Last week, we introduced you to Cartoon Violence, wherein our resident cartoon expert The Comics Curmudgeon, who read Hi & Lois at Oxford, marches grimly through Today's Comics so you don't have to (not that you probably feel too much of a need to, really, but presumably someone does, right?).
This week: CC believes that children are our future. Cartoonists seem to have never met any. Get yr crosshatch on, after the jump.
Greetings Wonkette readers! The Comics Curmudgeon here, back for another installment of political cartoon mockery. You know, when I was in eleventh grade, I had to draw a political cartoon for my history class; I chose to criticize NASA's seemingly overreaching attempts to diversify its astronaut corps -- not because I was opposed to affirmative action, but because I wanted to draw a Korean Elvis impersonator in a space suit. My teacher told my parents that the assignment didn't represent my true potential, but he totally missed the fact that I ripped it off from Bloom County! You got punk'd, teach!
Anyhoo, most kids are much, much cooler than I was and don't read editorial cartoons; so, just as the hatemongers behind TheAmishCanBlowMe.com can mock their peaceful victims online without fear of retribution, political cartoonists apparently think that they can trash-talk the youth of today on editorial pages across the nation. And of course, they're right. Still, I feel a need to stick up for the little ones. This week, Cartoon Violence examines the good, bad, and ugly of kid-hatin' toons.
(Click to enlarge)
Today's kids are rude
The good: This destitute fellow could have been identified as an out-of-work fetus murderer, driven into destitution by the Culture of Life, merely by the sign -- yet the artist went the extra mile and chose to dress him in OR scrubs. That's added realism! Because when your job gets outlawed, you get to keep your clothes as a parting gift.
The bad: Can you show someone flipping the bird in an editorial cartoon? Is it somehow better when a baby does it? Isn't this the sort of thing that would get torrents of angry letters if it happened in the Boondocks?
The ugly: Why flick off the doctor, kid? Your mom's the one who wanted to abort you.
Today's kids are slutty and litigious
The good: The kindly, bespectacled pharmacist actually fills this young lady's prescription, despite his wistful longing for a simpler time, when eight-year-olds were forced to have their unwanted babies.
The bad: All of the cartoonist's rage against loose women and lawyers are dumped onto an adorable freckle-faced child -- a sure-fire method of getting winning the reader over.
The ugly: It's like he tried to come up with a scenario for a cartoon, and then he thought, "Hey! What if two eight-year-olds were fucking, and the condom broke?" I mean, right? That's what's happening here, right?
Today's kids are fat
The good: Even though the kids aren't sitting on the couch, the artist really put a lot of work into it. I respect that kind of craftsmanship.
The bad: The scenario could have been a lot more squalid. Visible grease stains, more moldy pizza crusts on the floor, the works. I'd say that the cartoon is supposed to be subtler than that, but, seriously, check out the forehead on the kid on the right.
The ugly: Hey, if they're this unattractive, probably nobody wants to have sex with them, right? There's your solution, cartoon #2.
Today's kids are doomed
The good: Ah, deliciously horrible dark comedy, thy name is Danzinger. You didn't even feel like you had to slap a W on this cartoon's cowboy-booted, debt-laden protagonist.
The bad: I take a pretty firm anti-political-cartoon-label-metaphors stance. Still, even I have to admit that without the word "debt," this cartoon would just be about crushing babies to death, which is a little bleak even for me.
The ugly: The president is about drop an anvil on an adorable infant. Do I have to draw you a diagram?
Today's kids want to marry Tucker Carlson
The good:Prickly City's Democrat coyote is doing something stupid and incomprehensible out of some sort of sense of whimsy, rather than doing something stupid and incomprehensible because he's a liberal straw man.
The bad: The idea that an eight-year-old girl might swoon over Tucker Carlson is even more horrifying than the idea of two eight-year-olds fucking. For real.
The ugly: No, seriously, can you imagine a little pink scrapbook all filled with, like, pictures of him with his damn bow tie and shit? And notebooks that have "Me and Tucker TLA" and "Mrs. Tucker Carlson" written over and over on them? Jesus. I have to go lie down now.
