History Main / StrawCharacter

* In ''Series/ThirtyRock'', Jack and Liz have some straw conservative and straw liberal traits respectively. Although both characters are portrayed as flawed yet sympathetic, it's pretty obvious the writers are on the liberal side in real life. The pokes at conservatives have the feel of serious-ish {{Satire}} while the pokes at liberals have the feel of light-hearted SelfDeprecation. Not that it really matters since the show mostly runs on the RuleOfFunny anyway. As with the ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' example below, [[SelfDeprecation that didn't stop the writers from attacking liberals as well]]. The episode "Jack-Tor" basically has Liz position herself as a [[WhiteMansBurden White Savior]] and ends with Tracy calling her out and pointing out that her attitude is itself, quite racist.
* ''Series/AllInTheFamily'' had the character Archie Bunker, who was created by producer Norman Lear to be a Neanderthalesque caricature of working-class conservatives. [[MisaimedFandom It backfired.]]
** Bunker was based on Alf Garnett of ''Series/TillDeathUsDoPart'' and its sequels. Creator Johnny Speight claimed the character was based directly on his own father's POV (in adapting Alf Garnett in Archie Bunker, Lear injected his own father's attitudes and catchphrases as well). Garnett also backfired, being a racist, borderline anti-Semitic idiot who became an idol to people who seemed to miss that fact that he was created, scripted and acted by ''Jews''.
** Archie Bunker was balanced out with the [=strawman=] liberals of his daughter Gloria Bunker-Stivic and her husband Michael Stivic. These were ''token'' Strawmen, who usually got the last word and/or were proven right by the end of the episode, leaving Archie with AnAesop which proves it.
** Archie got used as a strawman in-universe when he complained about a pro-gun-control editorial by a local TV station. The station manager realized that by giving Archie air time to present an "opposing view", he could stack the deck even further in his favor while following the letter of the then-extant "Fairness Doctrine". Sure enough, Archie made his side of the debate look absolutely ridiculous by suggesting that airlines should "pass out the pistols" to passengers before each flight to prevent skyjackings.

** There are also several episodes where members of Congress or White House staffers in concert with StrawmanNewsMedia conduct investigations that turn into politically expedient {{Witch Hunt}}s. Also, the evidence behind it is always shown as nothing more than either conjecture or hearsay.

* The Daily Planet columnist Dirk Armstrong in ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' comics was created as a strawman conservative, though some later writers gave him more depth and sympathetic qualities, such as having to raise a blind teenage daughter on his own. His [=strawman=] status should have been obvious, given his physical resemblance to Radio/RushLimbaugh. While he is portrayed initially as a Superman fan (for being tough on crime), he is the first to turn on Superman after he loses control of his powers and becomes an energy being... though [[DorkAge in hindsight]], he might have been the OnlySaneMan on this subject! Thankfully, soon after that storyline ended, he was PutOnABus and has not been seen since. Some writers that handled the character seemed to think that any conservative-leaning, ''at all'', constituted being a wacko extremist. Meaning that when Armstrong vowed to devote his column to making sure a mayor with a poor gun rights record wasn't elected (at least until the election), it slammed straight into StrawmanHasAPoint territory so hard that if you weren't aware of the character's status as a [=strawman=] whipping-boy, you'd have thought they ''meant'' him to be right. For extra points, he said this while at a costume party and dressed as Lincoln... the mayor was dressed as ''Caesar.''

** Much like how Mike “Meathead” Stivic filled this role on All In The Family, more often than not, Stan’s daughter Hayley fills out the role of the straw man liberal. As a character, she tends to alternate between a well meaning, socially conscious liberal who tries to do the right thing but goes about it the wrong way, to a self righteous shrill know nothing know it all soapbox Sadie who opposes various causes just because her dad supports them and for a desire to appear to have the moral high ground. A glaring example of this is her hypocrisy with men. She has no problem whatsoever casually dumping men for any and all reasons and has done so at the drop of a hat, expecting them to “get over it”. However, the minute SHE is the one dumped, all sanity and logic go flying out the window and she goes on an insane violence spree.

