Robber Barons!

We all know that the American economy is in a profound state of "Oh shit." Obviously, no one can fix it, but we can take small steps to make things better. With that in mind, I propose that we resurrect common usage of the term Robber Barons.

Robber Barons, or bulbous corporate tycoons, were invented by Thomas Nast in the 1860's (see Fig. 1, right). As a hack Coca-Cola ad man, he felt that they made his job easier by having hilarious and easy-to-draw features. As usual, reality soon warped to fit delusional whimsy, and Robber Barons ran roughshod(?) over America, smelting things, building the railroads with clever "millions of Chinese people" machines, shooting the oil underneath Texas into the air, and trading the U.S. Presidency among themselves for that whole weird period between when Lincoln died and 1901.

Nast had unleashed a horrible blight on America, but he was right about one thing: Robber Barons look hilarious when you draw them. They are so rotund that you can draw them in MS Paint without ever using the pencil or the paintbrush: All you need are the circles, the lines, and those other lines that curve when you click near them.

Unfortunately, Robber Barons fell out of style when Teddy Roosevelt's "War with X" model of horrible-power-abuse swept the nation. Executive boards soon became populated by non-bulbous men with nary a moustache.

Of course, the comic-book villainry of everyone who runs the American economy refused to go gentle into that good night. In our lifetimes, for instance, we have seen the Keating Five thing, the Microsoft thing, the Enron thing, the real estate bubble thing, and many other things like these things. But in spite of their shriveled blackened souls, the new executives just aren't the same as back in yore, when men were men, dogs were birds, and CEO's were titans who would poor liquid iron on an immigrant's face if he so much as didn't work until he died right in front of them.

Anyway, within the last decade we've had a glorious resurgence of the old style of Robber Barons, thanks to the oil industry. Of course, we all know that the guys who run it are evil. We have proof that they caused 9/11, and obviously we won't leave Iraq until they figure out how to keep the terrorists from setting all the oil on fire all the time. But there are less obvious links to Classic Robber Baronism. For one, oil executives are often hideous, unsightly people who would look much better as circles produced in MS Paint. For instance, this thing on the right became famous when Exxon paid it $400 million to stop running the company. If the image link is broken, you can find it by Googling "Exxon jowls".

Even more subtly, the oil industry shares the old Robber Barons' affinity for comically inept government figures. Back in the Gilded Era, so called because factory workers kept getting embossed in horrible accidents, the President would traditionally be a large moustache attached to a man who ignored immense economic corruption. Today, the President likes to be intimately involved with said corruption, but that's close enough.

The obvious question is, what do we get from saying Robber Baron all the time? Well, as you know, the GOP is collapsing. At first we all thought they let the obviously incompetent George W. Bush become president out of immense cynicism, but now we know that they actually just have no one left to put in any races. McCain won the GOP nomination even though everyone in his party hates him, because he was running against an adulterous ferret mayor, a widely reviled fatuous asshole, and an Arkansan who doesn't know anything. And now the second guy stands a good chance of getting on the ticket too.

I say we dissolve the GOP and start a new party. This party would be called the GORB, and instead of an elephant, which the GOP traditionally kills with anti-environmentalism or sometimes just bullets, their mascot would be that fat guy I drew in Paint. He even looks like he could be called Gorb.

The GORB could retain the GOP's casual exploitation of racism and homophobia, but move the focus to the extremely wealthy people who make all the policy anyway. "Tax cuts for just Warren Buffett!" could be their 2012 slogan. They could make a bumper sticker where Gorb is stomping on Obama's head, shouting, "He looks DIFFERENT!" and another, "Give me a STEAK!" Together these send an undeniable message.

And how would this benefit the economy? Well, aside from enormous sales of Gorb golf merchandise, it would mostly help by ensuring that the GOP never wins again. Which looks like it might happen anyway, but it would be nice to be sure.