Going Up!
This cartoon’s development process was very indirect.
Following Obama’s State of the Union address last week, I had several different ideas, one of which was the previous cartoon. I wanted to comment on the spending freeze as well, and since one of the things that’s supposed to cut back on is wasteful spending, AKA “pork,” I thought I could do something showing that a lot of America’s runaway military budget is the porkiest pork that ever porked. To that end, I sketched this.
It wasn’t quite working, though, so I spent a couple days considering different approaches to the same basic joke. Some of them involved the pigs as obnoxious, gluttonous patrons in a restaurant, being served by Obama as a waiter. Some had them gathered around a pie graph of the national budget, with little tanks and arrows, as if planning to invade the slices not currently occupied by the military. I even tried to come up with something referencing George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
But, something seemed to be missing from all the pig-based jokes, so then I started trying to move in a few other directions, and basically came up with a lot of great images that I either didn’t agree with, or with which I had other problems. One sketch had Obama wearing a yarmulke with his logo on it while sitting down to dine on a giant ham labeled “military budget.” Another one had a human military character about to eat a similar ham with a bone in it that looked like Obama’s logo.
Somewhere in the middle of all these, I imagined the above cartoon. I was a little concerned about the potential racial connotations of portraying Obama as a stereotypical elevator operator, but I couldn’t come up with a way around that, and I decided it wasn’t worth tossing out an otherwise great image. If it helps, I was using Droopy’s appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit as my main reference for this (and even had a sketch where Obama’s neck stretches out like in the movie).
2 Responses to “Going Up!”
It’s a unique and well done take on a problem most people don’t hear about (or don’t WANT to hear about). I often hear people brag about how America is the strongest military power in the world (and I’m sure that’s debatable, especially now) but don’t realize how much that costs us.
In fact, I’m pretty sure some people would say the very idea of cutting back our military budget, as overblown as it is, was treasonous.
I agree that certain items need to be cut form the budget, however the military is not the place to look currently. We are the most powerful nation in the world but that is not due to recent events. Military budgeting has been a large part of the budget due to America’s victory in WWII and the results after that. It was a step into world politics that we could not come back from; each time that has happened America has had to rebuild, and rebuild slowly form it.
The Clinton administration did in fact cut the defense budget and it gave us a surplus. Unfortunately, an early September morning forced us back onto that stage and with a smaller military than we ended the Cold War with. The budget has increase because the military has only now rebuilt its strength to fight the threats facing it.
This does not mean that I support the War in Iraq or going into Iran. yes, Iraq was an unfortunate mistake that the American people actually supported. Although I did not support it, I supported that fact that once you are in a fight, you stay and you finish it. Vietnam taught us the results of just picking up and moving.
The current military budget is a necessary cost until we are at peace.
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