->'''[[WesternAnimation/AmericanDad Stan Smith]]:''' Make your voice heard, even if it's a whining, sanctimonious liberal voice trying to get illegal immigrants free hair gel and heroin.
->'''[[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy Brian Griffin]]:''' Or if you're a trigger-happy, conservative, weasel-faced hate spigot.
->''(Stan shoots Brian in the leg)''

* The final sequence in 1936's ''Things To Come'' is based around the idea that anyone who questions Everytown's black-clad, arguably techno-fascist leadership is opposed to "progress". Not to ruthless, dehumanizing progress, not to an obsessively technological society completely cut off from the natural world (at one point a small girl asks her great-grandfather what "windows" were), certainly not to a government that has outlawed private ownership of airplanes and declared its opposition to the ''existence'' of independent sovereign states, but to ''progress itself''.

Characters of this type are extremely one-dimensional. [[WriterOnBoard Every aspect of them is geared towards advancing the views of the author.]] The presence of such characters is often jarring and sometimes offensive to people who actually hold the beliefs that are being misrepresented; in addition, strawmen are very ineffective tools to convert or convince people of opposing beliefs and tend to encourage ConfirmationBias. Their ability to always be right within the politics of their creator frequently makes them come off as extremely arrogant, condescending and unlikable. This is especially annoying when a normal member of the cast suddenly breaks the flow of the story to get on a soapbox and deliver AnAesop.

A strawman can have pretty much any viewpoint. Why bother addressing the real issues of, for example, gun control, when you can instead portray all firearms advocates as bearded, racist, hillbilly lunatics ranting about black helicopters and wanting to own their own nuclear warheads? And so it goes with other examples; capitalists literally worship the bottom line and would sell their own kids into slavery if they could; liberals are all [[PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil constantly outraged]] at [[DirtyCommunists secret Communists]] aiming to destroy morality and personal choice; conservatives are [[TheHorseshoeEffect constantly outraged]] intolerant bigots who want nothing more than to see oppressed minorities suffer; scientists look down their nose on the religious, then shake their fist at God while plotting to surpass Him; the religious are wide-eyed, superstitious madmen; feminists want to kill all men; and so on.

A strawman can have pretty much any viewpoint. Why bother addressing the real issues of, for example, gun control, when you can instead portray all firearms advocates as bearded, racist, hillbilly lunatics ranting about black helicopters and wanting to own their own nuclear warheads? And so it goes with other examples; capitalists literally worship the bottom line and would sell their own kids into slavery if they could; liberals are all [[PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil constantly outraged]] [[DirtyCommunists secret Communists]] aiming to destroy morality and personal choice; conservatives are [[TheHorseshoeEffect constantly outraged]] intolerant bigots who want nothing more than to see oppressed minorities suffer; scientists look down their nose on the religious, then shake their fist at God while plotting to surpass Him; the religious are wide-eyed, superstitious madmen; feminists want to kill all men; and so on.

* Wiki/RationalWiki is a direct reaction against Conservapedia that takes constant potshots at conservatives, fundamentalists, Conservapedia, and ''especially'' its founder, Andrew Schlafly. Unlike Conservapedia, though, they make no claims to objectivity.

* ''Literature/LordOfTheWorld'' portrays everyone who is not a theocratic, reactionary monarchist in the worst possible light, as [[DirtyCommies Marxists]] to a man, who while professing atheism [[StrawHypocrite actually believe]] that “Man is God”, which in practice just means [[GodEmperor worshipping their leader]] and giving no regard to the rights of individual humans that they claim to profess anyway (despite [[BlatantLies claiming to be a democracy]], which the narrative seems to believe). Euthanasia requires no consent from the patient, and the state outright encourages suicide in response to hardship. They also want to murder exiled royals (decades after they were deposed) as well as ''every Christian on Earth''. Even apostates want to murder their former coreligionists. And despite claiming to be for science and reason, the Humanists don’t do that either, since they shut down all the universities[[note]]which is [[HilariousInHindsight even more risible]] now that the stereotype of universities is [[StrawmanU Berserkeley]][[/note]] and TheHero points out that Humanism is the logical endpoint of substituting subjective emotion for objective reality, so there is overlap with StrawmanEmotional here as well. But the biggest reason they are a straw man is because the narrative refuses to recognize any ideology other than theocratic monarchism on one side and pagan Marxist Satanism on the other. [[FalseDichotomy If you aren’t one then you must be the other.]]

