B.C. cartoon contains secret message?

A bizarre little piece of journalism. Hart is held in suspicion by many for his blatant faith (rapidly becoming a crime on its own), but this is getting a bit silly.

Actually, this is the part I found most disturbing:

From Marshall Blonsky, professor of semiotics at the New School in New York:

In analyzing this cartoon, semiotician Blonsky cautions against succumbing to the Intentional Fallacy:* In criticism, he says, it is a mistake to give much weight at all to the artist's stated intention. For one thing, it discounts the strength and influence of the unconscious mind, he said. All that matters in artistic criticism, he said, is the effect of the art on its viewers: the way people interpret it. In other words, even if Hart intended no offense, the offense is there.

Well, leaving aside the suspicion that Blonsky is probably at least a few bricks short of a load, we see again the developing theme of disconnecting arguments completely from objective reality.

It no longer matters whether a person means what he says, or is lying, or is telling the truth, or whether what he says is reflected by reality.

What a person listening declares has been said is just as important. How do you handle that? How is even the concept of argument or debate even possible under these conditions?

Of course, it isn't. And there's a lot of people who like it that way. Every concept in existence becomes subjective, nasty old facts don't encumber the discussion at all, and the guy with the loudest voice wins.

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*I do these things so you don't have to. To dig up the concept of "Intentional Fallacy" required that I plow through an ocean of academic cat crap that requires not hip boots to negotiate, but an atomic submarine.