Turn the Other Cheek
This cartoon was supposed to be finished on Wednesday. But Wednesday night, I got pulled away from home by something, and so resolved to finish it Thursday.
Thursday afternoon, a friend told me that his band would be coming to town that evening, and since I have a personal rule not to miss them, I decided to put it off until Friday.
On Friday, I got stuck downtown until late at night, and on Saturday, I finally got to finish doing some research and start (!!) drawing. I didn’t finish the drawing until early Monday morning, then had to spend a good part of the day today running around town looking for a decent scanner I could use for free, as my own scanner broke (again) and the temporary substitute I borrowed from my sister is an HP which apparently distorts images, put a crease in my paper (which I had to burnish out), and whose scan quality was very poor, even at high resolutions. I guess “HP” stands for “horrible peripherals!”
As mentioned above, I did a lot of research before drawing this cartoon, studying magazine illustration styles of the 1940s-’60s, because I thought a style characteristic of that period might fit the subject matter here well. In the end, the only thing that came out looking significantly different from my usual drawing was my caricature of Obama. I can’t say I’m too happy with that, because I’m not sure the resulting design is recognizable.
By the way, in case anybody’s wondering who Brett Noel is: He’s an obscure conservative cartoonist who used to draw amateurish illustrations for what was apparently a personal spanking-fetish website. There’s a tradition among editorial cartoonists of issuing “apologies” when making direct references to other artists’ work–I usually prefer to use different terminology when doing this seriously, but I thought it’d be funny this time around to sarcastically credit Mr. Noel for something from which he’d probably like to distance himself.
As to the content of the cartoon: This references President Obama, in the face of the 2010 Midterm Elections, once again calling for those of us who aren’t quite as far right as most fascist dictatorships to “compromise” with the lunatic fringe of the right wing.
As anybody with more than a scintilla of intelligence knows, Democrats lost big this election because they didn’t work hard enough to pass the reforms they were installed to create–endlessly compromising with stubborn Republican legislators was the problem! It’s almost as if many Democrats in Congress, as well as the President, never really intended to reform anything, and have been using Republican obstructionism as a convenient excuse for not doing their jobs.
2 Responses to “Turn the Other Cheek”
Terry, you are so astute and right on in your analysis of the recent election. I am disgusted with Democrats for being wimps and I won’t even say how I feel about the lunatic fringe because you said it so well. Compromise? Phooey! Can’t play nice with people who don’t know how to play nice.
I don’t think they lost because they didn’t pass the reforms they were put in office to do — though that hurt — I think they lost because they lost touch with the people who desperately needed them. They did good things, but forgot that the big picture isn’t the only picture.
I didn’t care for your last line, but Sally’s is absolutely perfect.
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