* In ''Literature/TheSupervillainySaga'', the President of the United States is Preisdent Omega and he is a HateSink who is a former Nazi General and came back in time because the future is a utopia he found to be incredibly boring. He's also a FantasticRacism genocidal nut. Why is he a StramanPolitical? [[{{Trumplica}} Well, much of his description is that he's got a bad toupee and tiny hands...]]

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' sometimes does this with its social and political-themed episodes. Not when both sides are made to look like asses (how the show normally deals with these issues), but when one side is unambiguously set up as wrong based on faulty pretenses, for the sake of dropping the episode's moral. Like the episodes about hate crimes, pederasty, and alcoholism.

** Authoritarians are their biggest strawmen of all, with absolutely no redeeming qualities shown. The police and military are little more than violent dadaists looking for reasons to screw with black people. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is considered a major threat, whilst Satan is just misunderstood. Canada's royal family traditions involve men mutilating their wives. The world's governments got Earth banned from the Universal Council in one episode because they were liars and cheats.

A strawman can have pretty much any viewpoint. Why bother addressing the real issues of, for example, gun control, when you can instead portray all firearms advocates as bearded, racist, hillbilly lunatics ranting about black helicopters and wanting to own their own nuclear warheads? And so it goes with other examples; capitalists literally worship the bottom line and would sell their own kids if they could; liberals are all [[PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil constantly outraged]] [[DirtyCommunists secret Communists]] aiming to destroy morality and personal choice; conservatives are [[TheHorseshoeTheory constantly outraged]] intolerant bigots who want nothing more than to see oppressed minorities suffer; scientists look down their nose on the religious, then shake their fist at God while plotting to surpass Him; the religious are wide-eyed, superstitious madmen; feminists want to kill all men; and so on.

A strawman can have pretty much any viewpoint. Why bother addressing the real issues of, for example, gun control, when you can instead portray all firearms advocates as bearded, racist, hillbilly lunatics ranting about black helicopters and wanting to own their own nuclear warheads? And so it goes with other examples; capitalists literally worship the bottom line and would sell their own kids if they could; liberals are all [[DirtyCommunists secret Communists]] aiming to destroy morality and personal choice; conservatives are constantly-outraged intolerant bigots who want nothing more than to see oppressed minorities suffer; scientists look down their nose on the religious, then shake their fist at God while plotting to surpass Him; the religious are wide-eyed, superstitious madmen; feminists want to kill all men; and so on.

* ''Literature/TalesOfTheBountyHunters'': Boba Fett gets portrayed as one of the extremely conservative variety. He doesn't have a single vice, because he considers them an insult to the flesh. He considers sex between those not married to be immoral - that includes rape, too. When Leia tried offering to pay him to get her and her friends out, he flat out refused, saying that the rebels were morally wrong. Apparently, he supports the Empire because it permits civilization to exist, never mind that it's an empire that commits genocide. He hates Han's guts because Han breaks laws, and Fett finds the idea of breaking laws to be offensive. Never mind that Fett murders people, and takes bounties set by the notorious gangster Jabba (who Han began as a smuggler for). He laughs off the Dark Side as Jedi superstition, which becomes hilarious in hindsight, because for all his hatred of Jedi, his lifestyle is much the kind that the Jedi Order would have considered ideal (not to mention making him a FlatEarthAtheist type given other material shows Vader once Force choked him--or [[WatsonianVsDoylist may be]] a ContinuitySnarl).

