Most Americans prefer to ignore the news, on the grounds that it’s all bad and depressing, leaving us with an ill-informed populace.
A sadly accurate cartoon.
The second cartoon from Bill Day on the Boston Marathon explosion… saying only ‘america sad’…
“Mean man make big boom. People owie. Billy sad.”
Cut the man a check for $42,000.
***
Maybe I’m just tired right now, or maybe it’s getting harder for me to get angry about this shit. I’ve said a few times over the past week, twice in relation to Day himself, that if you have nothing substantive to say, why not just say nothing?
At the same time, I don’t really know how someone who is paid to follow and comment on the news could not have anything to say, or have nothing to say beyond “I haz a sad.” There have already been a couple good cartoons in reaction to the Boston bombing despite a lack of firm details about this particular incident. Mainly because Bors and Toles don’t just look at this event in a vacuum and treat it as an isolated incident, a one-off thing to get sad about and then return to blissful obliviousness in a couple weeks.
I mean, is it really that hard to put Boston in a larger perspective of 9/11, the ‘96 Olympics, the Patriot Act, media sensationalism and rushing to report in lieu of hard facts, or the War on Terror? We may not know who did this or what their motives (if any) were, but we can make an educated guess about how things will proceed, how Americans will simultaneously beat their chest in an “America! Fuck yeah!” act of posturing while also rolling over for continued degradation of our civil liberties and rushing to blame brown people. We’ve seen this before, but Day et al pretend we haven’t, that this is something new and unique.
It’s always Groundhog’s Day for them.
The first round of cartoons about the Boston Marathon bombing were predictably stupid; it’s the price for rushing to be first, you can’t really say anything when you don’t have the facts and you’re operating on a purely visceral level. Just bloody shoes, crying Uncle Sam, a torn banner.
But now we have confirmation it was deliberate, though we don’t know who did it or what their agenda (if any) was, so now we have a second round of stupid cartoons that want to say something but can’t.
A 9/11 connection? A shoelace reading ‘Why’? The most inappropriate time for a spelling bee?
I can only repeat what I’ve said before: if you have nothing to say, just shut up.
I know I shouldn’t be at all critical of 9/11 remembrance comics. This is a non-partisan issue and all. But what the hell is this? What the hell is Steve Breen trying to do?
This isn’t hard. Draw the NYC skyline with an outline of the Twin Towers, maybe throw in a crying Uncle Sam, and call it a day. What’s with the candle and the flame looking like an eagle?
