CSotD: The Immediate Reponse
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Lalo Alcaraz wasted no time in getting out his pens to satirize the "Whatchagonnado?" response that greeted the Nazi riots in Charlottesville.
Dunno where that idea came from, unless it had something to do with this:
"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides. It's been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time."
So both sides do it and both sides always have and why look at me?
That's how you condemn something in "the strongest possible terms."
Given the source.
I fully expected to find a barrage of outraged cartoons this morning, not on the syndicate and newspaper sites, because bureaucracy and schedules and procedures slow things down there, but certainly on Facebook and Twitter.
Well, I haven't seen much yet.
Guido Kuehn, working from Germany, has the advantage of working in a different time zone such that he didn't have to be up all night in order to comment in a timely manner on Trump's "Whatchagonnado?" response.
And Austrian cartoonist Marian Kamensky shares that time zone advantage with Kuhn, and goes beyond the shrug to insist on the element of "If you are not with us, you are against us," specifically depicting Trump as lining up with one side over another.
Or, wait — Do you suppose Germans and Austrians share something else that makes them leap to the drawing table at such moments?
Twitter, a far more immediate medium, has been alive with statements, including this gem from John Fugelsang, which drew a couple of good comments.
And maybe I have too carefully a curated feed, but there seems to be a strong revulsion to what's going on, and not to "both sides," though I did see one "they both do it" comment on Facebook, from a predictable source.
But, as someone on Twitter noted, there were also two sides in World War II, and yet we somehow managed to choose one.
Clay Jones had posted this cartoon earlier, noting that he hadn't scheduled a cartoon but could hardly let the moment pass unmarked. In his piece, he notes Trump's alliances with dubious characters, which makes it easier to understand how David Duke might have misunderstood the 2016 campaign.
Or misinterpreted it.
Because both sides do that.
(As soon as I find a black nationalist or ISIS sympathizer who also assumes Trump is on his side, I'll post it.)
Bill Sanders had also posted a response early in the day, before Trump's "they both do it" statement, questioning the silence.
But Trump at least did break his silence, however, inadequately, however late it may have seemed. There remain other silences.
I guess I may be too demanding, in expecting outrage or some kind of fire-horse response to the bells.
Too steeped in Bill Mauldin's race back to the newsroom when he heard of JFK's announcement and was determined not simply to be in the next morning's regular edition but to be in the Extra that would be published that afternoon.
Too much aware of all the hoopla surrounding new media and immediacy and the death of deadlines.
Or maybe this little mini-krisstalnacht isn't such a big deal after all.
Yes, the water's getting a bit warm, but we'll jump out of the pot if it actually begins to boil.
Meanwhile …
… here's a flashback to a cartoon I wrote back in the late 70s, when the Klan planned a march in Colorado Springs. It ran on the back of a flyer calling for a counterprotest.
The counterprotest happened, but the Klan didn't show up, largely because, in those days, the cartoon basically got it right.
In those days, groups like the Klan were not viewed as some kind of balance to offer "both sides" a voice. Nor did they "misinterpret" any messages coming from the nation's leadership.
It was a long time ago.
I did, of course, see other cartoons on other topics today — it is Sunday, after all — but I'm not really in the mood to run that other stuff while we wait.
Well, maybe a little vintage Dr. Seuss. Oh, the places we'll go!
We'll return to this topic, assuming there's something to pass along a little later.
But we gotta move and we might get sued and it looks like it's gonna rain.
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