* ''Literature/TalesOfTheBountyHunters'': Boba Fett gets portrayed as one of the extremely conservative variety. He doesn't have a single vice, because he considers them an insult to the flesh. He considers sex between those not married to be immoral - that includes rape, too. When Leia tried offering to pay him to get her and her friends out, he flat out refused, saying that the rebels were morally wrong. Apparently, he supports the Empire because it permits civilization to exist, never mind that it's an empire that commits genocide. He hates Han's guts because Han breaks laws, and Fett finds the idea of breaking laws to be offensive. Never mind that Fett murders people, and takes bounties set by the notorious gangster Jabba (who Han began as a smuggler for). He laughs off the Dark Side as Jedi superstition, which becomes hilarious in hindsight, because for all his hatred of Jedi, his lifestyle is much the kind that the Jedi Order would have considered ideal (not to mention making him a FlatEarthAtheist type given other material shows Vader once Force choked him--or [[WatsonianVsDoylist can be]] a ContinuitySnarl).

* ''Literature/TheInheritanceCycle'': An argument is presented between representatives of the religious Dwarves and atheist Elves. The Dwarf is emotional ranting, while the Elf is calm and wise. Downplayed, however, in that the Elf deliberately picked the fight, knowing that she could stay calm since she had no stake in it.

** Jock, a very conservative former consultant with the RAND Institute in ''Literature/TheNeanderthalParallax'', goes from expressing skepticism over the Neanderthals to [[spoiler: attempting their genocide]]. Meanwhile in ''Quantum Night'', we have a right-wing US President who's quite Islamophobic, [[spoiler: turns out to be a psychopath, and eventually ''invades Canada'']]. Not to mention a Texas governor who passed a law removing all legal rights for illegal aliens (which is actually ridiculously unconstitutional), sparking their mass murders. That, plus the Georgia jury who believe in capital punishment and (even if not everyone agrees on that) reacts in understandable horror after learning the main character (called by the defense to show the defendant is a psychopath, thus he couldn't help killing) favors infanticide for disabled babies.

* Creator/JerryPournelle's books are full of straw environmentalists who hate all science and technology. His collaborations with Creator/LarryNiven are especially straw-heavy: In ''Fallen Angels'' they impose a fascist-disguised-as-liberal dictatorship in the U.S. which [[DystopianEdict outlaws science fiction]] (after singlehandedly causing the next Ice Age); in ''Oath of Fealty'' they are a Weather Underground-style terrorist group; and after the comet impact in ''Literature/LucifersHammer'' they devolve into ''cannibalism.'' The cannibals include [[ScaryBlackMan renegade black soldiers and gangbangers]] and [[CorruptChurch Evangelical Christians]].

* ''Creator/RobertJSawyer'' has these in some of his works. Jock, a very conservative former consultant with the RAND Institute in ''Literature/TheNeanderthalParallax'', goes from expressing skepticism over the Neanderthals to [[spoiler: attempting their genocide]]. Meanwhile in ''Quantum Night'', we have a right-wing US President who's quite Islamophobic, [[spoiler: turns out to be a full-on psychopath, and eventually ''invades Canada'']]. Not to mention a Texas governor who passed a law removing all legal rights for illegal aliens (which is actually ridiculously unconstitutional), sparking their mass murders. That, plus the Georgia jury who believe in capital punishment and (even if not everyone agrees on that) reacts in understandable horror after learning the main character (called by the defense to show the defendant is a psychopath, thus he couldn't help killing) favors infanticide for disabled babies. In ''Calculating God'', we have two fanatical anti-abortion, creationist fundamentalist terrorists who try to destroy the Burgess Shale for its conflict with their literalist view of the Bible.

