Political cartoons

There’s something new going on in the “lamestream press,” namely an equal number of liberal and conservative political cartoons.

Conservatives aren’t very good at this sort of thing, which might be the reason they were so far outnumbered in this respect before (They would probably say it’s because the mainstream press is so liberal.) Not when the Koch brothers are negotiating for the Chicago and Los Angeles Times and Rupert Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal.

Hyperbole and satire are main ingredients of political cartooning. Obama’s ears aren’t that big for instance, and he’s not anywhere as liberal as conservatives would have you believe. Because of the NSA brouhaha and the AP phone number smear, Obama is looking more like George W. Bush all the time. So . . . how do you tag him a far left liberal?

Nuance is another aspect of the political cartoon. Conservatives don’t know that world. It’s either black or white in their book. You’re either for a woman’s right to an abortion or you’re against it. They’ve gone so far as to pass bills in state legislatures making it a crime to abort a non-viable fetus. That is, one that doesn’t have a brain or can’t live longer than a few days, according to the doctor. I guess the idea is that a miracle could happen and the child could live. Conservatives believe in miracles.

Garry Trudeau gets in a lot of trouble for using hyperbole in his traditional cartoon, “Doonesbury”. George W. Bush makes regular appearances as a Roman war helmet with the plume beat all to hell. What you need is an element of truth for hyperbole to work. Bush’s dad got him a sinecure as a pilot in the National Guard. He never actually went to war. That could’ve gotten him killed. But he did wear a flight suit when he landed on that aircraft carrier claiming the war in Iraq was over. It wasn’t, not by a long shot. Trudeau could also be using the helmet as a metaphor, concerning all the flubs at the end of Georgie’s term. The New Orleans flyover, the Wall Street disaster, caused by a lack of oversight. Actually, no oversight. You’d think he would’ve learned from Calvin Coolidge. (I’m blaming Calvin and Harding for the Great Depression; Hoover didn’t know what hit him).

I’m looking at a political cartoon right now. It has Obama sitting at his desk. There’s a bubble above Obama’s head that has been edited to read “Change you can believe in” with a bunch of words blacked out, much as a confidential report might be if it were supplied to somebody without a clearance. On his desk Obama has four stacks of paper. The first reads “spying on reporters”. Let’s see, does that meet the hyperbole test? I don’t think so. The justice department gathered AP phone numbers, looking for those that matched a suspect in the administration who’d been leaking classified material on Yemen, which put American lives in danger. They knew who he was; they just needed evidence; he was also in contact with a Fox News reporter. Why not find a real reporter if you’re going to leak government classified information? Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, is a long time conservative activist, who sometimes gets credit for the Willie Horton ad which some say helped Bush Sr. defeat Michael Dukakis.

Some would argue that the NSA leak marks Obama as a hypocrite, since he continued Bush’s policy of capturing most everyone’s phone number, e-mail accounts etc., etc. He also reinstated the Patriot Act, which really does invade American privacy. But conservatives don’t talk about that, nor do they admit to starting the Fast and Furious fiasco, supplying arms to the Mexican drug cartel.

What all of these examples prove is that Obama is no dummy. He can’t cancel the Patriot Act because that would mean he was soft on terrorists and Fast and Furious was an attempt to find out who (in America) was supplying guns to drug smugglers. They hire straw men (American citizens) to buy their weapons for them at American gun shows, which isn’t hard to do because conservative states like Arizona don’t require background checks.

The second batch is labeled “IRS Scandal”, Lately we’ve discovered a Republican IRS agent was the one who questioned whether Tea Party organizations met the stricture against political involvement. The real scandal is that most of these people eventually got non profit status. WHERE IS THE SOCIAL WELFARE REQUIREMENT? Homophobia does not qualify. White supremacist leaders do not qualify. Lobbying for gun manufacturers and opposing any and all gun control does not qualify. Tea Partiers hate social welfare.

The third stack is labeled “Drone program.” Obama deserves a medal for keeping eighteen and nineteen year old boots off the ground. Does anybody really believe John McCain would have stayed out of Libya? We’d still be there and Gaddafi would still be alive. Does anybody believe the Republicans wouldn’t use drones themselves? Enough said. Of course, they’d probably also send troops to Syria, and we’d have another Iraq. They never learn.

The fourth stack is labeled “secret e-mails”. What secret e-mails? Let’s call that one Benghazi instead. Anybody who doesn’t think the Benghazi investigation is a bunch of pigeon doo doo raise your hand. Hilary Clinton will kick the Republican candidate’s behind worse than Obama beat McCain, unless they can get something on her. Women want a female president. Even some Republican women want a female president. Hispanics will not vote for a Republican president, even if they do pass an immigration bill; women will vote democratic for no other reason that the stupid nonsense about a non-viable fetus. Conservatives obviously don’t understand the word “overreach“.

Check out the next political cartoon you read and see if it meets the hyperbole test. Is there an element of truth? Somehow I doubt it, not when Jim DeMint is the head of the Heritage Foundation, and their job seems to be propaganda, rather than conservative public policy. See the Nineteenth Century if you want conservative public policy.

Dave Schwinghammer's unconventional mystery, SOLDIER'S GAP, is available on Author's den and Amazon.com, used and new.