When I first saw this cartoon in my local newspaper, I thought it was touching.
Believing that the message was despite any partisan differences, both major political parties feel the same remorse and sense of loss at a good and principled man.
Then a friend, a few days later, told me to take a closer look at the elephant, representing the G.O.P. It’s got a gleeful smirk on its face.
I told this friend she was crazy. That wasn’t what the cartoon was about. She insisted. I looked again.
I’ll be damned.
Are there actually liberals out there who think Republicans take fucking glee in Wellstone, his wife, his child, and other innocent people dying? Because it may benefit them politically? (Which is far from a certainty, by the way. Ask John Ashcroft.)
Despicable. Unconscionable.
Thank you, Slate editorial cartoonist Daryl Cagle, for reinforcing every negative stereotype about Democrats and liberals.
Someone much smarter than me once said, “Republicans think Democrats have bad ideas; Democrats think Republicans are bad people.”
Case in fucking point.
I certainly hope not all associated with the Dems think like a petulant 13-year-old.
While I’m sure that not all Republicans are gleeful at the death of Wellstone, I wouldn’t be too surprised if a few raised a smirk in private. It does what I think a political cartoon should do, even as I find it repulsive.
Political cartoons should push the envelope, they should be brutal, they should be unflinching, it’s the only thing that makes them at all necessary. The very thing that causes me to dislike many of them so much (carving a complicated issue down to a simplistic image) is the only reason for their existence.
The debate they stir up is worth far more than their small nuggets of simplified politics.
Despicable? Sure. Unconscionable? I’ll even agree with that. That cartoon was a remarkably low blow, and deserves contempt.
However, don’t let the published opinion of one man stand for the opinion of millions of others who happen to share a label. I think Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are raving idiots, but do I consider them representative examples of Republicans/conservatives? Not on your life. I know too many people who are perfectly reasonable to think that.
If you’re going to use a single man’s opinion to paint a huge group of people with a big black brush, then you’re part of the problem you’re ranting about.
The donkey and the elephant, I think we can all agree, are meant to represent the two political parties. Period. Not some Democrats and some Republicans.
It is questioning the fundamental human decency of Republicans. Right back atcha for drawing the cartoon, I say to Mister Daryl-with-a-Y.
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Nor do I think this is representative of all liberals and Democrats. That is why I said Cagle is reinforcing negative stereotypes.
I’m seeing more and more of such thinking, however. I’m sure Mr. Wellstone didn’t think like that, judging from what I’ve heard his Senate colleagues in both parties say about him over the weekend.
But I guess when Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, broke down in tears upon hearing the news about Wellstone’s death, he was secretly dancing with joy at how beneficial it would be for his party.
Here’s how people with class respond to something like the Wellstone tragedy.
It seems to me that the smirk is on the wrong face. The Democrats will get a lot more political mileage out of Wellstone’s death than the Republicans. He’s a martyr to the cause now and that can only mean trouble for the Republicans.
Man, that cartoon is offensive. I work at a newspaper which subscriibes to Cagle Cartoons, and the editor took one look at that cartoon and said “no way.” It makes me question the judgement of a publication to run something like that, especially since Cagle Cartoons sends at least three or four different ones every day, so at any one time, you have quite a selection of current, unused ones from that day and the last few days. It wasn’t like they got that one and were like “ah, it’s all we have, we need to have SOMETHING there” and ran it out of desperation.
He has a point. The point is maudlin hypocrisy. Here in Minnesota, people are more aware of, and less forgiving of, Republican enmity for Paul Wellstone. Just days before his death, Drudge was spreading a smear about Socialist youth busing to Minnesota to take advantage of same-day registration and voting laws in MN. This gross canard was gleefully picked up by the Orca of the Airwaves, Mr. Limbaugh.
Further, right wing business interests flagrantly flouted election finance laws to pump a million dollars into the Coleman campaign. Because Coleman is such a stern Republican? No, Coleman is a rather moderate Republican. Because he wasn’t Wellstone. And this just days before the tragedy.
Suddenly, he’s dead and the Pubbies are falling all over themselves to praise his “courage”, to praise principles they despised. What utter rot. When they discover thier admiration for Mr. Wellstones courage and principles? Certainly there was no evidence of it before he was dead.
He has a point. It certainly could have been better stated, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy that is entirely human, a weakness shared by us all. But hypocrisy is what it is.
Actually, once upon a time, Phelps used to be a fairly major figure in the Kansas Democratic party.
Not that said asshole should be held against them, sice they’d much rather he fuck off and die; I’m just dismissing your automatic attachment of Phelps to the Republicans