[[folder: New Media]]

* 19th-century Russian novelists, particularly [[Creator/FyodorDostoevsky Dostoyevski]], are fond of this trope and will very frequently work tangents about the philosophical/political issues of the time into the dialog, even when it doesn't really have anything to do with what people are talking about. Frequently this involves having a fashion chasing idiot arguing espousing Enlightenment ideals to somebody taking the side of simple virtues of the Russian peasantry/Orthodox Christianity. Many are also DirtyCommunists and or {{Straw Nihilist}}s in Dostoyevski novels. On the other hand, Dostoyevsky would tend to invert the trope too, creating Steelman characters out of whoever who represented the strongest philosophical oppositions to the spiritual or social thoughts he was wrestling with while writing the book. For example, in Literature/{{TheBrothersKaramazov}}, [[ThePhilosopher Ivan]] is much more intelligent and insightful than [[HumbleHero Alyosha]] and ultimately wins every discussed argument they have, even though Alyosha is the hero.

* 19th-century Russian novelists, particularly [[Creator/FyodorDostoevsky Dostoyevski]], are fond of this trope and will very frequently work tangents about the philosophical/political issues of the time into the dialog, even when it doesn't really have anything to do with what people are talking about. Frequently this involves having a fashion chasing idiot arguing espousing Enlightenment ideals to somebody taking the side of simple virtues of the Russian peasantry/Orthodox Christianity. Many are also DirtyCommunists and or {{Straw Nihilist}}s in Dostoyevski novels. On the other hand, Dostoyevsky would tend to invert the trope too, creating Steelman characters out of whoever who represented the strongest philosophical oppositions to the spiritual or social thoughts he was wrestling with while writing the book. For example, in [[TheBrothersKaramazov]], [[ThePhilosopher Ivan]] is much more intelligent and insightful than [[HumbleHero Alyosha]] and ultimately wins every discussed argument they have, even though Alyosha is the hero.

* 19th-century Russian novelists, particularly [[Creator/FyodorDostoevsky Dostoyevski]], are fond of this trope and will very frequently work tangents about the philosophical/political issues of the time into the dialog, even when it doesn't really have anything to do with what people are talking about. Frequently this involves having a fashion chasing idiot arguing espousing Enlightenment ideals to somebody taking the side of simple virtues of the Russian peasantry/Orthodox Christianity. Many are also DirtyCommunists and or {{Straw Nihilist}}s in Dostoyevski novels. On the other hand, Dostoyevsky would tend to invert the trope too, creating Steelman characters out of whoever who represented the strongest philosophical oppositions to the spiritual or social thoughts he was wrestling with while writing the book. For example, in [[The Brothers Karamazov]], [[ThePhilosopher Ivan]] is much more intelligent and insightful than [[HumbleHero Alyosha]] and ultimately wins every discussed argument they have, even though Alyosha is the hero.

* 19th-century Russian novelists, particularly [[Creator/FyodorDostoevsky Dostoyevski]], are fond of this trope and will very frequently work tangents about the philosophical/political issues of the time into the dialog, even when it doesn't really have anything to do with what people are talking about. Frequently this involves having a fashion chasing idiot arguing espousing Enlightenment ideals to somebody taking the side of simple virtues of the Russian peasantry/Orthodox Christianity. Many are also DirtyCommunists and or {{Straw Nihilist}}s in Dostoyevski novels.

-->'''A video presentation:''' ''Ladies and Gentlemans, here are your cancer profiteers: doctors, lab workers, pharmaceutical manufactures, probate lawyers, obituaries writers, coffin makers, New Yorkers who need apartment, [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers the Republican Party]].''
-->'''Duckman:''' ''[[FridgeLogic What's the Republican Party have to do with cancer?]]''
-->'''Roland Thompson''' ''Nothing really, [[AlwaysChaoticEvil they just go where evil is]].''

* HeteronormativeCrusader: A homophobic activist who sees any sexuality other than straight to be wicked and vile and is determined to [[BuryYourGays kill]] or [[CureYourGays cure]] everyone who is gay. Has a high chance of [[YouAreWhatYouHate secretly being]] [[ArmoredClosetGay gay themselves]].