CSotD: Take Five and Think
Skip to comments
Part of the mission here is to explain comics. Steve Sack ran this cartoon last week, when Michele Bachmann announced her interest in running for Minnesota's soon-to-be-open Senate seat.
It's a joke.
Steve was not actually hoping that Bachmann would run.
He was simply making a joke because she is such a polarizing, absurd figure that, if she runs, political cartoonists will find it easy to make cartoons about her.
So far, so good?
Here's Bob Gorrell's latest cartoon and it's also a joke, I'm pretty sure.
That is, based on Gorrell's track record, I don't think he's hoping for a Hollywood liberal to capture the White House and is simply making fun of the emerging glitz storm.
I chose his cartoon in deference to the Prime Directive, because there seem to be a lot of cartoons that, A) promote Winfrey as a viable candidate or B) make the claim that the Democrats are seriously considering running her and, in either case, C) appear to be taking the idea not only seriously but as a done deal.
A is debatable, B is unproven and C is bullshit. Even if B were true, we're a long way from C, whatever the merits of A.
Look, I've heard a lot of chirping from the Peanut Gallery, but I've seen nothing that makes me think any Democrat beyond the level of county dog-catcher is actually promoting this hare-brained idea.
Nancy Pelosi — certainly a highly-placed Democrat — admitted Winfrey might be able to win, but suggested that this does not make it a good idea. As she told the Washington Post:
I think one of the arguments for Oprah is 45. I think one of the arguments against Oprah is 45.
Not the first time I've agreed with Pelosi: Yes, she could win. But we've seen what happens when an inexperienced, unqualified celebrity takes the reins.
Certainly, she's more attractive than Trump and, if they ran head-to-head, I'd vote for Oprah. But that is an awfully low bar, because I'm not sure there's anyone who could run against Trump and not get my vote.
We've already got a President who trusts Putin, and I'm not that crazy about replacing him with someone who trusted Dr. Oz and Stephen Glass and Jenny McCarthy.
Popularity and Perspecacity aren't even that close in the dictionary, much less in real life.
Andy Borowitz, in a serious moment, pointed out on Facebook yesterday that we've often elected popular non-political figures, and reeled off a list:
When the most famous people in the country were generals, we elected George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant.
When the most famous people in the country were movie stars, we elected Ronald Reagan.
When the most famous people were TV stars, we elected Donald Trump.
I know, that last one was gross.
Now, you might argue that electing generals makes more sense than electing TV stars. But Andrew Jackson was one of the worst Presidents in history, and Grant was pretty terrible, too.
There are several problems with this, the obvious one being that he listed Trump and then disclaimed him, which does not erase the fallacy of electing TV stars.
And, whatever you think of Reagan as president, he had previously served two terms each as president of the Screen Actors Guild and governor of California.
Worse, however, is his list of generals, which also should at the very least have included Eisenhower and Taylor.
To start with, there's a big difference between stars in Hollywood and stars on your shoulderboards. Being a general puts you in charge of a very large organization in which you have to rely on qualified subordinates, to consider the impact of your orders on the very least of the people impacted by them, and learn to share the credit and shoulder the blame.
And I'll certainly give him that Grant was not an insightful leader, but he skips over the fact that Washington was a brilliant president, and he is simply parroting current hive-mind values when he says "Jackson was one of the worst presidents in history."
The Indian Removal Act was terrible, and, like a lot of pre-Civil War presidents, Jackson did not oppose slavery. However, Jackson's overall performance leaves him consistently ranked in the top tier of presidents.
Which might stem from the fact that, besides being a war hero, he was also a practicing attorney who had served in both the House and Senate as well as on the bench of the Tennessee Supreme Court.
He may have become "famous" as a war-hero, but he was well-known as a sharp, highly qualified, experienced politician.
I'm not asking these cartoonists and comedians to go get graduate degrees in history, but before they start beating the "Everybody Wants Oprah!" drum, they should first of all ascertain whether everybody actually does and then spend maybe 15 minutes on the Googles to find out what the hell they're talking about.
Or drawing about.
I mean, jumpin' jesus on a pogo stick and regardless of what you actually know about Andrew Jackson, you might want to know a little more about the candidate you're flacking for than that she gave away a bunch of cars.
I think I've already seen more cartoons about Oprah giving away cars than there were cars that she gave away.
Which, by the way, she didn't actually do any more than Peyton Manning gave away free pizzas.
Use your Googles before you use your pens.
But maybe before this thing gets any further out of hand, we should all just take a deep breath and make sure we're not being swept away by something totally silly.
Knowledge of history doesn't have to go back many years to see what happens when a starstruck press obsesses on what's most interesting and ratings-grabbing instead of what's most important for the country.
Take a break. Rethink. Apply the wisdom of the Ancient East.
Comments 20
Comments are closed.