History Main / StrawCharacter

** Creator/TreyParkerAndMattStone are known to be pretty syncretic libertarians. While no one is safe, leftist people and causes seem to get the brunt of the potshots. Witness their portrayal and treatment of "hippies", UsefulNotes/AlGore, UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco, Occupy, the medical cannabis debate, and so on.

A straw ''character'' is a caricature of a person, a character the author has set up in order to ridicule a particular viewpoint.

* Rational Wiki 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.

* Winslow the coyote pup from ''ComicStrip/PricklyCity''. In one early story, he suggested that he and his human companion, Carmen, get married, so that Scott Stantis could equate gay marriage with bestiality.

* PompousPoliticalPundit: A politically biased commentator used to satirize the pundits on conservative news media.

* PompousPoliticalPundit: A politically biased commentator used to satire the pundits on conservative news media.

-->'''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]].

* In ''Hiding Out'', Jon Cryer is an adult accountant hiding out as a high school student. In a history class, the [=strawman=] conservative teacher gives a weak and histrionic defense of Richard Nixon as Cryer's character struggles to bite his tongue.

** Heaven help you ([[JustForPun so to speak]]) if you're a Latter Day Saint.

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; [[CapitalismIsBad 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, [[RageAgainstTheHeaven then shake their fist at God]] while plotting to surpass Him; [[BeliefMakesYouStupid the religious are wide-eyed, superstitious]], [[HolierThanThou self-righteous]] [[KnightTemplar madmen]] (who more often than not treat science as a ReligionOfEvil); feminists want to kill all men; and so on.

In the ''[[TheWarOnStraw strawman]] fallacy'', a debater constructs a weakened or just plain unrecognizable form of an opponent's argument, and in defeating it, acts like they have defeated the real argument. This is likened to attacking a dummy made out of straw that can't fight back. In other words, the go-to tool for someone, possibly driven by a dangerous ego, to create a fantasy outcome where they win.

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.

Characters of this type are extremely [[FlatCharacter 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.

The strawman is a relative of the {{Windmill|Political}}. While a strawman is a dumbed-down version of a real enemy or threat, a windmill is not at all the threat it's believed to be -- if it even ''exists'' in the first place. A person who [[WindmillCrusader honestly fights such windmills]] can be used as a StrawLoser, while a [[ManipulativeBastard dishonest person]] who tricks others into fighting windmills typically is a StrawHypocrite. If the strawman actually makes a good point that the author didn't intend it's a case of StrawmanHasAPoint. Compare and contrast with DeliberatelyBadExample, where a character's purpose is to make a sympathetic character look better in comparison regarding a potentially touchy subject. Finally, characters literally made of straw are ScaryScarecrows.

* The ''VideoGame/AzureStrikerGunvolt'' series takes a very lopsided look at prejudice and racism by portraying Acura / Copen as one of these after [[spoiler:his father gets killed by a seventh / septima user (also known as an "adept" in the English versions).]] This causes him to be motivated by IrrationalHatred to kill any and all adepts; even those who pose no threat to anyone. In fact, the second game ends with Acura / Copen [[spoiler: cutting off all ties to his family when he discovers that his own sister is an adept]]; something he feels he can never accept.

* [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] comics had a form of this in the Strawman Communist: for instance, ComicBook/IronMan fought enemies like Titanium Man and the Crimson Dynamo several times. The focus wasn't on their ideology, which was hardly even mentioned: the focus was on providing an {{acceptable target|s}} for the hero to beat up-- in those days, Communists were used much like [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazis]] are used in World War II shooters today. In truth, it's not much of a stretch to conceive of an aggressive Soviet enemy responding to Tony Stark's escalation of the arms race, considering the Cold War nearly went hot multiple times in real life for similar reasons.

* ''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 [[note]][[AcceptableTargets not that they don’t deserve it]][[/note]] and alcoholism.

* ''ComicBook/AstroCity'':

*** The Weasel News Network is a direct TakeThat against the Creator/FoxNewsChannel. (Get the pun?) Everything about the network is portrayed as [[CrossesTheLineTwice crossing the line twice]].

