Political Cartoons Thread<------------Thread Title

Banning his version of Liberals would be as easy as banning unicorns.

Not liberals! Progressives.

Is that REALLY a thing? I mean really? 'Cause they define themselves as the opposite of Liberals and if they're the opposite of "Progressives" they are "REgressives". I mean that's as bad as calling themselves "Teabaggers"...oh...

...Do I even have to say that she voluntarily withdrew herself? Do I EVEN??

Yeah :(

FUCK YOU BISH. FUCK YOU.

Fuck you Rogers. Next time at least TRY to have a point.

A little subtler or angrier and I would have liked this (I'm a Santa snob)



...no it's not...

Take THAT fat white male! That fat white male put the exact right words in the black woman's mouth! We SHOULD legalize pedophilia, drunk driving, and drugs!
I love how conservatives use the war on drugs as an example of failed policy in every context except the war on drugs.




...you are the worst. Ever. A tiny bit of the total joy in this world just died, permanently, because of this fucking horseshit. Fuck you, and may god have mercy on your pitiful soul.

"WE NEED GUNS IN CASE THE FEDS COME FOR OUR GUITARS AND BECAUSE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS ARE GUARDED BY ARMED MEN MAKING THEM HARDER TO SHOOT."

Oh my god, Reagan.com is a real thing. Why did I not think of this cash cow?

Quick, what can we do to make money off this idea? OliverNorthBallsack.com?

I believe Liberals are GODLESS COMMIES that HATE AMERICA and Progressives are merely sympathizers (and also they were totes into eugenics Back in the Day and we will totally keep reminding people of that when we can't think of anything else to whine about). That's just sort of the way I've noticed some wingnuts use the words, it could just be Muir felt like using the longer word because he is fucking terrible and should get hit by a bus who cares why really.

They accept non-sequential bills dropped at their offices at night.

*rolls up sleeves, cracks knuckles*

Crypto-secure email. Payments are accepted to one-off bitcoin wallets created for the specific invoice through Silk Road only (or possibly any Tor-based bitcoin mixer). Everything stored in the database is encrypted with your public key, and no unencrypted data is kept whatsoever. All addresses are randomized to the limits of the common implementations of the email protocol, and every outgoing email comes out of a new, randomized as described address. All traffic is required to go through at least two non-adjacent Tor nodes. Incoming email "addresses" are actually just pointers to a "child-key" generated from your public key + time + random seed; hit the button, get a new email address for someone to send an email to. Logon is through HTTPS only and requires 2-factor authentication: hardware widget code signed by your private key.

*thinks* I don't actually know enough programming to implement that, but I don't think you can get any more anonymous or secure.

How do you make money off of it? You charge people for accounts, of course. Idiots, specifically.

Most of those good cartoons were superb and most of those terrible cartoons were shaking-wrath-inducingly terrible. Kudos.

(Asay's pivot from the school shooting to what I can only assume is the au-courant-black-helicopters-comin' talking point is... wow.)

You mean you aren't moved by the terrible specter of the Gibson guitar raid?

I'm not sure I understand the rage at these two. The Santa one is a bit on the nose, but that's it. It makes me sad because you know that in the real world there are wrapped presents with the names of dead children tucked away in closets. I know it.

The "why did the bell ring 26 times" one I don't quite get, unless it's a reference to a story I heard about one kid who narrowly escaped murder who thought the gunman had finally found him every time his doorbell rang. But that looks like a girl in the cartoon and I don't know who "Zuzu" is. Is that a It's a Wonderful Life reference?

Otterloop, I don't fully understand why you are so outraged by the ones that use the child-hugging, list of dead child names, It's A Wonderful Life type themes. Is it just because they're so lazy? Please explain.

edit -- What Jamie said. Yes, Jamie, that's an It's A Wonderful Life reference. "Every time a bell rings, another angel gets its wings."

Oh. Oooooh. ...Ick.

Yeah, it's It's A Wonderful Life. See, according to that movie a bell rings every time an angel gets its wings, which they get after finishing a long apprenticeship and completing a lengthy sidequest, but in the cartoon apparently angels are murdered children, so it's a reference to a movie that maybe the author hasn't seen. Also that might be the dumbest label I've seen in all my days.

