Wonkette

By the Comics Curmudgeon
It’s absolutely true that politicians are, by and large, hideously ugly. So, if you’re going to get into the political cartooning game, you’re going to have to learn to enjoy inking the minute details of the sagging face-flesh, the terrible combovers, the faces ravaged by decades-old acne scars, the paunches ill-contained by aspirationally sized pants. Yet once cartoonists go down this road, they might find themselves actually enjoying it, like a professional dominatrix who got into the biz for money and finds herself unable to put down the whip in her off hours. (This sometimes happens! I saw it in, uh, a movie.) Anyway, drawing Karl Rove’s second chin no longer has any appeal for these depraved freak-loving artists! In this week’s Cartoon Violence, you’ll see what lies at the end of this very dark path.

OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT TERRIBLE “BIRTHER” IT IS A DEMON FROM HELL! Actually, the birther-baby monster is the least offensive being in this cartoon. Sure, it’s a devil-thing with claws and horns, but it’s tiny and cute and cuddly and has adorable mixed-up eyes! When it repeatedly screams “DEATH PANELS” and “WHERE’S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE” at hapless Congressmen at town hall meetings, in Aramaic, it’s probably pretty adorable, and everyone just shrugs and says “That’s our li’l Anamalech!”

More unsettling to me are hell’s OB-GYN, whose terrifying bug-eyes somehow protrude over the top of his mask. And then, of course, there’s the monstrous elephant demon-mother itself. Most of its repellent body is at least decently covered by the sheets, but we are given a harrowing look at the underside of its mouth-parts, with its long, undulating snout lifted up suggestively to reveal the terrifying maw, bristling with primitive, undifferentiated razor-sharp teeth. The nightmarish pachyderm emits a few Cathy-style sweatballs in exhaustion after bringing the eldritch birther-demon into the world; fortunately, we are at least spared the visual horror of the after-birther.

And what is the prey that the birther-baby hunts? Why, the Obamafish, of course! But this particular Obamafish is a zombie Obamafish. Note its listless, dead eyes, and the rotting fish flesh along its flanks. It seeks only brains … brains … BRAINS (of old people, who have been tried before the Death Panel Star Chamber and found adequate for transformation into fish food). Will our adorable demon-infant be able to subdue the undead fish? Will zombies vs. demons become the latest permutation of the zombie “literary” fad, and the fall 2009 version of the pirates vs. ninjas meme enjoyed by bored Internet hipsters?

This “political” cartoon is about how the terrible French airplanes are, what with the constant crashing and death (if by “constant” you mean “so infrequently as to be barely perceptible statistically, and certainly causing death less frequently on average than driving, riding your bike, walking, or staying indoors”). Anyway, the nice French planes are being slagged on by the dead-eyed flight attendant at the front of the cabin, who OH MY GOD SHE HAS A FUCKING BEAK IS SHE SOME AWFUL BIRD-MONSTER OR WHAT.

Nothing against bird-monsters, honestly, I’m sure she does a fine job of handing out peanuts and taking drink orders when she’s not busy regurgitating worms down her children’s gullets, but it is kind of ironic that a bird would have use a plane to get airborne. “Yeah, I used to be able to fly on my own — it was indescribably glorious, feeling the wind lifting beneath your wings and seeing the whole world spread out below you. But then that mad scientist fused my body with that of a human woman, and now this is as close as I can get to that wondrous sensation. Oh, so do you want the white wine after all? Do you have exact change?”

Oh, also, Vladimir Putin is going around with no shirt on or whatever. This is the biggest advantage of his switching jobs; the President of Russia, as head of state, has to maintain the dignity of the Russian people at all times, and thus is by law and tradition required to swathe his torso in cloth whenever he’s anywhere that he might be seen. But the Prime Minister? Who cares how he dresses? Sure, PM Vlad, flash those nipples, nobody’s gonna stop you. It makes it all the easier for you to poop in the bathtub, or “hack” Twitter by attacking it with a golf club, or take a carrot up to a horse and AUGH WHAT IS VLADIMIR PUTIN GOING TO DO TO THAT HORSE WITH THAT CARROT LOOK AT ITS SHOCKED EXPRESSION! Putin is a monster, a shirtless monster.

Speaking of monsters, who’s this subhuman Elephant Man-esque specimen? Observe the way that his protruding cranial ridge and jutting chin nearly meet, leaving his face a squashed little mass in the middle of his repulsive head — and of course the glasses perched at the end of his nose are a nice touch, like a hat on a bear. This is New York Senator/mutant freak Chuck Schumer! He’s in the pocket of the snaggletooth gunman lobby, obviously, who are here seen mugging hapless rubes the moment they walk out of Port Authority, in accordance with New York law.

There’s only one thing more terrifying than the Schumer-Thing, and that is, of course, America’s children. This cartoonist has chosen not to depict any of these little freaks — every medium has its limits of decency, even one as depraved as political cartooning — but note that this brave lady is waiting for the filthy little buggers to burst through that door, and is prepared to beat them to death with a chair, if necessary.