* Parodied to great extent by ''Website/TheOnion's'' Creator/StanKelly. Every [[TeensAreMonsters terrible teen]] is a zit-faced juvenile delinquent. Every liberal is a [[NewAgeRetroHippy smelly, sanctimonious hippy]]. Feminists and [=#MeToo=] advocates are [[StrawFeminist ugly, hairy Feminazis]]. Every dead celebrity he likes is in FluffyCloudHeaven, and every one he doesn't like is in FireAndBrimstoneHell. Literally everyone who he doesn't like personally (''especially'' if they're a stand-in for his ex-wife) is drawn with a SinisterSchnoz and ScaryTeeth.

* Use of the trope in newspaper editorial cartooning is satirized by ''Website/TheOnion's'' "Stan Kelly" (actually, Ward Sutton). In the persona of a cranky conservative, "Kelly" returns again and again to caricatures like the NewAgeRetroHippie ([[https://www.theonion.com/editorial-cartoon-november-17-2008-1819589205 here]]), TeensAreMonsters ([[https://www.theonion.com/editorial-cartoon-march-2-2009-1819589313 here]]), using TheGrimReaper to symbolize disliked trends ([[https://www.theonion.com/editorial-cartoon-october-20-2008-1819589163 throughout]]) and so on. It's actually not too far off from the technique of newspaper cartoonist ''Chuck Asay''. And almost ''all'' the comics have the Statue Of Liberty crying (when things are going well for Kelly, she's weeping with joy).

* ''Film/ThePurge'' films are as close as mainstream entertainment has come to Strawman Political: TheMovie, which becomes exponentially more heavy-handed with each sequel. By the third movie, anyone of even the slightest conservative bent is depicted as a fascist, mass-murdering, white-supremacist religious fanatic out to slaughter everyone who isn't exactly like them for the benefit of their rich and equally white, fascist, racist, religious overlords. That said, the writers' overtly vicious {{Demonization}} of Conservatives and [[ArtisticLicense general cluelessness about real-world politics, sociology, and economics]] makes these characters come off so extreme as to seem like cartoonish abstractions, so it has to be difficult for any right-leaning viewers to take them seriously enough to be offended.

* ''Series/TheColbertReport'' has a straw conservative anchorman. He makes snap decisions with his "gut" rather than his brain, preferring to believe what feels right rather than what dry facts tell him ("reality has a well-known liberal bias"). In early episodes, he had a straw liberal foil in the form of Russ Lieber, played by David Cross, who was so obsessed with not offending anyone that he could barely function at all.

** 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 KnowNothingKnowItAll SoapboxSadie 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/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' features a CanonForeigner villain, Lock-Up, who is a straw-conservative and vigilante who despises the "liberal media" and enjoys throwing everyone he doesn't like into prison.

** How crazy? Liberals will end up with such goals as [[InterspeciesRomance granting animals full personhood... for that kind of reason]]. Conservatives will end up with such goals as ''making burning an American flag legally equal to murdering a human being'', under the crime "Flag Murder". Again, worth reminding, it's all PlayedForLaughs.

* ''The Contender'' stars Joan Allen as a U.S. Senator (formerly moderate Republican, now a Democrat, and a pro-choice atheist to boot) who is nominated for the Vice Presidency after the incumbent veep is killed. A Republican Congressman tries to block the nomination by dredging up her sexual past, but is unsuccessful, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the (Democratic) President. The "good guys" and "bad guys" are easy to spot. (Gary Oldman, who played the Republican Congressman, and the film's producer subsequently accused Creator/DreamWorks Pictures executives of [[ExecutiveMeddling re-editing the film]], which came out three weeks prior to the 2000 election, to make the Democrats more sympathetic).

* The CorruptCorporateExecutive version of Comicbook/LexLuthor occasionally edged into Strawman Conservative territory, though when the character actually ran for president the writers were careful not to describe his political leanings at all. Though it's worth noting that at one point, Comicbook/GreenArrow decries something President Luthor has done with "This would never happen with a Democrat in the White House!" (Green Arrow's own leftist strawman status is debatable; make your own decision on whether his statement there was meant as a strawman's or dead serious). ''WesternAnimation/SupermanBatmanPublicEnemies'' avoids this by making Luthor a third-party independent. Luthor was a third party candidate in the comic books as well. [[DependingOnTheWriter If some writers forgot that in order to turn him into a Strawman,]] that can't be helped, but the main writers of the story showed him as competing with the "two major party candidates."

