Wonkette
By the Comics Curmudgeon
Our political class is no mere machine, with individuals just cogs within it; no, our leaders can exercise free will and make decisions almost on a whim that have far-reaching implications, and this week one man has made just such a choice. I’m talking, of course, about David Souter, but that just happened last night, so the political cartoonists are just now recovering from their hangovers (Thursday is the new Friday!) and starting to tackle that topic. (They will depict him as returning to a sad, empty home, because they are cruel bastards.) Anyway here’s a bunch of drawings about Arlen Specter changing parties or whatever instead.
Now, your Cartoon Violence columnist is one of those terrible critics who is completely unskilled in the medium that he criticizes — I can’t draw a lick, to put it plainly. Nevertheless, Specter seems pretty caricaturable, am I right? It’s the eyes, the beady, shifty eyes, that are, for me, his defining feature. They manage to simultaneously look melancholy and slightly pissy, as if he’s very sad that the Warren Commission couldn’t reveal the CIA-UFO conspiracy that killed Kennedy, but don’t go running your mouth off about it, buddy.
Sadly, only one cartoon out of the batch churned out in the wake of his flip-floppery really seemed to capture his sinister eyes properly, and that’s this one by David Horsey (click it, and all other cartoons, to make them larger):
Even here, it’s more like he’s just casting a jaundiced eye on the obese, tent-clad elephant away from which he’s hiking vigorously. And wouldn’t you? We all know that the mighty GOP pachyderm-symbol, like the party he represents, has grabby hands (or a grabby trunk, maybe), and you would not want to spend a night in a tent with him. Also worth noting here is the attention Mr. Horsey has applied to the details of Specter’s camping accoutrements, including his plaid shirt and down vest and walkin’ stick. Kudos to you, sir! Unfortunately, your fellow members of the cartooning fraternity did not do as well.
Here you have a mostly unrecognizable, and thus helpfully labeled, Arlen Specter. He’s been taken out by the GOP and put in the trash can! Now he’s sitting in a can of festering garbage, with rotting banana peels and apple cores, and flies, and stink lines. I guess those Republicans showed him, huh? And now he’s trying to make some sort of claim that he’s the one who quit, but we all know that he didn’t, that the Republicans threw him out in a move to clean house, right? Right? That’s how it went down? Oh, wait, it didn’t? This cartoon has no basis in reality at all? Oh, all right then.
(Also not based in reality is that recycling bin. Because we all know the GOP elephant would just take those cans and throw them directly into a river, right?)
Much more accurate is this depiction of a bald-headed, plaid-suited Specter-homunculus, sliding rapidly away from the crotch of the GOP elephant. I propose two possible explanations for this baffling image, both more or less equally distasteful:
- The GOP elephant is a child molester, and accidentally mistook the tiny Specter for a sexy toddler. Specter is fleeing to the warm, non-abusive embrace of the Democratic Party after undergoing who knows what horrors.
- The GOP elephant is giving birth to Specter, who, after 43 years in the Republican womb, has finally been born into the world, and has immediately chosen to become a Democrat.
This cartoon manages to avoid drawing Specter at all, but in the process becomes tangled up in philosophical dilemmas about how a static image can represent the progression of time. Specifically, we see the awkward moment just after Specter fled the Senate Republican caucus’s underground sex dungeon; how can we make clear the fact that it is our boy Arlen who has just slammed the door behind him? The solution arrived at here — to have a random slip of paper labeled “Specter” sort of drifting in the air around the doorway — is not, I am sorry to say, particularly elegant.
The actual content of the cartoon is laughably inaccurate as well; everyone knows that the GOP’s kinky S&M parties have for years now been the only thing keeping Specter a Republican.
Finally, we come what’s truly the most exciting image that anyone could come up with about any political issue, ever: two guys commenting wryly about it at as they read about it in the paper, while standing in the middle of a cornfield! The corn indicates that these are good, honest Iowans who are about to get gay married. Dude on the right is holding the enormous metal marital dildo that he’s been saving for this precious day of freedom.
Dude on the right is holding the enormous metal marital dildo that he’s been saving for this precious day of freedom.
Yikes!
Seriously, WTF is that guy in the cornfield holding?!? I’m really glad I’ve never been to Iowa.
The GOPs big tent is only a pup tent during Cocktober, the rest of the year it’s really a hat.
You’re making it quite a challenge to masturbate while I read your posts, Josh, but by God, I will not let you down!
I have to confess my love for Michael Ramirez’s font. I know that makes me a closet child-molesting elephant or whatever, but it’s true.
“This cartoon has no basis in reality at all?”
Didn’t you see the signature? That answers the question; Mr. MCCoy’s work reflects a 180-degree turn from reality.
I live in Iowa and have never seen one of those devices, but I have sense enough to stay out of the goddamned cornfields, too. (The hog farms are another matter.)
