CSotD: Grasshoppers 0, Cattle 1
Skip to comments
Today's offering really is just one huge Juxtaposition, and I had trouble knowing where to start. Ann Telnaes won the lead position for best setting the overall mood without arguing a specific point.
That sounds like damning with faint praise, but it takes a safecracker's touch to make a statement this piercing without getting distracted by this or that particular element, and she even avoided the temptation to put various grievances in among the trash, choosing rather to populate the Dumpster with American icons that he has already soiled and degraded.
That doesn't mean you can't, or shouldn't, make specific accusations, and Nick Anderson specifies a major insult to the nation, and thus its flag.
Walking on the flag is a violation of flag etiquette, but the trail of footprints makes the dishonor more apparent, while Putin's bland, self-satisfied expression contrasts with Trump's angry face to suggest the control he has, though it is only an accent for the clear and obvious picture of not only who is in control, but who boosted Trump to the level where he can speak into the microphone at all.
In Anderson's cartoon, Trump defiles the nation by being a Russian stooge, while, in Telnaes's, his entire administration has been an overall insult to our national dignity.
Both POV's are valid, mind you.
Chris Britt lays out a laundry list, and two things happen here: One is that he highlights the double-standard under which Trump operates, and, while several NFL players tweeted about it, Britt has the mainstream platform to bring it forward.
It's not complex, people: You simply can't make excuses for racists and Nazis and then turn around and express total condemnation of Civil Rights protesters.
Well, obviously, you can, because Trump has done so. But it's not consistent, it's not intelligent, it's not decent, and it sure smells like hypocrisy if not outright racism.
The other thing that happens here is that Britt proves himself one of the few cartoonists who understands the concept of meter. When cartoonists satirize songs and poems, I read the first panel or two and, if they can't match the meter, I can't continue. Whatever point they are trying to make is drowned out by the bumps and thumps of clumsy wording.
This may sound like a petty grievance, but cartoonists are not required to try spoofing lyrics or poetry, and bringing an option into your work is ill-advised if you aren't good at it.
All cartoonists should be married, preferably to someone who loves them enough to be frank or, failing that, to someone who doesn't love them at all.
I'll bet the wife in this Frank Reynolds classic studied poetry and could tell him if his meter had gone clattering off the rails.
Meanwhile, Rob Rogers offers a point of view that I'm seeing a lot on my feed from people whom I know served in the military.
Granted, I curated my feed enough during the campaign that there may be some vets I know personally who feel otherwise, but when I think back to the people I unfollowed or unfriended for their chest-thumping, often-racist, blind jingoism, I can't think of any who had served in uniform.
Though it's possible some did. I ran into a classmate a few weeks ago who mentioned having been in Vietnam in quite another context, to which I said, "I missed that party" to which he responded, "You didn't miss a thing" and we went on with our conversation.
The vast majority of vets don't walk around in camo.
Nor do you have to show a DD-214 to post on Facebook as a vet.
And, BTW, vets who need the reassurance of these public displays deserve a president who doesn't propose cutting their benefits.
I'd also guess that the majority of people who drape themselves in violations of the Flag Code, as seen in Ed Hall's cartoon, have never worn the uniform.
I say that as someone who still treats the flag the way he once treated the palms handed out at church on Palm Sunday.
You don't let them touch the ground, you don't simply throw them in the trash, and you don't have to be a big believer in symbols in order to treat them with polite respect.
Which puts me at odds with people who use the flag to advertise their businesses, who fly it filthy and tattered from their cars, who let it stand out in the rain, who wipe their mouths with napkins that bear it, who hand out cheap little flags at parades that end up abandoned in the gutter.
And who swear they respect and revere it.
And, by the way, who are just as gullible in believing lies about what Jerry Jones said about the protests (that's him in the center before last night's game), as they are in believing lies about Tim Tebow being punished for praying on the field.
It's only fair to admit that a few cartoonists are against the demonstrations, echoing the talk radio contention that these demonstrations — not saturating the market with additional game nights, not an explosion of competing media choices, not heightened concern over player safety, not escalating ticket prices, not teams moving out of loyal markets — have caused dips in NFL attendance and ratings.
I even saw one that said the demonstrations are — ha ha ha — proof that football causes brain damage, which echoes the President's call to stop giving a damn about player safety.
Perhaps the problem is not a lack of respect for the flag, but the lack of self-respect that makes people so vulnerable to manipulation.
In any case, for all the noise made by the social media grasshoppers, the great silent cattle have made the pasture their own, this time around.
Perhaps Chan Lowe's analysis lacks subtlety, but it seems accurate and it made me laff.
I suppose he could get penalized for celebrating before we've reached the end zone.
Now here's your moment of zen:
Comments 5
Comments are closed.