Thursday, April 26, 2007

Muir's mistake

Rick Moran asks if Chris Muir jumped the shark. The answer is yes, but not because of the blackfaced Hillary. I don't think that's so offensive. Blackface has a historical connotation and within the context of the strip it clearly wasn't meant as a slur against black people.

What I did find completely offensive was the panel before that suggests Republicans care about individuals and the Democratic party only cares about demographic groups that can get them elected. As Holly of Cincinatti pointed out in the comment section at TMV, that premise is simply untenable. It would in fact be laughable if he wasn't so deadly serious about it.

As the Democratic investigations begin to shed light on the Bush adminstration's darkest secrets, it has become undeniably clear that the Bush and his rubberstamp GOP Congress spent six years converting our government into a tool for Republican party power. The GOP has shown zero respect for individual rights.

Muir is not stupid, so I can only surmise that he is deliberately planting a false and divisive meme at a time when our country badly needs to come together and reach a middle ground. I find that irresponsible and maybe even unforgiveable.

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6 Comments:

Blogger Jon Swift said...

Of course using racist imagery is a great American tradition and only someone with the sophistication and thoughtfulness of Chris Muir could pull it off.

2:20:00 AM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Jon I don't think using racist imagery is a great American tradition but it does have a historical context that served as a short of shorthand for Muir to make his point about Hillary. One that I don't agree with by the way.

Neither do I think Muir is all that sophiscated or thoughtful. He's good at what he does but I find him to be basically a one-note ideologue. I think Cox and Forkham are much better right leaning cartoonists whose work is much more subtle and fair and they do it with one panel and don't need to rely on the hot girls schtick to make their points, even if I often think they're wrong.

8:17:00 AM  
Blogger Jon Swift said...

I'm sure we would all like to know: When can we use racist imagery?

9:14:00 AM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Jon, it's still nominally a free country. Anyone can use racist imagery who wants to, but they must be prepared to pay the price in public scorn.

I don't condone it, and I wouldn't use it myself, but frankly I think the black community and Americans in general have bigger problems to worry about than whether somebody posts something symbolically racist. If we're going to get outraged, let's save it for the incidents of real life racism that still exist today.

For instance what happened to the black community in NOLA offends me deeply. I find this comic strip to be rather inconsequential in comparison.

Granted that may be easy for me to say as white woman but I just think there's only so much time in a day and we need prioritize our battles.

9:41:00 AM  
Blogger Jon Swift said...

Just being a modest conservative blogger myself I wouldn't presume to speak for the black community. However, this blogger would like to, just this once.

7:20:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Good link Jon. I think it makes my point. Thanks.

11:30:00 PM  

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