other not-so-equal opportunity hurters — or just from having unluckily poor health.