CSotD: Drawing on our beliefs
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I'm finding it hard to get too inspired by a lot of cartoons lately, particularly over in the political sphere, and I think I know why. I'll start with an Ed Hall panel to get the conversation going without tapping into one political wing or the other.
This one isn't bad, but my point is that it relies on an accepted belief, which is that the weather service never gets it right and that their predictions are complex and muddled.
I suppose it depends on where you live, for a couple of reasons.
One is that some places are very hard to predict, because of ridges or large bodies of water or other local factors that can divert systems one direction or another.
In fact, most of the places I've lived have had something, such that an approaching storm in Colorado could cut north or south of Monument Pass, so that Denver would get socked and Colorado Springs, an hour away, would be dry as a bone, or vice-versa.
My current home is a more pleasant conundrum, generally a tad too far north for ocean-influenced storms, but a little too far south for the northern snows.
And then sometimes we seem to get the worst of both.
The bottom line is, if you live there, you should know that.
And maybe NYS is the only place where kids have to study meteorology in eighth or ninth grade, but, if you have a decent meteorologist on your local TV station, you'll get a nightly mini-lecture complete with charts and maps and live radar on what's coming and why, and how it's likely to hit.
You have to work very, very hard not to know that there is a system for predicting weather, and that, if a particular storm veers in one direction or the other, there's an explanation.
And you can joke about the weatherman, but you're bright enough, and experienced enough to know that weather prediction is complex.
In this case, however, the jokes are harmless enough: Farmers and fishermen and people who actually need to know the weather are bright enough to figure it out.
When the issues matter more, the attitude becomes less amusing.
Here's a Hillary Juxtaposition:
(Chip Bok)
Clay basically goes right for the heart of the issue, which is that Clinton is being judged, not on evidence, but, first, on an accepted "dishonesty" reputation and, second, on her ineptitude in disputing it.
Bok, as a Clinton opponent, exploits decades of attacks with the assumption that, just as weathermen never get it right, Clinton was lying then and she's lying now.
It wouldn't take a lot of research to show that there was a well-funded conservative conspiracy actively working against the Clintons from the start of his presidency. It would take a little more digging to parse out how much money actually changed hands before the Whitewater project fell apart, but what would be the point?
Just as Al Gore "lied" about inventing the Internet and John Kerry "lied" about his service record, Clinton made up some "right wing conspiracy."
And the weatherman just pulls a prediction out of a hat, because, well, we all know they never get it right.
Now here's a pair of Trumps:
The story here is slightly different, because both cartoonists — who tend to approach things from opposite ends of the spectrum — are expressing surprise that Trump is able to say whatever he wants whenever he wants and not be challenged or questioned in any meaningful way.
Wasserman's has a little more bite in context, because there are partisan cartoonists floating the idea that the "mainstream media" is in Clinton's pocket, a tin-foil approach that is part of Trump's defense in such things and thus well-accepted by his loyalists.
These cartoons seem almost about Trump taking over the job of the lazy cartoonist: He is not simply indifferent to the issue of perception versus reality, but counting on his supporters being equally indifferent to it.
He could be on to something: In those previous situations, not just Whitewater and Benghazi but who invented the Internet and how Purple Hearts are awarded, none of the True Believers bothered to look beyond the accusations.
So why address the Byzantine system by which Syrians attempt to enter the United States, or discuss the tiny number who make it: Simply announce they are flooding in.
Why talk about the cost of building a wall or it's practicality? Simply announce you're going to do it.
Let the traditional politicians waste effort on policy statements explaining their promises.
Nobody cares.
Meanwhile, over at the Nib, Shannon Wright takes on Trump's ridiculous, counter-factual, insulting remarks about the African American community, and it's worth going through the piece to see how far off the mark his speech was, and why it is being so roundly rejected by that group.
But Trump never intended to tell the truth about race in this country; he only intended to show that he cared, in order to blunt accusations of bigotry. And if anyone bothers to read Wright's piece, it won't be anyone who had swallowed Trump's foolishness in the first place.
Still, truth matters, and cartoonists may have to learn to adjust their work to account for the fact that they can no longer simply illustrate prejudices and depict nonsense, but must work to correct the record.
Wright's piece won't reach into the places that need it, and, where it does reach, it isn't needed.
When Ross Perot addressed the NAACP as "you people," it was a telling though inadvertant slip that helped kill his chances there. But Trump wasn't addressing the black community and didn't care if they believed him or not, as long as his immediate audience cheered.
Cartoonists need to work harder.
So here's something encouraging:
The Center For Cartoon Studies has recently added Sophie Yanow to its faculty. Yanow practices a form of graphic journalism that can depict truth.
Assuming there's a market for truth.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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