I’m as liberal as anyone, and my main reaction to any reference to Sarah Palin is to think she’s already gotten a thousand times the post-election coverage she deserves. But I did think Trudeau was probably overdoing it today. If he intends it as a symbolic teabagger attacking the administration with over-the-top rhetoric, he needs to be less subtle about identifying his symbols or more subtle about how those symbols are used.
Don’t be surprised if your local paper stops carrying the strip, or moves it to a different page once the complaints start coming in.
The way I see it, Sarah Palin isn’t even really the subject here; she’s just being used as a figurehead for the Tea Party lunatics who respond to a Democratic administration with hysterical references to watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. The problem with the strip is that this isn’t really clear; it does appear to be about Sarah Palin personally. And yeah, it’s not terribly funny.
Biffy: That kind of makes sense, although using Palin to symbolize anything other than Palin was a terrible choice. She’s such a notable personality in her own right that it’s hard to get past that and see her as a symbol of anything else. Heck, he could have replaced her with a talking teapot and it would have been crystal clear.
astorian: Well, yeah, he does. I’m not saying it’s not true, but it’s not particularly witty or insightful.
But it is not just Palin. Palin is the leader, the symbol is that the toys are all dressed up in Revolutionary-era costumes (note Mr. Potatohead’s tri-corner hat) and are discussing their plans at a child’s tea party.
For those of you who don’t follow the script, the kid in question is BD and Boopsie’s daughter, who a while back wanted and was given a Sarah Palin action figure. BD is the most conservative of the main characters who aren’t pure jokes, though I haven’t noticed much politics out of him since he lost his leg in Iraq.
Ah, I completely missed the teacups the first time I looked at it. I’m afraid I’m not as perspicacious as I once was. I also didn’t see the strips where the kid got a Sarah Palin action figure, so to me it looked like Palin herself was in the girl’s bedroom talking to a bunch of toys, which was just odd. If I had gotten those two points originally, I might have appreciated the humor and satire more.
This is the wrong forum for this but you can turn that argument around and make the case that she became as popular as she did so fast because the right was desperate for a reason, any reason at all, to jump on the McCain ticket so when she burst onto the scene they grabbed on with both hands.
To make this post more on topic, I am a liberal and the tone of today’s strip felt a little harsh to me.
My local newspaper removed Donesbury from the comics and placed it on the editorial page a long time ago, maybe 10 years. It is a daily editorial cartoon, not a comic.
The left’s dislike of her is about as rational and defensible as any political dislike has ever been. She’s one of those rare politicos who really is as awful as her opponents say she is.
