‘The Boondocks,’ a leftist, angry-black-man comic drawn like anime, reeeeeeaches for a punchline. This is more puerile than its usual fare and conflates Hinduism with Islam, though it’s more a comment on the grandfather character’s bumbling.
Mohandas Gandhi’s hunger strikes have long been the object of derision in cultures without ascetic tradition. Churchill dismissing Gandhi as ‘nauseating’ and a ‘half-naked fakir’ wasn’t just the poisoned fruit of an embittered colonialist, it was also gut-level cultural revulsion which transcends political orientation. When Jon Stewart makes fun of ululating Arabs on the Daily Show, or show alumnus Stephen Colbert cracks a Gandhi starvation joke, they’re expressing culture clash. Personally, I draw the line at the Shi’as’ bloody self-flagellation during the Ashura festival and the self-mortifying skin hooks for the Thaipusam festival shown in the ‘Mundeyan To Bach Ke’ video (thanks, jeet).
But dissidents like Mandela have long gone on hunger strike, and many African countries are much poorer than India. The American shorthand for starvation used to be Ethiopian famine — why now Gandhi?
I blame Richard Attenborough. There’s nothing you can teach an American about what’s outside our borders that we can’t make fun of 
In 2003, Maxim beat up an icon.
Related posts: Fatty fatwa, New evidence uncovered about Gandhi’s assassination, Promo’s pizza leaves bad taste in actor’s mouth, Gandhi didn’t wear Armani
Update: Ennis points out that pork chops are Southern food, like yams and greens. But pork is still laden with cultural connotations with which I’m sure Aaron McGruder is familiar, and he uses it for comic effect.