* 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 [[AudienceAlienatingEra 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.''
* ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'s portrayal in the first dozen of issues of ''ComicBook/Supergirl2005'' drew a lot of criticism as fans cried foul at Kara's characterization and the sheer force of difference between that version of her and her original portrayal. (The Pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El was quick-tempered and snarky but mostly cheerful, enthusiastic, responsible and heroic; the Post-Crisis version was mainly obnoxious, whiny and selfish). Ultimately writer Joe Kelly decided to address these complaints by having a MirrorMatch between Post-Crisis Supergirl and an exaggerated knockoff of Pre-Crisis Supergirl, whose sole purpose in the story appears to have been an excuse for Kelly to espouse why a flawed, angry Supergirl is ''such'' a better alternative to the "Little Miss Perfect" caricature they paraded out to contrast with her. Fans didn't take this well, and the next writers proceeded to give Post-Crisis Kara a likable personality and retcon her early characterization as Kryptonite-induced madness and the "match" as a hallucination.

* This was averted with the similar ''Comicbook/CaptainAmerica and Comicbook/TheFalcon'' series. The Falcon was usually used to explore issues like classism and racism, but Captain America rarely came off as badly as Hal Jordan did. At worst, he just came across as a naive white guy who didn't ''grasp'' racial issues in modern America. Any [[NobleBigot accidental racism, sexism, etc.]] on Cap's part could be forgiven to an extent because of the time period that Cap grew up in and was [[FishOutOfTemporalWater thrown out of in - to him - an instant]].

* [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] comics had a form of this in the Strawman Communist: for instance, ''ComicBook/IronMan'' fought enemies like Titanium Man and the Crimson Dynamo several times. The focus wasn't on their ideology, which was hardly even mentioned: the focus was on providing an {{acceptable target|s}} for the hero to beat up-- in those days, Communists were used much like [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazis]] are used in World War II shooters today. In truth, it's not much of a stretch to conceive of an aggressive Soviet enemy responding to Tony Stark's escalation of the arms race, considering the Cold War nearly went hot multiple times in real life for similar reasons.

* ''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 [[AGodAmI “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.]]

* Played with in an episode of ''Series/NewAmsterdam2018''. Dr. Frome, head off psychiatry, is talking to a patient, who pointed his gun at his ex-wife. The guy accuses Frome of being a "bleeding-heart liberal", who is judging him based on the fact that he believes in the Second Amendment. Later on, Frome explains that yes, he's a "bleeding-heart liberal" (also married to another man), but he is absolute ''for'' responsible gun use, and it is the patient who is the straw character for immediately prejudging him based on a single impression.
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* [[http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c0cf508ff8/prop-8-the-musical-starring-jack-black-john-c-reilly-and-many-more-from-fod-team-jack-black-craig-robinson-john-c-reilly-and-rashida-jones Proposition 8: The Musical]]. You tell a group of Straw Conservatives when you see them.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Pogo}}'' featured strawmen on both sides (though more often as conservatives, given Walt Kelly's politics). A particularly famous example is that of Senator Malarkey, a thinly-veiled TakeThat of Joseph [=McCarthy=].

* [[https://tellygunge.wordpress.com/archives/story-archive/by-tellygunge/ The Tellygunge series]] ''Comeuppance'' combines this with OfficialFanSubmittedContent. The readers vote on which woman with whatever [[TheScrappy disliked occupation]] will be CoveredInGunge. The thing is that all the women are just straw- well, women for the represented occupation (the Tax lady loves lining her pockets with your cash, the dentist loves to scare you, the airline service check lady demands you pay up if you want to fly if you didn't bring your boarding pass, etc.) Hence, this leads to a case where a woman coming third (or escapes for 2 nights in a row) is seen as a KarmaHoudini, while the gunging is LaserGuidedKarma for their [[DisproportionateRetribution 'misdeeds']].