It's just gross. First of all a supposed political cartoonist should not be doing a cartoon about how the dead kids are in heaven now or how senseless an event that was, because addressing that topic in a political context absent any actual political issue implies that the deaths of a bunch of children are themselves a political issue, and just mentioning them is some kind of statement. Second, if someone wants to cope with the loss of a child by saying "they're in heaven now," that's up to them, but that kind of grieving is an intensely personal thing and it's shitty for some rando to step in and say "well you know they'll be collecting their Christmas presents in heaven this year ha ha." At best it's a cheap emotional potshot that can never come off as sincere, and at worst it's a smug co-opting of someone else's grief to score points for one's religion.

Oh. That makes sense, I guess. I just thought it was an easy and lazy emotional tug without, as you say, any real point. However, I don't tend to apply some sort of motivational purity test to political cartoonists, so it doesn't bother me if they take a religious angle. I'm more outraged by the ones who use the event to defend their gun fetish rather than this class of thing.

As a guitarist with several Gibsons, I'm deeply offended by Ass says meaningless words.

This. Every one of those cartoon angels represents a real, actual person. "Ha ha, at least there's an upside" from a complete stranger.
Plus the sheer laziness. Especially the "list of names". No commentary, no symbolism, no effort, just "a thing happened" but with dead children.

Or they need to put out a comic as part of a contractual obligation and instead of being a jagoff like Asay and blaming the liberals or whatever, they go with something safe that the target audience will still find acceptable. Sympathy > yet another tired ARE GUNS rant anyday.

Spending longer than eight seconds coming up with a cartoon is out of the question, I guess. Those "the kids are angels now" cartoons might be better than the "see this just proves we need even more guns all over the place guns guns guns guns guns" cartoons, but they're both terrible. If you don't have something political to say about it, maybe don't do a political cartoon about it at all?

So saying "I'm sad" isn't political, is what I'm gathering.

It is political, especially in some of these examples given what lousy cartoonists are usually up to. Where they are communicating purely on emotion (I hate Obama), they frame it as a question of policy or public welfare (I am troubled by non-specific aspects of Benghazi). When there's a real tangible policy issue at stake with obvious political dimensions, they become "sad" and actively decontextualize the tragedies in question.

It's just the worst kind of manipulative, passive-aggressive political argument, that's all.

Mawkishly mourning people in the box where the political cartoon goes isn't their job, doing so in a religious way is in bad taste and potentially fairly offensive to those who might not happen to believe their murdered kid is now a bible belt Christian cherub.

I sympathize with BillD's view that a bit of "I am sad" boilerplate is better than Asay's atrocity, particularly given that crappy boilerplate is about all most of these guys ever manage. But it's still pretty poor compared to either treating the subject with an intelligent political cartoon, or doing a political cartoon about something else. Devils' advocate, maybe some of them were expected to crank something like that out.

Precisely (re: LK's point). Which is ably demonstrated by the "call and response" duo from the previous page.

Also, "I'm sad" is a fine thing to say, for you and me. But if you want to be presenting your thoughts and opinions to the masses as something worthwhile, at least have a point. "A thing happened" is illustration, not commentary. We don't need you guys illustrating the news, thanks.

I know "dead kids" is always the first arrow in my quiver.

Yeah, that one was BURN.gif.

Wasn't Gibson knowingly using illegally sourced wood? Since when is "Lawbreaker found in violation and agrees to fine" the same as "Jack-booted thugs TERK ERR GURNS!"

EDIT: I just read up on the Gibson thing again, and it's even more asinine than I remember. Totally a reason to fear for our second amendment rights.

Yeah, it was stupid. We were enforcing a fine for another country. It wasn't our regulations, it was Indian trade laws that they happened to violate IIRC.

The reason we have so many guns is because we're terrified that we'll be busted for.. violating international trade rules, and receive a fine.

First they came for my guitars......

But I thought they killed fascists??

If Hallmark started making Sad Cards for the deaths of children, they would be less offensive in their banality and simplicity than about half of those cartoons.

I guess my question was more about Otterloop's seething rage but since everyone else seems to share it and the last thing I want to do is defend these imbecilic cartoonists in any fashion, I'll bow out of the argument wholesale.

I had a dream last night that Otterloop was banned, and I was totally sad because that meant this thread would stop getting updated. TAKE THAT AS YOU WILL

Nobody can be said to "share" otterloop's seething rage at any of these cartoons or their creators. The best we can do is try to understand it, in some small way.

It's why I tune in.

Can we go back to hating on especially awful Day By Days?

I'm still not sure what the fuck the punchline of that one is supposed to be and fuck Day by Day for making me (YES MAKING ME) try to figure it out.