CSotD: Not with a bang, but a snicker
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Don Asmussen sets himself a tough task with "Bad Reporter" — making three terse, funny, insightful, thematically-linked gags on the same day. He doesn't nail all three every time, but, my, it's lovely when he does.
With the next presidential campaign just kicking off, we're in a particularly target-rich environment right now, particularly with the emerging extremism of the right a leading factor, at least for now, in the Republican efforts to unseat a Democratic incumbent. More than one editorial cartoonist has already used the "clown car" metaphor to depict the declared candidates.
Once Iowa and New Hampshire have begun to weed out the contenders, things may settle down, but, of course, that assumes a heavy turnout of moderate Republicans determined not to repeat the Sarah Palin debacle of 2008.
Given the tone of the debt ceiling debate, it seems political cartoonists will have some good times ahead, because, even if the moderates are able to put a Mitt Romney-level candidate in the driver's seat, there will be tremendous pressure to please the Tea Party gang with a running mate who will make Sarah Palin look like William Gladstone.
And god knows they've got plenty to choose from.
I've heard people say they hope the Republicans nominate a Michele Bachmann, because it would make it so much easier for Obama to be re-elected. I have no idea what developments they have been watching over the past few years that make them believe this, but they apparently have faith in a rational electorate that simply doesn't exist in the numbers necessary to sway an election.
I haven't read Ryan Lizza's New Yorker piece on Bachmann yet, but I heard Terry Gross interview him yesterday, and it was a very frightening interview. Two decades ago, her extremist views and factual blunders would have made her a laughingstock, but she's running for office today, not two decades ago.
She started a charter school that was pledged to be non-sectarian, then promptly taught creationism and wouldn't let the kids watch "Aladdin" because it contained magic. She and her cohorts were forced off the board. But you have to see it from the right (sic) perspective: They were forced off the board by atheist liberal socialists who hate Jesus and it's that much more important that we put good Christians in positions where they can fix our schools.
She was influenced by a preacher who believes Christians should take over the government by violence if necessary to make Christ's message the guiding principle of our nation. Yes? And what's wrong with that?
One of the books she listed as important for everyone to read is a biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins, which contains this paragraph, quoted in the New Yorker piece and then again on Fresh Air:
Slavery as it operated in the pervasively Christian society, which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole not contempt, but over time mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith. The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.
Again, you may believe with all your heart that the idea that the Civil War was an attack by the godless North on a Christian South where slaves and Massa rejoiced in their common faith is lunacy, but if you believe that this idiotic view of history has no appeal to a substantial portion of active voters, you're as delusional as they are.
And they are going to vote, and they will be motivated to vote even more by things like Newsweek running a picture of Bachmann looking crazy, with a cutline calling her the "Queen of Rage."
Anyone trying to stir up the rational voters runs the risk of inciting the irrational ones. It will be interesting to see how cartoonists, and magazine editors, handle the upcoming campaigns.
I like the addition of the watch. Asmussen makes me laugh. But everything else scares me, including the ban on comparing our current situation with the Weimar Republic. If you mention it, there is an instant "how dare you?" response that avoids talk of financial ruin, unemployment, bookburnings and scapegoating of a religious group.
We need to start wondering how a people can be turned into, not simply a mob, which can be brought under control with truncheons, firehoses and rubber bullets, but a mob that votes in large enough numbers than they gain control of the truncheons, the firehoses and the rubber bullets.
I had a chance to interview Frank Zappa in 1986, and I have often since been reminded of this exchange:
Peterson: I remember that at one point, Lennon was asked in an interview on his pacifism, "What would you have done about Hitler?" and he said that the problem with Hitler was back when he was a kid — Why did he become Hitler? — rather than what do you do with him in 1938 when it's too late…
Zappa: That's an interesting observation, but it doesn't solve the problem in 1938. And then, it raises the spectre of what do we do, have a government agency to spot little Hitlers? My theory is, any society can produce a Hitler, and to the Germans in 1938, Hitler was a totally acceptable guy, because he was saying the things that they wanted to hear. If you look around you in the United States today, there are plenty of acceptable guys saying what Americans want to hear that are just as dangerous.
Of course, that was two decades ago …
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