A lazy, crappy cartoon shouldn't encourage lazy, crappy reasoning

jpgray

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Fri Feb-20-09 09:51 AM
Original message

A lazy, crappy cartoon shouldn't encourage lazy, crappy reasoning

Or "A post wherein I piss off everyone and waste their time."

The cartoon in question is a bad cartoon. It takes two stories, the stimulus and Xanax-chimp, and attempts to stitch them together in a "humorous" way. Any way you look at it, the 'toon is in bad taste. Without any further interpretation on author intent or racial connections, making light of a horrible incident that resulted in a mauled, disfigured lady and a dead chimp (using violent imagery no less) risks causing extreme offense if not done -expertly-. Further, given the racial iconography in this country, using animal metaphors with regard to Obama-related policies must be done extremely carefully and clearly. I imagine everyone agrees on this.

The reason there is such debate over possible racist intent seems to me a result of the cartoon being so poorly done--the intent isn't immediately or exclusively clear. As a result, interpretation can swing wide of author intent.

So is the 'toon identifying Obama with the chimp? If you answer that question with zealous, self-righteous confidence and certainty either way, I think you're being lazy in your thinking. People are quite wrong to say that if enough people view the 'toon as racist or not, it is de facto racist or not. Take Hume:

The difference, it is said, is very wide between judgment and sentiment. All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard. Among a thousand different opinions which different men may entertain of the same subject, there is one, and but one, that is just and true; and the only difficulty is to fix and ascertain it. On the contrary, a thousand different sentiments, excited by the same object, are all right: Because no sentiment represents what is really in the object.

If you're shaking your head at this, think back to the '08 campaign, wherein Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment was interpreted as sexism by conservatives. The reason those claims seemed so ridiculous had everything to do with judgment, not competing camps of sentiment. Many hyper-sensitive Palin supporters may honestly have seen sexism there. As a matter of -fact-, however, there was little if any actual evidence that showed attribution to Palin--it hinged on seeing any use of "lipstick" in the context of the campaign as a direct reference to Palin. That was a view ill-supported by the evidence, no matter how many believed it.

So given that the -sentiments- of those who find it racist are valid in and of themselves, is there actual evidence that shows the chimp is meant to identify Obama? Let's take a look:

Ambiguity. If you're looking for direct attribution, it's hard to find here. That's rare in political cartoons--when depicting a public figure, they are ridiculously label-happy and usually hit-over-the-head clear with attributions. Who wrote the stimulus bill? Not Obama--he handed over guidelines to Pelosi/Reid, who wrote the bill with some mix of colleagues, so no certainty there. Is the chimp obviously designed or labeled to represent a specific public figures? No--it resembles neither Obama, nor Reid, nor Pelosi. Could it be a more simplistic one-liner of a representation, not attributable to any individual ("Huh huh, the stimulus bill is so bad the Xanax-chimp probably wrote it")? That to me is the simplest explanation, but is it the correct one? It's hard to say, and again I don't see how anyone could say "yes!" with feverish certainty to any of these questions.

So in isolation, the cartoon is too incoherent to provide us with much evidence for certainty. Looking at past cartoons (especially any containing bigotry!) may lead us closer to the truth. Let's look at this guy's stimulus-related oeuvre:

Now we have a pattern. It seems to run as follows:

1. Wacky news story
2. Near-nonexistent superficial connection to stimulus
3. Comparison of the two
4. ???
5. "Humor"

Octamom and A Rod have nothing to do with the stimulus, just as the chimp didn't. So it's clear the choice of the chimp incident as fodder fits with a pattern of lazy, incoherent stitchings-together of wacky stories and the stimulus, and was not necessarily chosen uniquely for racist iconography. Moreover the "mother" of the stimulus is not represented as Obama, but rather as Democrats generally. If the chimp was meant to directly represent Obama, this shows a break with the pattern.

What about attribution ambiguity? Is it common in his work? Used to pose unflattering animal stereotypes? Not from what I can see. When depicting a public figure, there is either a clear label or a representative caricature, as in this case:

Does this guy have a history of subtle bigotry? Of hiding hateful views under a plausible (if still incoherent) protestation of innocent "wacky" humor? No, he has a history of clunky, obvious, nasty bigotry. There is no room for error whatsoever concerning this toon--it is a hateful equation of bestiality with GLBT folks (where was the outrage for this one?):

To sum up, the cartoon in isolation can be fairly judged as racist, dependent on seeing the chimp as Obama. The wider pattern seems to show little or no evidence of purposed, direct racism, so much as incompetence, ignorance and horrible taste. If we are to accept this toon as intended to racially brand Obama as a chimp, then it is a unique break with the cartoonist's past methods, and moreover represents a couching of the cartoon's message in deniable ambiguity. Subtlety and nuance, in other words, the douche doesn't seem capable of anywhere else.

So to say "that cartoon is racist to me, and I'm going to raise hell" is fine. To say "That cartoon is racist as a matter of inarguable eternal fact, and anyone who denies it is a racist, ignorant of history, or a secret racist apologist" seems a stretch. It's hard for me to see how people can get so vehemently self-righteous in their certainty one way or the other over a clumsy, unclear cartoon that's in horrible taste whatever its meaning. The editor and cartoonist are ignorant and lazy, and should have been aware of how dangerously hateful this image could seem, whatever their intent.