Horsey Father’s Day cartoon riles up dads

Hearst Corp/Seattle PI editorial cartoonist David Horsey’s Father’s Day cartoon caused a bit of a storm. The cartoon depicts a man in the kitchen standing in front of his daughter who asks, “Daddy, Since you lost your job and mommy is supporting us, should I give my Father’s Day card to her?” On his blog, David notes that nasty comments he received on Facebook but also offers what he was trying to convey.

The recession that has had a grip on the country for the last two years has hit working class men disproportionately. The term “mancession” wasn’t invented by me, it was coined by an economist to emphasize the fact that males in blue collar jobs are the biggest losers in the bad economy.

My cartoon may have been a little raw, but it wasn’t all that far off target. American men are entering a new era where the old assumptions about their place in society are being challenged as never before. This is not necessarily bad, but, for some guys, it will not be easy.

Read the full blog post.

9 thoughts on “Horsey Father’s Day cartoon riles up dads

  1. It seems if there’s a huge organization, like NOW or the NAACP or some radical muslim group upset over a cartoon, then that should be a news item.
    A few guys who got their feelings hurt, over a Father’s Day cartoon of all things, is NOT a news item.

    Should we report every time we get a hate letter?

  2. The thing is, when blue collar jobs are gone it leaves men and women both out of a job. Not many households getting by on one check anymore. Hopefully the father in this cartoon is getting unemployment AND working for cash under the table because otherwise they’re going to lose the house.

  3. …my response to the thoughtless child ,would be…”no honey,give the card to the milkman or one of my best friends”…it ain’t about support,..it’s about love,so the jokes on the little kid…TaDa !

  4. “American men are entering a new era where the old assumptions about their place in society are being challenged as never before.”

    “As never before?” I’ve assumed for the last 20 years or so that women worked too. I guess it helped watching my mom go off to her job every day during most of them.

    “It seems if there?s a huge organization, like NOW or the NAACP or some radical muslim group upset over a cartoon, then that should be a news item.”

    Maybe I’m confused by the outrage because I remember reading that cartoon this weekend and i just found it surprisingly sexist. And dated. Haha, men without jobs don’t deserve praise because after all, being the parent who stays home isn’t actually work. Edgy!

  5. I thought the cartoon was excellent. In my reading, it operates as a critique, not approval of, sexism, as well as commenting on the unique societal and economic pressures on men as late-period capitalism slides into collapse. As Gloria Steinem said more than 20 years ago, now we have to help the men find their place.

  6. Perhaps David didn’t mean it this way, but the joke of the cartoon seems based on a premise that men belong in the world of work outside the home and are responsible for supporting the family financially, and the women’s job is to do the unpaid domestic work, and that to reverse all that is against the natural order of things.

    Mommy, working outside earning a living, is now the daddy. Daddy, stuck at home, is now the mommy.

    Sexist and retro. Most people don’t live that way any more.

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