CSotD: Editorial Cartooning 301 (pre-requisite: EC101)
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Nick Anderson comments on the NIMBY aspects of free-market capitalism in general and explosions in fertilizer plants specifically.
One comment I read — and, yes, I know, the only people more foolish than the people who post those comments are the people who read them* — said that, well, they built this plant years ago and then people built their houses nearby and so, hey.
I've never been to Waco, much less toured the area around the now-considerably-more-than-defunct fertilizer plant, but I'm gonna make a wild guess that those nearby houses weren't McMansions, that living near the fertilizer plant didn't become the hip, tony thing for newly crowned millionaires, the East Hamptons of the Western Plains.
But I've been wrong before.
On the other hand, I'm tired of this whole "personal responsibility" mantra that is taking the place of empathy and compassion.
I guess because I'm a philosophical Christian rather than a theological one, I may have a different slant on this, but I find it particularly reprehensible and hypocritical when people who claim to be religious don't simply fail to satisfy one of the basic tenets of their professed belief system but actively denigrate it.
And if I ever become famous enough to merit it, I hereby give cartoonists permission to draw me at the Pearly Gates, with a bunch of these heartless "Christians" approaching, saying to St. Peter, "No, no, wait a minute. I wanna watch this."
Because I want to be there when they say, "When did we see you hungry, Lord, and yet told you it was your own damn fault and gave you a kick in the ass?"
Compassion, charity and empathy with the less fortunate are keys to every major organized religion. Every one. Without exception.
But the key to Matthew 25: 31-46 is the word "see:"
"When did we see you, Lord …"
… they say, as they bury their heads deeper, and turn away, and refuse to look.
I don't know the Greek or the Aramaic or whatever, but, however it is translated, it comes down to the fact that God gives us ample opportunities to behave with decency, that he puts before us example after example, and that, if you believe all this stuff, he's not going to accept "I didn't see it" as an excuse.
And if it is okay for people to live next to a fertilizer plant, if it is okay for them to work two jobs and still not be able to clothe and feed and house their families, if it is okay for them to be without health care, if it is okay for them to be isolated, malnourished and alone in their old age, then it should also be okay for the middleclass to live that way, and for the wealthy.
But, of course, we never saw it, Lord.
Not our fault.
Not our responsibility.
Nearly 125 years ago (in 1890), photojournalist Jacob Riis grabbed America by the scruff of the neck and forced it to see, with his book "How the Other Half Lives."
He was not the first to write about the disgraceful distance between those with enough, and those without enough. Helen Campbell had written "The Problem of the poor" in 1882, and "Prisoners of poverty: women wage-workers, their trades and their lives" the year before Riis's landmark work appeared. She co-authored a more expansive work, "Darkness and Daylight: Lights and Shadows of New York Life" shortly after "How the Other Half Lives" was published.
Modern analysts with the benefit of hindsight and lack of perspective or context will characterize the muckrakers as judgmental and racist, and there are, in particular, sections of Riis that are regretable for his 19th century views on ethnicity.
But that's like observing that Lincoln did not believe in racial equality. True. But he freed the slaves. So, would you rather he hadn't?
Because Riis and Campbell and their contemporaries may not have measured up to contemporary standards, but they rose above the measure of their times, with passages that opened America's eyes to the plight of those who, in those pre-electronic days, it was easy to not see.
Good land! what are we that we should think ourselves always right, or,
lest we do wrong, sit idle all our lives waiting for light? The light
comes as we work toward it. Roosevelt was right when he said that the
only one who never makes mistakes is the one who never does anything.
Preserve us from him; from the man who eternally wants to hold the
scales even and so never gets done weighing—never hands anything over
the counter. Take him away and put red blood into his veins. And let the
rest of us go ahead and make our mistakes—as few as we can, as many as
we must; only let us go ahead. — Jacob Riis, "The Making of an American"
And not only did their books sell well and reach, and touch, a lot of Americans, but they reached, and touched, some of the right Americans, including the aforementioned TR:
It could not have been long after I wrote “How the Other Half Lives” that he came to the Evening Sun office one day looking for me. I was out, and he left his card, merely writing on the back of it that he had read my book and had “come to help.” That was all and it tells the whole story of the man. I loved him from the day I first saw him; nor ever in all the years that have passed has he failed of the promise made then. No one ever helped as he did. For two years we were brothers in Mulberry Street. — ibid
The muckrakers succeeded by persistence, by grassroots organizing and by more persistence.
And yet here we are, again, with the poor hidden away, or despised as freeloaders, as irresponsible, as undeserving, or as geeks paraded before us as comic figures on reality TV, in the guise of Honey BooBoo and a variety of other eccentric, clueless rubes in similar phony, scripted programs where they cavort like Steppin Fetchit and we love them, but at a distance, much as we love a funny YouTube dog.
Much, for that matter, as our grandparents loved Steppin Fetchit, unless we are black, in which case our grandparents were invisible and could not be seen, Lord.
This will not do.
And if, as argued here yesterday, editorial cartoons are not simply illustrations and should not bend to the prevailing wind, nor be funny-page level jokes about sagging blue jeans, neither should they comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted.
If we don't need regulations, if we don't need safety inspectors, if OSHA and the EPA are simply making it hard for business to prosper without offering any benefit or protection for the public, what does it matter where the fertilizer plant is built?
And don't miss Nick's site at the Chron, where he goes from graphic mockery (which I happen to like) to graphic evisceration (which I happen to admire), with a series on the sleaze that surrounds his governor.
The panels are presented there as a slideshow, but Nick also posted a single-strip version of the first in what he promises will be a weekly feature (click on it for larger version):
* We don't have "comments" here. We have "dialogue."
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