Political cartoonists are always on the lookout for cartoon ideas and on some days, they can be damn hard to find. You read the newspaper, check the internet, take a walk to let the information you absorbed percolate and with a deadline approaching, still don’t have a solid idea.
On some days, it’s like sorting through a mountain of gravel hoping to find a diamond.
On other days – and they’re way too infrequent for my taste – the cartoon idea is presented to you like a mint on your pillow. All the work is done for you and the above cartoon is an example.
I was reading a story about Joe Biden’s search for a running mate and the article said Biden had “been in touch with roughly a dozen women” and my reaction was pretty much the same as the female character in the final panel.
An issue of credibility
If you’ve spent much time on this blog you know I think Donald Trump is a horrible president and assuming their candidate isn’t an active member of the Nazi Party, Ku Klux Klan and Flat Earth Society, I’m going to vote for whatever candidate the Democrats nominate.
Right now, that candidate appears to be Joe Biden. (I’d say it was going to be Biden for sure, but recent events indicate the world has gone batshit crazy and anything seems possible.)
So if I want Trump to lose and Biden to win, why draw something critical of the guy that will run against Trump?
For me, it’s an issue of credibility.
If you won’t admit that the candidate you support has flaws, it hurts your credibility. (And if you think you’ve got a candidate who’s perfect, you clearly don’t know enough about that candidate.)
Donald Trump is not credible because the guy won’t admit he ever makes mistakes and his supporters hurt their credibility when they rationalize and defend whatever dipshit move he makes.
Joe Biden has had some troubling history with women and ignoring that doesn’t help a Biden supporter’s credibility. On the other hand, Biden seems capable of learning from his mistakes which Trump can’t do because he won’t admit he makes them.
Stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle recently put out a video about what’s happening in this country right now and he makes an excellent point: his audience doesn’t trust him because he’s always right, his audience trusts him because he doesn’t lie to them. He tells the truth even when that truth gets him in trouble.
Here’s a link to that video and if you haven’t seen it, you ought to:
I’m not even-handed
OK, if you’re thinking I’ve drawn dozens and dozens of anti-Trump cartoons and only a few anti-Biden cartoons, you’re right and you probably ought to get used to it.
This is not an even-handed presentation of the news; it’s opinion and in my opinion Trump deserves way more critical cartoons.
That could change depending on how much Biden screws up, but it’s hard for me to imagine I’d ever see him as a worse candidate than Trump unless it turns out Biden is a zombie and belongs to the Living Dead Party and even then I’d want to know his position on use of the military to control the civilian population before I turned on him.
I mean if Zombie Joe wanted to feast on other people’s brains, how much damage could he possibly do in Washington, D.C.?
While admitting he’s a flawed candidate, I’ll vote for Biden just like I voted Hillary Clinton – another extremely flawed candidate – and blame the Democrats for running a couple people who had (and probably will have) their have hands full beating a TV reality show host who was already famous for being an Olympic-level jerk.
Is this really the best the Democrats could do?
But as that human weasel Donald Rumsfeld once said: “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have.”
So, at least for now, I’ll support Joe Biden, but I won’t pretend he’s perfect.
I have a nephew who told Mr. Rumsfield that he had too much to drink (Military in Moscow) which was the correct thing to do. That's why you are seeing the brass stepping down now. However, they are not saying or stopping anything that I've seen.
Comedians are our truth-tellers. Thanks for the link. And the great column.