Cartoon Violence Against the Preborn

By the Comics Curmudgeon
If you’re like most right-thinking Americans, you’re probably wondering, “What does the mainstream media have against precious, precious babies that have yet to choose to leave their mothers’ wombs yet, anyway? Why are these elitists all basically posting pleas on page A1 begging women to get abortions?” Well, it all boils down to economics: newspapers need readers, and it’s a well known fact that virtually all preborn babies are wholly illiterate. And once they are welcomed through their mothers’ vaginal gates, they make so many demands on their parents’ time that they don’t have time to read thoughtful columns by Richard Cohen or David Brooks either! And, since Wonkette would go out of business if we didn’t have Richard Cohen and David Brooks to make fun of, we too must get on that gravy train. After the jump: fetuses and their discontents.

The first question you need to ask yourself when you discover that God has planted some dude’s seed in your nurturing womb is this: is your fetus a hobo? Most upstanding non-hobo Americans are probably convinced that they could never give birth to such a being, but recent studies by top hobologists have shown that the hobo gene is recessive, meaning that you could give birth to a hobo and not even know it until it pops out and demands a handout, or a sammich. Fortunately, advances in ultrasound technology allow expectant mothers to tell if they have a hobo-fetus, as bindles and trashcan fires can now be made out in the first trimester. You’ll want to send these unborn freeloaders to the Big Rock Candy Mountain right away: not only is the social stigma of birthing a bum-infant crushing, but during your pregnancy the preborn hobo’s scratchy beard can damage your uterine walls.

But not every fetal abnormality is a harmful one! For instance, many naive parents say that they’ll be happy if their preborn child comes out with “ten fingers and ten toes.” But what if it emerges with that full complement of digits — and long, graceful wings as well? Your first instinct will almost certainly be to brain this awful parody of humanity with a shovel. But consider! This flying mini-you can be sent to do your evil bidding upon the face of the land, while you stay in your tower of war criminality and cackle with fiendish glee. It helps if you dress the part — some long, flowing black robes, say, or a high-peaked hat — but if your reputation for world-blighting villainy is already well established, you can dispense with all that and make do with a nice suit.

Naturally, Barack Obama got a good look at the flying Cheney-monster and said, “I want me one of those!” But because he was a Democrat, there was a whole lot of darn government bureaucracy he had to wade through to get his own minion of evil. Why should he have only one minion? his aides said. Discriminatory! Too “rugged individualist”! We need a whole team of minions, a diverse group, working together, in a committee for progress — progress in evil! Also, flying was right out, because adding flight capacity would involve tiresome negotiations with both the FAA and the Transportation Security Administration. And that’s how Barack Obama ended up with an entire team of evil civil servants that he had to lead through their paces, step by step. Another failure of Big Government!

Now, you know who does great work with minions? The sinister Israelis! Yes, crafty World Jewry, pulling the strings from the heart of their Zionist Compound for years now, controlling key aspects of all mankind’s existence like the puppet masters they are. From the shadows, hidden from the view of honest, decent gentiles, they run the banking industry! The entertainment industry! And, uh, the Mossad! Yes, it’s true, the Mossad are in fact the Israeli intelligence service, so Benjamin Netanyahu could just, you know, call their guys into, like, a conference room down at the Prime Minister’s office and show them a PowerPoint about their next assassination mission, but it just feels so much more natural for him to control them through a shadowy web of lies and deceit and blackmail, you know?

What with all the evil afoot, Lady Liberty began to rethink her whole “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” idea. What if among those huddled masses were terrible creatures like flying monkeys and hobos and other awful post-fetus mistakes? How could she keep America free without making it a free-for-all? Finally, she hit on a idea that would bring the best of both worlds to the wretched refuse: Internet freedom! It would be just like actual Freedom, but, you know, on the Internet. E-immigrants could experience the right to fair trial in a Second Life-style chatroom, right up to the point where they are dragged away from their computer and beaten by thuggish secret police sent by their U.S.-funded government. Unfortunately, this high-minded ideal quickly gave way to the reality of today’s Internet, with the most of Lady Liberty’s site’s pageviews generated by “10 MOST SHOCKING CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS” slideshows and “candid uprobe” shots of the gargantuan statue-goddess herself.

Meanwhile, the staff cartoonist at the Lexington Herald-Leader has depicted the population of his newspaper’s state as consisting of: deranged gas station attendants/cockfighting impresarios; toothless meth addicts too addled by addiction to stand; stunted, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome-afflicted children suckling on corn likker as if it were their mother’s teat; and Jim Bunning. Here’s hoping that the implication of near-total statewide illiteracy is correct, lest an angry, meth-tweaking mob bearing vicious fighting cocks assemble for an all-out assault on the paper’s offices.

Programming note! Your Comics Curmudgeon will be on VACATION from this feature for the next couple of weeks, but never fear! He will Return! This week I’m actually going to be at SXSWi in Austin, being on this panel, so feel free to shoot me a line/stalk me if you want to Rap about, I dunno, new media or some crap like that.