* While rife with political satire, ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' is notorious for hammering the Republican Party in particular, whose Springfield headquarters is a Transylvanian-style castle which furnishes the page image. Consider that the Springfield GOP's mayoral candidate in one instance had just left jail, having been convicted for attempting murder ''twice'', while a Rush Limbaugh-esque talk radio host paints him as the victim of America's "liberal" justice system. The Democrats meanwhile are often portrayed as wishy-washy, weak, ineffectual, incompetent, and willing to tolerate the abuses of their own candidates, often exemplified with Mayor Joe Quimby when he's used in episodes detailing the Left/Right divide and not as a general satire on corrupt politicians.

* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'':
** [[GeneralRipper General Eiling]] is shown to have sinister straw-conservative leanings, he's eager to drop [[NukeEm nuclear bombs]] on the Justice League, blames the "bleeding hearts in Congress" for not getting his way and eventually turns himself into a supervillain in order to "defend" America from heroes. The series also features a cowardly straw-Bill O'Reilly type character.
** Like the comic books, they avoid hinting which political side Lex Luthor leans toward in his policies when he runs for president. A quick line of dialogue revealed he was running as an independent.
--> "Polls among likely voters place Luthor within striking distance of both major party candidates."
** Green Arrow is a much more downplayed version. Like the comics, Green Arrow is liberal in his views and comments on it from time to time (he is a self described "old lefty" and marched against nuclear energy in college, according to a comment made to Captain Atom). Unlike the two straw conservative examples above, however, he is very respectful of the other heroes, even when he disagrees with them, and was brought into the League specifically to counter-balance them and offer a street-level perspective.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheBoondocks'':
** Basically anyone but the main characters in the show have whatever character traits they have taken to the furthest extremes possible. Even Riley, Huey and Grandpa are strawmen at points, although depending on the focus of the episode (with Huey in particular) [[DependingOnTheWriter it varies]] whether they're a strawman, or [[StrawmanHasAPoint actually making a good point]].
** Huey Freeman is used to representing far-left radicals; he's been described variously as a socialist or black nationalist.
** Tom and Sarah [=DuBois=], though portrayed as decent people, are milquetoast establishment Strawman Democrats. Tom once tried to kidnap Ralph Nader for taking votes away from Al Gore. (Thus earning the title of "the first moderate liberal extremist".)
** Uncle Ruckus is used to parody white nationalists and Tea Party Republicans, with the added irony that he's ''black''.
** "Wingmen" featured Dewey Jenkins, a fake Muslim who writes bad poetry because he's "down with the struggle". Huey, an actual leftist radical, finds him disgraceful.
** Betty von Heusen is portrayed as an [[RightWingMilitiaFanatic obsessed gun nut]].
** Rev. Rollo Goodlove, an {{Expy}} of Al Sharpton, is a self-serving black liberal hypocrite who intentionally attaches himself to bogus "struggles" for publicity.
** Their portrayal of Ann Coulter: She appears on TV as a massively hateful ranter, but it's just an act for publicity. She's not even a real conservative.
* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' skews conservative/(right wing) libertarian (as per its creator Mike Judge), but in general it's pretty good about being equal opportunity. The first episode of series has a [=Strawman=] Liberal social worker who's convinced that Hank is physically abusing Bobby but ultimately gets ReassignedToAntarctica by his boss for not actually investigating Hank and operating solely off of gut instinct. (This character, or an IdenticalStranger, returns in a later episode where he enables people to claim disability for ludicrous reasons.) On the other hand, another early episode has a [=Strawman=] Christian fundamentalist woman who claims all forms of Halloween celebration are Satanic and gets Arlen to "cancel" the holiday; Hank ends up putting on an old costume and leading a protest against her, with all the adults of the neighborhood agreeing with him.