Hey, just because the rest of you don’t use rakes in your sexual adventures in a cornfield doesn’t mean that you have a right to impinge on the Republicans’ rights to do so.
Did the little Bald Headed Senator man fall from the Big Elephant pooper or what? I don’t likes teeter totters anyways.
Jesus Christ on a Unicycle, WTF with the commie red all over Arlen’s pic? He looks like Jack Nicholson after scrubbing off his Joker-in-Batman makeup with a Brillo pad.
I thought the one with the teeter totter was actually kind of nice, because it reminded me of my childhood. The teeter totter is, I think, for many children an early and binding lesson in the futility of trying to defy physical laws.
Also, re: the expandable metal Iowan buttplug… par for the course for the cartoonist, Michael Ramirez. When he worked for the local paper, readers always said he should extract the stick from his ass. This cartoon just proves that it wasn’t a stick.
gurukalehuru: That was beautiful.
queeraselvis v 2.0: I hear you. I actually thought that was the first cartoon - way overworked in detail, mind you, but nevertheless frightening as hell.
Love the one where the elephant’s taking the senator out to the trash. Check out the recycle bin. They have the goddamned arrows running couter-clockwise. Yes. These fuckers are just that stupid.
Custerwolf: There’d be in an ‘n’ in that comment up there, but Jim borrowed it for a different post and hasn’t returned it yet.
I thought the homunculus in the see-saw (or teeter-totter for you socialists) cartoon was Frank Perdue of the Perdue chicken empire. Or maybe ex-NYC mayor Ed Koch. Either way it makes no sense whatsoever.
gurukalehuru: You make physical laws work in your favor — my brother and I realized that we could trap the other one on the top and then get off, causing the person at the top to suffer a coccyx-bruising plunge to earth. If there were seesaws for adults we would probably still be doing this.
That’s some fast-growing mutant corn! Or did Iowans know Specter was changing parties last August?
Min: It appears to be made of cast iron? DOUBLE-YIPES.
So many satisfying explanations for McCoy’s Specter-in-the-trash.
1) He’s depicting “mirror land” where everything is exactly backwards.
2) He’s a petty, hateful, conservative troll currently in the denial stage.
3) He’s merely deluded. (Really deluded.)
I can’t wait for his depictions of the GOP Daddy elephant turning out his harlot daughters Snowe and Collins, helpfully labeled with tags that say “Snowe” and “Collins” because even he realizes he can’t caricature worth shit.
JMP: Josh is going a little too far saying there is no basis in reality — he was about to be primaried after all. But it’s more like the elephant is getting him ready for the garbage, and he hitches a ride with an opportunistic donkey. Or something. But no stink lines.
There’s so much baffling about that last one. He’s wearing a tie and a hat (and a pocket protector, maybe) and smoking a pipe? In a field of mature corn in April? Holding what the fuck? Someone pls translate. It is more mysterious than a South Korean cartoon.
Two things: 1. What the fuck is Ann Coulter’s ferocious visage doing in an ad on this website? Keep up the good work Google-ads! Wonkette needs to make rude comments about her not shill for her. Do we need the money that badly? We do? Well okay then. Also, 2. Horsey used to (still does? who knows?) pen for the now defunct Seattle PI (I think, them or the Seattle Times) so he ought to know somthing about our granola munching, tree hugging, gorp making ways. He’s the best of the bunch.
I think maybe it’s a garden rake shown at a funny perspective?
Clearly the cartoonist meant to depict real Americans from the Heartland, going about their day-to-day business of raking the corn, milking the pigs, wearing stupid goddamn Matt Drudge hats, and of course just constantly smoking absolutely staggering quantities of dope.
Oh my God! Now it is Newt Fucking Gingrich! Please, please make these ads stop. Please? Where is that cute chick in the Snorg (or whatever) t-shirt you guys used to run? Aw my eyes hurt. Must Have More Southern Comfort STAT.
“wearing stupid goddamn Matt Drudge hats”
If you’re under 35 and wear a fedora, there’s a 97.5% chance you’re an asshole.
Oh wait, I get it…
It’s a hand tool designed to screw into the ground to plant corn seeds.
In other words, a Cornholer.
Big Daddy Tom: Horsey will always reign supreme over political cartoonists simply because he consistently draws
the
hottest
babes .
Big Daddy Tom: Horsey will always reign supreme over political cartoonists simply because he consistently draws the hottest babes.
Lascauxcaveman: During the Liddy trial, Slate ran a McCoy cartoon where he tried to make fun of Fitzgerald. At the bottom of the pane he invited comments with and provided his email link. Fuck me! I politely suggested his analogy was a bit tenuous. It was in fact absurd, but I didn’t say that. I got back a lengthy and vile diatribe in which he called me sweetie. My name is Kelly, I let him know that I was biologically disinclined to be attracted to other men and quite surprised by his libertine attitude. What a ‘nozzle.
Gun-toting Progressive: Iowa farmers don’t wear neckties.
Zhu Bajie