This is Historic Times » Ronald Reagan

Grand Wizardry

deephurting — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:23:34 +0000

This was the cartoon I mentioned in the previous post, which I started drawing about a week ago, but set aside so I could end 2011 with something else.

As I expected, Michele Bachmann dropped out of the race for the GOP Presidential nomination following yesterday’s Iowa primary. Rick Perry appears to be limping along, but hasn’t given up yet, in spite of his poor Iowa showing and poor campaign performance in general.

As with the last cartoon I drew including Herman Cain, I did have time to remove Bachmann from the cartoon after I decided she’d probably drop out, but before inking it. However, I just loved how she looked in the picture, and none of the other candidates seemed like a better representative of the crazed, speaking-in-tongues wing of the Republican Party, so I figured I’d give her a last hurrah. Besides, this cartoon’s more about the candidates’ ideas than the candidates themselves, and some of Bachmann’s particular brand of insanity is bound to stick around in the campaign dialogue for at least a little while.

I had a lot of fun with the details in this one. Longtime readers with good eyes may recognize the crystal ball (or palantir, for you Tolkien enthusiasts) from this cartoon in the upper-lefthand corner. The flat Earth globe in the corner opposite was originally included as a relatively meaningless goof, but after awhile, I realized it could be taken to relate to Thomas Friedman’s “World is Flat” economic ideology, for better or for worse. The two “alternate” pointed hats on Ron Paul and Rick Perry were not part of my original idea, but something I came up with on-the-fly.

The book in the background, labeled “Reaganomics,” was originally labeled “Creationism.” I thought it’d be a funny joke relating to all the candidates’ supposed religious backgrounds, while tying into the general theme of pseudo-science, but it didn’t fit the overall theme of economics very well, so I changed it to the more reliable workhorse. I also considered having it read “Voodoo,” but thought that might be too obscure for the average person.

Some of you may have noticed the art in the last cartoon looking a little different, and this one looking more familiar. This was because I got a small Wacom for Christmas, and the last cartoon was the first one I colored with it. I planned to do the same with this one, but I already lost the pen–it’s possible I left it at a friend’s house in Bellingham, WA, where I went for New Year’s Eve, but if not, I’ll have to get another one before I can continue coloring cartoons that way.

Yeah, This Won’t Backfire…

deephurting — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:12:26 +0000

I was developing a cartoon criticizing the economic policies of the various GOP Presidential candidates, but then I read this and decided the above might make a more appropriate year-ender. Before developing the economic policy cartoon, I wasted a few days trying to come up with something commenting on the recent US withdrawal from Iraq with which to end the year, but none of my ideas seemed to say much beyond the surface details of “a thing happened.” Besides, I couldn’t possibly outdo this outstanding illustration by Joel Pett, chronicling the whole blunderous enterprise, from its back-alley conception, to its ignominious conclusion, so I’m glad this specific angle was brought to my attention instead.

The very first post-withdrawal articles I read had made note of how Iraq was to be opened up as a prime market for US defense contractors, and I remember rolling my eyes as I read this, commenting to my friend online that arms sales–not “liberty” or “democracy”–were, and always had been, the ultimate purpose of the war.

But for some reason, it took the headline of the more recent article for me to make the connection between the past and the present on display in this cartoon, as well as in the post-occupation policies of the Obama Administration. Despite holding an official policy of neutrality in the Iran/Iraq conflict of the early ’80s, the Reagan Administration provided Saddam Hussien, a Sunni Muslim, with weapons and military funding under-the-table (until they were caught doing this, of course), for the express purpose of acting as a “counter” to Iran. Reagan didn’t really seem to care when Saddam began using the weapons we gave him to oppress and kill Shiites (like Nouri al-Maliki, the current US puppet in Iraq). Nobody in the US seemed to care, really, until Saddam invaded Kuwait.

A famous photograph of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam began circulating on the web shortly before the more recent Iraq invasion, and has become symbolic of the folly of giving strongman dictators guns and an expense account for the Military Industrial Complex all-you-can-eat bonanza, not to mention the irony of having those very weapons turned against the US and its allies shortly afterwards.

It has been suggested to me that this cartoon may be difficult to understand, because people aren’t likely to recognize Nouri al-Maliki on his looks alone. If history is any indicator, he just might become as recognizable to the average person as his predecessor was, in a decade or so.

This is Bat Country!

deephurting — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 21:23:35 +0000

Here it is, folks, my 9/11 tenth anniversary cartoon.

A little over a week ago, I read about this ~~publicity stunt~~ tribute a large number of Sunday funnies are planning on doing. While I’m sure many of those involved mean well, I couldn’t help but be immediately reminded of this Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon, originally published in late September, 2001. I feel what these newspaper comics are planning might actually be in far poorer taste than Bolling’s joke, since the latter makes a good point about the absurdity of forcing the topic of 9/11 (or any disaster with a high body count) into any and every venue of the cultural consciousness, regardless of whether or not it’s appropriate there, and the former unironically does what the parody did in jest. The idea of gag-a-day strips that are usually about things like goofy talking dogs and Vikings in the Middle Ages suddenly talking about real-world, modern terrorist attacks is about as dignified as trying to shoehorn a miscarriage arc into a bad webcomic about “gamerz” where the punchline is typically violence and/or rape.

