CSotD: Role models
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The Knight Life ponders the weird gap between the role models we offer our kids and the roles we expect them to model.
Thus was it ever, Keefe, though you do have to differentiate between the characters parents provide to their children versus the characters kids find on their own.
When I was researching a story about Prohibition, I was appalled to learn that there were magazines aimed at the 12 year old crowd that basically turned gangsters into heroes, though I already recognized the way history had spun it: I wrote the story in reaction to schools holding "gangster and flapper" parties when studying the '20s.
In the story, the main character meets a gangster based in part on Legs Diamond, who used to frequent Northern New York, and, as Chris Baldwin depicts here, his pals are dumbfounded — and duly impressed — to learn that he knows the glamorous thug with the hot girl and the hot car.
And there's a whole chapter devoted to the phenomenon of hero-worship of non-heroes in "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," of which Mackay says
Whether it be that the multitude, feeling the pangs of poverty, sympathise with the daring and ingenious depredators who take away the rich man’s superfluity, or whether it be the interest that mankind in general feel for the records of perilous adventure, it is certain that the populace of all countries look with admiration upon great and successful thieves. Perhaps both these causes combine to invest their career with charms in the popular eye. Almost every country in Europe has its traditional thief, whose exploits are recorded with all the graces of poetry, and whose trespasses “Are cited up in rhymes, And sung by children in succeeding tunes.”
Mackay wrote before the days of Jesse James and certainly before Legs, but he talks about the highwaymen of England's past, and pirates, and a variety of outlaws including Robin Hood.
I never believed the hype about what generous souls Jesse James or Pretty Boy Floyd were, but at least those narratives came from dissenters.
I was more struck by the fact that my generation was treated to TV shows about Robin Hood and Zorro by a mainstream entertainment industry whose leaders then got upset when we manifested their lesson that good guys stand up to unjust governments.
Note that, for years, Disney barred from his Magic Kingdom anyone who looked as if he might carve a Z into Sergeant Garcia's trousers.
We fixed it, however: We raised our own kids to believe that having their tiny fingerprints in a central data base would keep them safe from the perverts, kidnappers and murderers who most certainly lurk around every corner.
Little wonder that they, in turn, have corrupted the relatively benign idea that Santa knows if you've been good or bad and are raising their children under the all-seeing eye of J. Edgar Elfontheshelf.
Speaking of idolizing villains and the madness of crowds
An interesting Juxtaposition of the Day, in which Horsey doesn't have to exaggerate a great deal to make what should be — but apparently isn't — a horrifying point, while Wuerker doesn't exaggerate a bit, and thereby outpaces and outclasses all the cartoons decrying Islamophobes as ISIS recruiters.
Horsey ties the dystopic vision to Trump, under a headline (which was likely written by an editor, not him) noting that "Donald Trump's fascist inclinations do not bother his fans," but with the essay itself more focused on the response to Trump's statments from media and other politicians.
He does, however, observe that Trump "has clearly learned that many people will accept a leader’s Big Lie — or at least his constant fibs and fantasies — as long as he never backs down and is able to counterattack against the liberal news media or 'weak' rivals who are part of a corrupt party establishment."
For my part, I'm less disturbed by Trump than by the eagerness with which his hateful, paranoid message is received and by the way Ted Cruz is shifting his own platform to a message of "I am just as filled with vile, insane, unreasoning venom as Trump, but I have experience and he doesn't."
And while both cartoonists depict the victims of this torrent of bigotry, hatred and threats as innocent and apprehensive, Wuerker's placement in the corner of one poster plastered over another says more about the impact of our xenophobic display of toxic ignorance.
The whole world is watching, and they will judge us more on how we end up revealing ourselves than on who we end up electing.
Which, y'know, so will I.
And now for something considerably more cheery:
This isn't the first time I've posted a video of Boulet at work. I don't obsess over technique and nibs and paper and such, but I sure do enjoy watching things flow out of his pen.
On the other hand, I remember going to a "Boys of the Lough" concert with a musician friend. Walking out, he said, "You know how, with most concerts, you can't wait to get home and play your own instruments? I want to go home now and smash all of mine."
I could see a cartoonist watching Boulet work and getting that same feeling.
Anyway, this is only a sample: He's got three more such vids plus a raft of additional illustrations on his website.
Visit at your own risk, I guess.
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