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Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: The sleeping giant

Published: March 12, 2011 1 minute 11 comments

Crmlu110311
When Wisconsin's GOP pulled that razzle-dazzle trick the other night, I was reminded of the famous but apparently apocryphal quote from Admiral Yamamoto following the attack on Pearl Harbor about having awakened a sleeping giant. I may not have been the only person for whom it resonated, as Mike Luckovich draws on the overall concept if not the quote itself.

Of course, the fact that Wis Gov had started signalling a willingness to compromise was a strong hint that we should draw the parallel, since the Japanese government had also sought to keep the giant asleep by offering peace talks in DC while the task force got in place.

This is an apt commentary and Wisconsin's GOP had better accomplish all they want to accomplish in a right hurry, because it may be awhile before they once more hold the upper hand.

Speaking of Japan, there will be many cartoons noting yesterday's disaster, and, if any of them merit being Comic Strip of the Day.com, you'll see it here. But I wouldn't stand on one leg waiting for that. What I've seen so far has ranged from so-what to awful.

I'm not a big fan of simply noting that something sad has happened, absent a purpose in saying it. Japan has a strong, modern economy and has done a lot in the past couple of decades to protect themselves from earthquakes. There's not a lot of need to rally donations, as in the tsunami of 2004, nor is there much to criticize in how the Japanese government prepared for the event.

And, while anyone with a heart must feel for the victims of the disaster, it is somewhat distant from a country with whom the vast majority of people have no real ties. Damage to our own coastal towns, while certainly notable and even frightening, does not rise to the level of making this into a local story.

Cartoonists may feel an obligation to note the tragic aspects of the earthquake, but there's really nothing they can do to help in this case or to prevent the next. By contrast, what happened in Wisconsin the other night pales beside the devastation in Japan in a humanitarian sense, but it is part of something that can be impacted by what Americans do next, which means commentary can have some influence on its ultimate outcome.

Fact is, good political cartoons emerge from a sense of outrage, rather than a sense of obligation.

And a mild rebuke: I realize it's nearly 900 miles from Luckovich's home paper in Atlanta to the scene of the action in Madison, but, if it's a story worthy of comment at that distance (and it is), I think you could give readers a little credit and label the fellow "Scott Walker" rather than "Wis Gov." But a label is a label and if you need one at all, the wording is a minor issue.

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Comments 11

  1. I’m curious why you think what happened in Wisconsin is so awful as to eclipse a tsunami, considering that all the bill did was require certain- not all- public union employees to pay a small percentage towards their own health costs, and removed the option to collectively bargain for benefits- just benefits, not salary.
    If this is so awful and traumatic, why has there been no hue nor cry over the twenty-six other states that have _never_ had collective bargaining for benefits, and no death threats (in this supposed ‘new age of civility’) over the fact that no _federal_ union employee has ever had that right?
    No one’s salary got cut, no union employees got fired, no benefits were taken off the table nor removed from those that already had them, the unions can still bargain for salary and raises, and even after the bill, they pay considerably less for their health insurance than most private sector employees.
    What, I must ask, made the bill so evil that it merits death threats, body outlines chalked on the sidewalk labelled “Walker” and chaining the building shut to block the vote?
    Mad.

  2. Well, first of all, I don’t think there’s much you can do to prevent a tsunami, so there’s less point in expressing an opinion about it, one way or the other.
    As for the bill that cut workers rights, was not part of what Walker was elected to do and has caused so much fury among people in Wisconsin, you may be right — it may be nothing at all like the people there say it was. But that’s the nice thing about democracy, isn’t it? We’ll find out at the next election, or maybe in recall elections sooner, now that the voters of Wisconsin know what Walker and his GOP legislators actually have in mind.

  3. You didn’t answer my question.
    Mad.

  4. This isn’t a blog about political debate. It’s a blog about cartoons. This was a good cartoon, whether you agree or disagree with Walker’s actions (and those of his colleagues in the Wisconsin legislature).
    The point of the cartoon is that, in the opinion of the cartoonist, the actions of Walker will create a powerful backlash. The facts that tie his actions to Pearl Harbor are that (A) he was telling the press that he had decided to compromise and (B) the GOP legislature passed the law quickly, without debate and as a complete surprise.
    There’s no relevance in how good or bad the law was. I happen to think that Walker and the GOP are going to be trounced by a motivated liberal voting bloc. As I said in my response to your first comment, maybe the majority of people in Wisconsin want this and will reward them at the polls.
    We’ll see. But my experience as a longtime observer of such things is that elections are often won by motivated groups, because people who like what’s going on have a lighter turnout. That’s not a question of who’s “right” and who’s “wrong.” It’s a question of what it takes to get people off their butts and into the booths.

  5. “This isn’t a blog about political debate.”
    Yet you post political cartoons and make political comments about the events they depict.
    Mad.

  6. Mad, other than calling a very abrupt and surprising parliamentary maneuver a “razzle-dazzle trick,” there’s not a lot of political commentary in this blog entry. It was a surprise attack in the middle of the night at a time when compromise was being promised — dispute that if you’d like. Or you could argue that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was announced in advance. The sleeping giant metaphor, however, calls it forward and I’d have been historically ignorant not to pick up on it.
    But we’re basically talking about THIS CARTOON. If you feel that the recent events did NOT inspire some potential backlash from union voters, you could certainly say that, in your opinion, they probably won’t vote in any greater numbers than they ever did, and that Walker’s recent actions haven’t had the slightest impact.

  7. “Mad, other than calling a very abrupt and surprising parliamentary maneuver a “razzle-dazzle trick,” there’s not a lot of political commentary in this blog entry. It was a surprise attack in the middle of the night at a time when compromise was being promised — dispute that if you’d like.”
    I shall: I’m curious if you believed that the Democratic-majority congress also pulled a “razzle-dazzle” trick when they pulled a nearly-identical parliamentary maneuver to get Obamacare passed against a similarly-unified opposition.
    Of course, we must admit that yes, doing so cost the Democrats the House and a good chunk of the Senate, in what the President himself admitted was the greatest “shellacking” an administration has taken in decades, so perhaps you’re right in that the Wisconsin Republicans are facing a major backlash.
    But all of that is getting off track. In my original post, I asked you what *you* thought was so wrong with the Wisconsin bill, since at least two separate entries have derided it and its authors.
    Mad.

  8. Okay, I’ll bite:
    You’re saying that the Democrats in the US Congress met while the Republicans were not present, they excised most of the health care bill and left only the parts the Republicans had objected to. They then scheduled it for an immediate vote and passed it without posting the new version of the bill or furnishing copies of the newly-changed bill to the press, to the public or to the other members of Congress in a timely manner that would allow it to be read and considered, and they did not furnish timely notice of an unscheduled vote.
    Then they passed it in a session in which no Republicans were present.
    Please furnish your proof.

  9. No, I’m saying they passed it against unified Republican opposition, and when they couldn’t muster the votes to break the fillibuster, they used a parlimentary procedure that allowed them to pass it with a simple majority.
    (http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/no-you-can039t-see-health-care-bill)
    And yes, copies the final bill of roughly two thousand pages, were indeed delivered for the congressmen to read, less than one full day before the vote.
    But again, you’re not answering my question. Setting aside the conditions of the vote, what, in your opinion, for the third time, was so bad about the bill to justify even just the animosity, to say nothing of the death threats and siege of the capitol building?
    Mad.

  10. Never mind. You answered my question.

  11. As did you, mine. Unequivocally.
    Mad.

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