** In earlier episodes Dale could be seen as a [=Strawman=] Conservative with his extreme distrust of the government; however, once {{Flanderization}} kicks in he's just treated as a lone nutcase who thinks "The Conspiracy" is behind everything bad in America with several Straw Right-wing Libertarian leanings.
** As the seasons progressed, {{Flanderization}} would set in and Hank's discomfort with anything outside his worldview would more often than not be justified, and those holding alternative views were portrayed as dumber than dirt. One late episode has Hank joining a co-op grocery store who's employees, stereotypical hippies one and all, seem to not understand basics of business. After Hank makes some common sense improvements around the store, the employees are shown as dumbfounded by making a profit. Not surprised that the store made a profit, but unaware of the concept that they could have more money than they started with, rendered helpless and dumbstruck until Hank explains basic economics.
** ''WesternAnimation/TheGoodeFamily'', in much the same vein as ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill''.
* ''WesternAnimation/HarveyBirdmanAttorneyAtLaw'' featured some Animal Liberation Nut Strawmen in "Free Magilla"; they freed all the animals from Mr. Peeble's pet store, even though this seemed to cause the creatures more anxiety than relief. When Magilla Gorilla later reunites with Mr. Peebles, he asks him to "Take me home- home to my nice, safe cage", the group who stole him splashes red paint on him and shouts "Animal freedom now!"
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': This seems to be the sole purpose of the Waterfall family's existence, as a collection of strawmen (and one woman) that do little good for the world, and [[SharedFamilyQuirks ultimately suffer some kind of]] KarmicDeath by the end of the episode they debut in, such as [[AnimalWrongsGroup Free Waterfall Jr., Sr.]], and [[StrawFeminist Frida Waterfall]]. Interestingly enough, [[TokenGoodTeammate Old Man and Hutch Waterfall]] are portrayed pretty positively, but you can bet they don't make it out alive, either.
* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' used to be this. Originally, the show seemed to be created solely for this, but eventually, Creator/{{Seth MacFarlane}} switched all of his strawmanning and [[AuthorFilibuster soapboxing]] back over to ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', and apparently allowed ''American Dad'' to actually have a purpose other than "Conservatives are evil".
** The opening of one episode taking place during Black History Month, has a teacher at Steve's school (a white guy dressed in a dashiki) screaming at his students that none of them have even seen a black person, even though four of the kids in the class are indeed black and as confused as everyone else. As the teacher is yelling at them, he's got a black woman banging on a drum each time he finishes speaking. He goes on saying that white men only think of sex with a black man once a year, and ends his lecture by stating that "the next time you privileged suburban white boys think Mozart wasn't black, you should look in the mirror!"
** That said, Stan Smith does have some pretty heavy [=Strawman=] reactionary tendencies in a lot of episodes involve him learning some kind of lesson, often involving him seeing how his conservative[=/=]reactionary perspective on an issue was wrong and becoming more liberal. Stan also exhibits a lot of positive tendencies associated with conservatives, like personal responsibility and work ethic but to what degree and how likable that makes him varies from episode to episode.
** 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 KnowNothingKnowItAll SoapboxSadie 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/FamilyGuy'' uses this trope to death; any time a character with conservative leanings appears, you can expect them to be a caricature in line with the most heavy-handed political cartoons. One specific example is Peter's father Francis, a typical [=Strawman=] Conservative religious zealot. Peter can be seen as a Strawman American thanks to his {{Flanderization}} from BumblingDad into self-absorbed {{Jerkass}}. Ironically, Brian (who is often thought of as Creator/{{Seth MacFarlane}}'s AuthorAvatar), dips into [=Strawman=] Liberal at times, showing him to be a faux-intellectual blowhard who campaigns to make himself look important rather than to help others.\\
\\
In one episode, when Brian learns that Radio/RushLimbaugh is in town for a book signing, he launches into a tirade about how the man is a monster and then marches down to the bookstore to chew him out. After Rush saves Brian from some muggers, he ends up going Republican...only to become exactly the same kind of Strawman that every other conservative is on this show, spouting off the most extreme caricatures of Republican ideology (free guns for everyone, execute every single person in jail, etc). The SnapBack ensures that he's back to being liberal by the end of the episode.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Duckman}}'': In the "They Craved Duckman's Brain" episode, Duckman has the cancer’s cure in his brain, so the CorruptCorporateExecutive Roland Thompson who is WithholdingTheCure tries to kill Duckman… after a really long JustBetweenYouAndMe:
-->'''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]].
* ''WesternAnimation/OurCartoonPresident'' plays this up for all sides of the political spectrum, in spite of it being a show mostly making fun of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump and his administration.