Say Anything Blog

He’s just not like that nasty Republican George Bush, who looked funny and always did the wrong thing.

After poking fun at George W. Bush for eight years — often drawing him with big ears and a severe overbite, or as a gung-ho Joe College type, or simply as a clueless doofus — political cartoonists are finding Barack Obama a more elusive target.

Bush’s emotive facial expressions, easy-to-caricature physical features and, most of, all his deeply unpopular political decisions were fodder for liberal-leaning cartoonists. But the cool and detached Obama enters the White House at a time of considerable economic anxiety, bolstered by wishes of goodwill even from some political opponents.

“I had all my villains in place for eight years and they’ve been taken away,” lamented Pulitzer Prize winner Pat Oliphant, one of the most widely syndicated cartoonists. “I don’t know that I’ve ever had this experience before, of a president I maybe like. This is an antagonistic art. We’re supposed to concentrate on finding things wrong. There’s no point in drawing a cartoon that’s favorable.”

Amid a worsening recession, there is the question of what appetite exists for ridiculing a chief executive seen as earnestly trying to guide the country toward recovery. Racial sensitivities also are an issue, as reflected in last summer’s uproar over the New Yorker cover of the Democratic candidate giving his wife — depicted as a gun-toting, Angela Davis look-alike — a fist jab in the Oval Office.

So we can’t question the liberal messiah because he’s got such an important job to do (unlike Bush who never faced any serious challenges).  Oh, and he’s black, and PC dogma says you can’t make fun of black people.

You know, I get partisanship.  We all have our biases.  We’re all liberal or conservative or whatever, and we show favoritism toward one type of leader or another.  But when a person can’t recognize that the political leaders they support are capable of error, that sometimes they do stupid things that are worthy of criticism and mocking, then why even take them seriously any more?

That’s the litmus test for honest commentators, I think.  Again, we all have our biases, but if you’re at least willing to laugh at yourself and your “side” once in a while then it’s all good.

Clearly, there are a lot of liberals in the media who aren’t going to be worth taking seriously under an Obama administration.