Reader Complaints: Part 1

In which I take a trip down the Low Road...

When I write I often write with some particular friend in mind (she’ll think this is hilarious or he’ll love this inside stuff about baseball) and if other people happen to think it’s hilarious or love the inside stuff about baseball, so much the better. But this one I’m writing just for me and if you want to stop reading now, I’m OK with that.

But assuming you have nothing better to do because the first football game isn’t on ‘til noon (and that’s definitely why I’m writing this) and are still here reading…

The futility of arguments

When someone complains about something you’ve done, you’ve got two options:

1. Take the high road and ignore the complaint or…

2.  If you’re kind of immature and petty – and Life has taught me I’ve got both those qualities covered – respond, because you don’t want anyone to think you don’t have an answer to the complaint.

So those are the two options and assuming you occasionally go for Option 2, here’s something to remember and we’ll use the Holidays as an example:

Christmas is coming up and that means you’ll probably have a relative over for dinner who’s either a Card-Carrying Member of the Hitler Youth or a Big Karl Marx Fan (and Karl is widely considered the least-funny Marx Brother) and one or both of them will say something outrageous and if you choose to respond, don’t focus on your opponent; focus on the people listening, who by now are probably a little tipsy and want to see how this Annual Holiday Shit Show winds up.

Take it from me: when you get into an argument you’re always arguing to persuade the people listening and not participating because in four-and-half decades of political cartoons and the arguments that ensued, I’ve never once had an opponent say:

“Y’know what? You’re right. I’ve got my head so far up my own ass I should be wearing a snorkel to prevent suffocation, have absolutely no idea what the hell I’m talking about and probably ought to shut the fuck up.”

Absolutely destroy somebody’s position and they won’t admit their position’s been destroyed, they’ll just move on to another position: “OK, so Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a zombie — I’ll grant you that — but how about Mary Todd being a Lizard Person?”

And since the arguers involved never change their minds, if there is no audience listening to the argument and it’s just you and some other moron yelling at each other, you’re the one who ought to shut the fuck up; there’s no point in arguing.

Having said all that, I’m now going to present my case to the audience because I want this written down somewhere so the next time some reader complains about me being one-sided, I can tell he-and-or-she-or-quite-possibly-them to read this post and get back to me, or even better; stop reading me completely.

Which is just the kind of thing I could never say when working for the Kansas City Star because we were freaked out about losing readers even if they were Olympic-Level Assholes: if Vlad the Impaler called up and complained about our one-sided vampire coverage, we’d never in a million years tell Vlad to go impale himself.

How balance is achieved

A common complaint that all political cartoonists get — whether they’re Liberals or Conservatives — is that they’re being one-sided which if you think about it, is another term for “being consistent” which is generally considered a good thing until someone doesn’t like what you’re consistently saying.

Some political cartoonists try to avoid saying anything that would upset people and in my opinion those cartoonists are boring and spineless and when some old Middle-of-the-Road cartoonist died and his obituary said “everybody loved him” I thought, “Yeah, that’s because he was a horseshit cartoonist.”

Needless to say I was not invited to speak at his funeral.

“Here lies, Bob…great guy, but when he was presented with a political issue, didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.

A political cartoonist should have a philosophy that he or she promotes which is why the cartoons are called “political” and as the late Tony Auth (he was the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist) once asked: If he were drawing during World War 2, would you expect a few pro-Hitler cartoons?

If you’ve got pen and paper handy, write this down:

Balance on an editorial page balance is not achieved by one person taking both sides of an issue (although a lot of editorial writers are willing to give it a go), it’s achieved by allowing people on both sides to have their say.

I once had a Kansas City Star co-worker complain about a very conservative cartoonist who was running on the Star’s editorial page and I said that guy needed to be there because it balanced out what I was doing.

We should both be allowed to make our arguments and let the best argument win.

As anybody who hasn’t suffered a recent head injury can tell you, I’m pretty much a Liberal, but that doesn’t mean I think Liberals are always right. Short version: I believe in a philosophy, not people. And when Liberal people fuck up I’m willing to criticize them even if they’re Liberals or Democrats and to prove that point here are a few of the cartoons I’ve drawn since the beginning of 2021 and we’ll start with the Trump Impeachment trials which I believed were happening not so the Democrats could actually impeach Trump (they didn’t have the votes for that), they were happening so the Democrats could put on a show:

Here’s one criticizing the Democrats for having their priorities out of order:

This one criticizes the people in charge of the COVID-19 vaccination effort:

And this one criticizes Joe Biden and the Democrats for not delivering on a promise:

Here’s another shot at the confusing vaccination rollout:

This one criticizes Biden and the Liberals for paying lip service to gun control:

This one points out that Kamala Harris was given a thankless task that had little chance of success:

Here’s one about Democrats working with Republicans:

Another one making fun of Biden for what I thought were his ineffectual efforts to take on the gun lobby:

This one criticizes the Democrats for being naïve:

Here’s one aimed at both Democrats and Republicans for criticizing the efforts of the Capitol Police during the January 6th riot:

And another one criticizing them for trying to stuff pet projects into the infrastructure bill:

This one takes a shot out how long it was taking for Biden’s bill to get approved:

Here’s one about Andrew Cuomo trying to hold on to power:

OK, I’ve got a lot more cartoons criticizing a Democrat and/or Liberal, but the Substack gremlins are informing me that this post is getting too long for email so I’m going to have to cut it into two parts, so come back for the exciting conclusion tomorrow.

Remember: everybody loves a cliff hanger…unless they’re the ones hanging off cliff so come back and see who that might be.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/