Obama Joker Cartoon Spawns Incredibly Stupid Political Debate

This is barely comics, but apparently somebody's cartoon depicting President Obama as the Joker character from last year's Dark Knight movie has taken one of the current slots of something we as a nation talk about instead of talking about something that matters. What's (barely) interesting is that there has apparently been some left-of-center reaction to the cartoon that this is somehow a hate crime -- I didn't think the movie was all that great, and it was really long, but I'm not sure I'd go all the way to hate crime -- which has further led to a conservative backlash that President Bush was depicted in demeaning ways, including the same Heath Ledger Joker last year by the great Drew Friedman, and none of those darn liberals complained then.

This is true on the face of it, that there wasn't a one-on-one reaction to the Bush cartoon similar to this one. And that this is a hate crime is a ridiculous claim. But if you back off the thought that everything everyone does needs to be schoolyard fair before they do it, it's understandable why you get the reaction you're getting now when you didn't get a similar reaction then. More people are more protective of right-now President Obama than they are of late-second term President Bush. It seems to me pretty obvious that more people have a greater amount of affection for President Obama in the present moment, both in immediate terms and for the symbolism of his presidency in the greater American Story, than they did for Bush as he limped to the end of his second term.

But the further implication of overall imbalance, the suggestion that there wasn't a heaping pile of aggressive dumbassery by people instigated by cartoon depictions of Bush? That's ridiculous. Off the top of my head: Michael Ramirez was apparently investigated for a potential death threat against President Bush for a cartoon he did. A cartoonist on LiveJournal somewhere between the coasts was if I remember correctly physically assaulted by a group of pro-Bush conservative citizens for an anti-Bush cartoon in 2003 or 2004 or thereabouts. I believe Dennis Draughon had an anti-Bush cartoon killed by his employers at one point for the simple fact of certain imagery being out of bounds. The notoriously conservative Chicago Tribune killed an anti-Bush Boondocks in 2005, one of many incidents that helped give Aaron McGruder a second career as an on-campus speaker. None of these are people complaining that Drew Friedman drew President Bush as the Joker; all of these are much, much worse. Not understanding or valuing free speech isn't a signature of either American political party; it's something shared by strident, self-interested morons on both sides of the aisle.
 
posted 8:20 am PST | Permalink
 

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