Uproar. Big ol' uproar. And to think that the cartoonist who penned this is a -gasp- right-leaning cartoonist. I guess that the 1600 Crew do have a hard time with fiction v. reality. To think that they are all upset about the cartoon, which is a take on one of the most famous pictures of the Vietnam War, the summary execution of a VC guerrila by a policeman (if you are too young to remember it, it was both a still and movie, shown in print and broadcast). It was a very, very influential picture.
Now, please explain how this picture, by a non-governmental person is so different from this statement:
1994 -- Helms is named chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He questions President Bill Clinton's ability to serve as commander in chief of the armed forces, and draws fire when he says in an interview, "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard." Helms later said he regretted his offhand remark was taken literally.
Interesting that there was little to no blowback from the republicans that I remember over St. Jesse's statement, in fact, I seem to remember watching some rightie pundits laugh about it.
But then I don't remember that thin-skin was exactly a trademark of the last administration...if the 1600 Crew had to endure 10% of the abuse of the Clintons, they would all be on Zoloft or something.
The fact that the significance of this cartoon even has to be explained makes me wonder what the big deal about it is....
posted by Jo Fish on 07.21.03 at 01:15 PM
Comments:
The funny thing is that Ramirez is actually a hard-right hater of liberals and Democrats whose venom and sheer detachment from the facts rivals Ann Coulter’s. Except that he’s less talented.
I too, was a bit shocked by the cartoon, even though I viewed it on two different levels.
Having seen many such thigns in Nam part of me said, "Yeah, well, shit happens in war. If people don't like it, let'em stop wars."
But...the image of an occuoant of the Oval Office, being killed like this, is repugnant. Leaving aside memories of John Kennedy murdered in Dallas by a cabal of haters, which I also lived through, the killing of the "regal image" fosters a lot of disquiet and fear on subconscious levels.
NO, CJ - I am not implying that GW is a king. Don't even go there.
Humans are pack animals and the concept of a leader is deeply ingrained within our souls, or DNA. or whatever. We understand that the welfare of the pack is directly tied to the safety and health of the leader. A threat like this to the leader is an attack upon the pack.
But I for one shudder at the thought of this man being assassinated. It's not the way Americans do business. There are enough thinbgs going on that make us look like some third rate banana republic without doing this. It's too damaging to the commonweal to even joke about it.
But on another level I saw the cartoon as a great truth. This man, so deeply involved in the politics of the moment, rather than the good to be obtained from an action, is vulnerable to the consequences of all of his actions.
Careful examination of his occupancy of the Oval Office and Governor's mansion in Austin shows that every action, each word, all symbols, are shrewdly chosen for no other reason than the perceived poltical impact.
He's made no decisions for the benefit and welfare of the general populace. He's spoken no speech that honestly portrayed his agenda. Everything is selected to hide his real purpose.
And in that setting, I see the truth.
This man can be put to sleep, politically, in 2004. He can be fired; sent into forced retirement; involuntarily downsized; declared redundant; sent off to scribble his memoirs in crayon on yellow paper with wide blue lines; declared superfluous to the requirements of the corporation.
posted by: Lurch on 07.22.03 at 02:08 AM [permalink]
Dear Lurch,
I certainly hope (and believe) that this stuff about our being "pack animals" is not true. It would be true if we were descended from dogs, but we are not. We are, in evolutionary terms, members of bands of gatherer-hunter hominids. Anthropolgy of those gatherer-hunter peoples who have survived far enough into the last century to be studied clearly indicates we don't have pack leaders. In our evolutionary heritage, we have a sort of rough democratic group-mind by consensus, and the worst punishment is banishment from the group. This is rarely carried out by real gatherer-hunters, but it often happens that disaffected individuals go off and join a related band rather than put up with harrasment and strife.
Once we got civilized the rules changed; objective conditions changed, and our conditioned social responses are a rational reflection of these changes. We are now so numerous we cannot rely on coming by our subsitance free for the finding in nature; we must create it "by the sweat of our brow" and we are much more dependent on conditions beyond our control no matter what we do. Hence we are insecure, frightened, dependent on specialists doing their jobs, able to create huge surpluses and store them but dependent on their being available for investment in the complex productive processes as needed. These surpluses can be taken by those who had no part in making them. These objective factors are the basis of our modern militarism and submission to hierarchy, not some pack instinct.
Of course the Army tries to teach you this is Nature's way, or God's. Of course the aristocracy of wealth also wants you to believe that submission and obedience, and also violent competition to the knife, is the human way. But I think if you want to bring in our ancestral instincts, you wind up promoting something like democratic socialism if you want to be honest, true to our heritage--and to retain the good that human progress does represent. The true human heritage is cooperative communtiy; the trick is to make that work on a global, intricately technological scale.
As for the cartoon that challenges your conditioned regal response (if it does that good, those responses need to be shocked right out of your system if you haven't done that for yourself already--I would have thought your Army years would have done that for you though...)
The irony is, this is a dumb piece of W-worship. The point is clearly that "politics" is a corrupt and vicious thing that kills the innocent. The point is to _protect_ the "regal image" of the "king"; it is apparently necessary to destroy it in order to save it! He's not getting a tenth the abuse Clinton (and his wife and daughter for God's sakes) got and not a hundredth of what he deserves by any sane standard, but Ramirez will have _nothing_ but praise for the boy king!
That he gets into trouble for lese majeste is deliciously funny to me.
Humor is one of those monkey traits we inherit too...
posted by: Marcus Friday on 07.22.03 at 10:42 PM [permalink]
