One of the things I look forward to on Saturdays is “The Gallery,” your weekly selection of political cartoons. I was dismayed, however, at the selection Feb. 12. A good political cartoon is pithy and makes its point cleverly, in a way that people can relate to whether or not they agree with the underlying political position. You had three cartoons this week that completely violated that standard, and all three portrayed President Bush or the Republican Party in an undeserved positive light.
The “Reduction Clinic,” showing the grotesquely overweight “Deficit” on a scale, portrays Dr. Bush as saying, “Eat less. Exercise more,” while the Democrat says “Buy bigger clothes!” This leaves out the scene where Bush was force-feeding “Deficit” with tax cuts to cause it to become so overweight in the first place.
The collection of Democrats with their heads in the sand, with the text, “I now call the Democratic Party Caucus on Social Security to order,” could as well feature Republicans as Democrats, since the president has acknowledged that his current proposals would do nothing to “fix” the underlying financial problems with Social Security. Both sides may have people with their heads in the sand on this issue; the trait is not unique to Democrats.
Then you have President Bush (again looking trim and in control) sitting on the couch with his overweight wife (Congress). Bush is saying, “And we promise to cut spending, right, honey?” while the fat wife says, “Yeah, whatever” to him and “Hello, Home Shopping Network?” into the telephone. This implies that Bush is being responsible and Congress (although controlled by Republicans!) is not. But since Bush has left major known spending items (such as the ongoing cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars) out of his budget proposal, one could argue that his pose is equally insincere.
Of the remaining two cartoons, one is not political, just portraying Cupid as a tech support worker, and the other portrays Bush as Cupid giving a box of candy to the rich while shooting the poor in the head with his arrow. While this one may be seen to slant the other direction (portraying Bush in a more unflattering light), it isn’t particularly clever either. I can only hypothesize that the selection of cartoons last week was rather poor, if this was the best you could do.
