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Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: One topic, two approaches

Published: December 17, 2013 1 minute 7 comments

My day begins around 4:30 with a dive into the day's cartoons, during which I pull out, on average, a half dozen nominees. Then I go back and sort through them to come up with some sort of coherent overall theme or, at least, a sensible order in which to discuss them.

So today I had pulled out two cartoons on school shootings, both of which I liked a lot, and while I have already talked about school shootings, I felt they each took a fresh enough approach to bring it up again, in part because now it's not just about the Newtown anniversary but we've also got the incident in Colorado.

Then, as I was deciding which would get top position, I realized that they really take two different approaches, which factor suddenly became as interesting to me as the topic itself.

It's not quite the "descriptive/prescriptive" dichotomy typical of political cartoons and political commentary generally, but it's related.

Check it out and see how you would describe the conceptual split:

Slow131217
I'm leading with Jen Sorensen's contribution.

Obviously, she uses exaggeration, but it's still basically descriptive, with a reductio ad absurdum filter.

The only "prescription" is "Wake up and do something!" which she emphasizes by suggesting that people who tolerate the current slide into deregulation are foolish and you certainly don't want to be one of them.

Beyond that initial jab at Wayne LaPierre, however, she doesn't employ personal mockery so much as she mocks a societal trend that she feels is both counterproductive and stupid.

Even the implicit attack on the NRA seems to take a backseat to her criticism of society's willingness to not only do nothing but to tolerate moves that make future tragedies increasingly inevitable.

Her cartoon succeeded in making me angry about the lack of action and about how readily we allow special interests to subvert the common good.

Still, I can't say it's "prescriptive" because "Wake the hell up" is not a prescription. It's a slap across the face, and maybe only a more dramatic slap across the face than in the second cartoon:

 

Cwjmo131217

 

While Sorensen depicts a dystopian "Idiocracy" approach to the issue, Jim Morin employs an approach that I find more chilling because there is so little exaggeration in it.

Granted, I don't know that any stations have yet added a regular school shooting segment to their news broadcasts.

But we're not far away from it being possible.

And this is not another media feeding-frenzy in which isolated, inconsequential events are hyped by coverage into an apparent epidemic, like the "rental car tourist attack" hype of the early 90s or the current flurry of "knockout game" coverage.

Pack journalism is different: If there were a spate of coverage of accidents featuring red cars, bonehead editors around the country would pick up on it and begin to devote additional coverage to accidents in their communities that involved red cars.

After awhile, people would be scared to death to drive red cars, just like they were temporarily scared to drive rental cars and are now scared of being randomly attacked by young people in loose-fitting clothing. 

You can't, however, apply that dismissive analysis to coverage of school shootings.

There may be some over-coverage, for instance, of a kid getting busted for having his hunting rifle in his truck out in the school parking lot during hunting season, but it's perfectly valid to run a story when a kid pulls out a gun in the building, and especially if he fires it and double-especially if he shoots someone.

And yet.

And yet the shooting in Colorado began as "DEFCON 1 Omigod!" and then was quickly downgraded to "Oh, okay, well, only one kid wounded, and the shooter killed himself."

Now, here's Andy with the sports …

I'm not sure how to describe the difference, and please chime in if you can reduce it to some compact terminology, but I think it's important that Jen Sorensen talk about the "why" and "how" elements, even if she doesn't prescribe specific remedies. Her anger is needed.

But sometimes a laid-back approach provokes an even stronger reaction.

It scares the crap out of me how little Jim Morin had to tweak things in order to be able to say "It's come to this."

 

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Comments 7

  3. Looks like similar treatment from the two toons if you ask me. Neither of them looks at the source of the problem….the individual shooter….instead of the tool or the event.
    http://www.nbcnews.com/health/terrible-tally-500-children-dead-gunshots-every-year-7-500-8C11469222
    The link to the story was borked.
    As I expected, the story included 20 year olds as “kids”. Those are adults, not children.
    A more detailed analysis would indicate that younger children die at a much higher rate due to lots of other issues. Swimming pools comes to mind. There are other issues that are far more threatening to young children than guns.
    It is only when those kids get to the age where joining a gang is a possibility that the death rate due to gun violence goes up.
    Solve the gang problem by solving the drug problem. Solve the drug problem via legalization.

  4. Dann, quit looking for gun control advocates under your bed and show me where in Jim Morin’s cartoon there is any advocacy of new laws to restrict the right of irresponsible, untrained people to gain control of firearms?
    Two other requests: In light of the “it’s not guns, it’s mental health” argument being advanced by anti-regulationists, show me how Congress has increased access to mental health treatment since Newtown.
    Also, please list the number of societies that have prospered under anarchy. And don’t start with the obvious one, because I don’t accept Somalia has having “prospered,” nor have they lived in libertarian paradise long enough to be counted yet.

  5. Hi Mike,
    Fair enough on the first count.
    Although I do think it is important to note that gun crimes have dropped since 1993 by a non-insignificant amount. Perhaps his cartoon is oriented at criticizing a media that hypes these incidents thus rewarding the consumers.
    On the second point, it isn’t there job. It is the authority/responsibility of the states.
    I would offer a supplemental observation that we have devolved our society away from asking the individual to be responsible for their own actions. Instead we blame inanimate objects, or luck, or “the system” or something other than the poor decision making of the individual in question. There isn’t an easy legislative fix to that situation. It’s true nonetheless.
    Lastly, who is advocating anarchy? Person of hay. The same is true for the as yet unmentioned right to keep and bear nuclear weapons.
    What I am doing is advocating for the hundreds of thousands of law abiding people who do not become violent crime victims each year because they have exercised their right to own and use an appropriate tool for self defense.
    Regards,
    Dann

  6. Erg…sorry…not “consumers”….”shooters”.

  7. Well, you don’t understand health care funding, so that topic is now closed.
    And suggesting that people behave better without government restriction is anarchy. It’s also against all human experience. Pick either one, doesn’t matter. That’s not a strawman argument in the least, but claiming that “hundreds of thousands” of people use guns to defend themselves against criminals each year is utter and complete nonsense.
    I expect better.

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