Just look at some of these samples. Hagar the Horrible and Beetle Bailey, in particular, look like something out of a modern art museum (while Reply All, like usual, looks like something attached with magnets to a day care center’s refrigerator). If the cartoonists were doing something like using their space to draw caricatures of specific victims of the attack, that’d be swell, but wrapping their characters in the event smacks of shameless, opportunistic self-promotion.

Imagine a day where most newspaper comics are Funky Winkerbean. That’s what’s happening this Sunday.

Anyway, that’s what got the wheels turning which produced the above editorial cartoon, even though the commentary on display is pretty far removed from its inspiration, instead addressing the wider topic of something I’d call “fear profiteering.” Following the World Trade Center attacks, we’ve seen an explosion in industries that buy and sell fear: private, for-profit militaries like Blackwater and corporate propaganda bullhorns like Fox News have enjoyed terrific windfalls from such camera-friendly human misery, and they’re clearly more than happy to exploit them.

Like the Red Menace of the ’50s, the terrorist attacks have been an extremely useful tool for unscrupulous politicians as well. The pointless and unnecessary invasion of Iraq and George W. Bush’s second term arguably could not have happened without them. For Bush, the attacks functioned like his own personal John Hinkley moment, propelling a President whom everyone up to that point knew was a corrupt idiot to sudden, undeserved popularity and dangerous levels of power. This has had a domino effect: like each of the Presidents following Reagan, most of the bad things the current President pushes can probably be traced to the policies and attitudes the Bush Administration was able to advance thanks to this single, early crisis.

So, this cartoon sets out to criticize anyone who exploits 9/11. I chose vampire bats for the metaphor because they have special enzymes in their saliva that prevent blood from clotting. Similarly, I feel it’s in the best interests of organizations and people who live off the reaction to terrorism for that blood to keep on flowin’, so of course they’re going to take every opportunity to remind us of the big, scary boogeymen that are still out there, while at the same time turning what ought to be an occasion for solemn reflection on American foreign policy into a disgusting, orgiastic display of “patriotism” and hocking 9/11-themed versions of their products. Buy the Official Patriot Day Snuggie™! Try new 9/11 Tenth Anniversary Edition Kaboom™!

About the attacks, it’s often said that we should “Never Forget.” This isn’t a bad thing, because we certainly should remember what happened, and whom it happened to. But it’s also important to remember why it happened, and that’s something that’s frequently ignored. This is because the truths about what caused the event are inconvenient to many of those who control the media narrative, and because there isn’t an easy answer to that question. As I said, it’s rooted in the complexities of decades of Western foreign policy, as well as centuries of religious conflict. Most of this is stuff people would still have to learn in the first place before they could start “never forgetting” it.

Remembering 9/11 also doesn’t mean we should come to let the actions of the terrorists dominate our culture and govern every aspect of our lives. Otherwise, we give them what they wanted, and perpetuate the cycle.

As FDR once declared, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Ronald Reagun

deephurting — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 02:29:01 +0000

I wanted to draw something that’d tie the current Universal Healthcare debate, as it applies to mental health, to the recent shooting in Tucson, which I addressed by itself in the previous cartoon.

Since one of the many terrible things Ronald Reagan did during his time in office was defunding psychiatric care programs and tossing the mentally ill out of sanitariums and into the street, I thought this might be an appropriate context in which to bring up his more easily remembered opposition of socialized medicine, so he is functioning here both as a symbol of the Republican Party in general, and as a literal representation of himself.

Similarly, Jared Loughner here represents both himself, and the United States in general.

Unfortunately, while the illustration is pretty nice, I don’t think this cartoon turned out too well, as the commentary in it is way too muddled, and I’m not even sure it clearly depicts a psychiatrist’s office.

WWRD?

deephurting — Sat, 22 May 2010 01:26:28 +0000

There are several gags at work in this cartoon.

The main, overarching theme is a comparison between the GOP’s relationship with the Tea Baggers, and the Reagan Administration’s relationship with the Mujahideen. In both cases, the former joined forces with the latter to battle a common enemy (the Democrats, and the Soviets, respectively). We all know how arming the Mujahideen turned out for America, and in much the same way, the Tea Baggers now appear to be turning on the GOP.

There’s also a reference to Reagan’s belief in the supernatural. A guy I know by the name of Tony Caroselli deserves credit for reminding me of this, because I was going in a slightly different direction with this cartoon before, and I think that reference helped the whole thing come together much better than it would have otherwise.

They Cling to Guns and Religion

deephurting — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:42:06 +0000

The Evil Dead

deephurting — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 10:47:54 +0000

Presidential Evolution

deephurting — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:03:13 +0000