Bob Gorrell sees the world in black and white.
A good cartoon.
(And a late one; the copyright says ‘2013’ and there’s no mention of this being a vacation rerun. So why is Gorrell just now running this?)
EDIT: As expected, Zimmerman’s trial is starting soon. Still, there’s nothing new being said here about a story that peaked over a year ago.
Right. There are asshats everywhere. And then there are people who have compassion for everybody - crime victims and criminals, wrongly accused and rightfully accused, people who think the accused must be guilty because they were accused and people who realize the broken court system has totally inverted “innocent until proven guilty,” who still somehow manage to have compassion for everybody involved. I literally have not heard of the Steubenville case until this cartoon, and I’ve only done two minutes’ research, but can I say the accused were guilty or innocent? No, either way. Maybe they’re guilty as hell - although if they’re not, they’re certainly not the first people, nor the last, to be falsely accused of rape and convicted. If the girl had been raped and murdered, they wouldn’t be the first nor the last to be falsely accused of murder. But even if they were guilty, they were kids. Compassion for kids is never a bad thing, even if they do something horrible.
And I should add, whether or not they were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt - and I don’t know until I examine the evidence myself - if the girl truly was raped by somebody, be it these two boys or someone else, having compassion for the criminals in no way diminishes my compassion for her. Compassion is not a finite commodity.The fuck is wrong with you? 16 years olds are not kids, and rape is not something like shoplifting or spraypainting graffiti. It’s the worst thing you can do to someone, violating them and leaving them with feelings of shame and victimhood that persist long after the initial crime. And this incident is even worse considering what happened went far beyond a single instance of rape.
And the reason this cartoon exists is because Candy Crowley and another talking head ignored the impact this would have on the victim, instead lamenting that the “promising football careers” of the two degenerates has been stalled.
Honestly, how the fuck can you hear about a group of fuckwads repeatedly violating a passed out woman and bragging about it on Twitter and Facebook and your reaction is “Well, maybe they were falsely accused” or “Well, we should still have compassion for everyone involved”?
No, we shouldn’t. There is no equivalence between what happened to the woman and what happened to her attackers. One was violated and had her life ruined, the others were brought to justice and will pay for what they did (not nearly enough, but it’s something I guess).
Oh, and 16-year-olds aren’t kids? Really. REALLY? That’s not a valid defense in court against statutory rape or contributing to the delinquency of a minor charges. Nor should it be. Their brains haven’t even developed impulse control yet. 16-year-olds sure as shit are kids.
Yes, really. 16 year olds aren’t kids. They’re old enough to legally operate cars, they meet most age of consent laws, they can be legally employed. There are limits on those privileges, yes, but a 16 year old is not a child, regardless of how much our society coddles teenagers.
As for impulse control, actual children - five year olds - understand the concept of delayed gratification, and by 13 they’ve developed delaying strategies that last through adulthood.
But you aren’t seriously arguing that the rapists in this case deserved some sort of leniency because of their age, are you?
Not to mention puberty does a number on all those social skills you’ve learned by the age of 13 and quite a bit of other things. And 13 is about when hormones kick in and start making it harder to remember the cost-benefits analysis. None of which matters because I never asked for - and wouldn’t ask for - leniency. (Unless by “leniency” you mean, “They shouldn’t be sent to a maximum security prison for hardened adult criminals,” in which case, yeah. I’m asking for leniency.) I’m asking for compassion. What Crowley and her co-anchor said was, “This is sad,” which it is.
Also… I’ve now read every single post you’ve made. You know, Trayvon Martin was older than the Steubenville pair. At 17. Which you called a kid. But now you’re saying is not. So I guess you’re only a kid if you’re a victim and not a perp? That… doesn’t make much sense.
Crowley and her co-anchor said “This is sad” in reference to the conviction of two rapists while ignoring the victim in the affair. You reacted to the issue of a rape case with false equivalency bullshit about “I don’t know if they’re guilty (sometimes people are falsely accused of rape), but we should show compassion for everyone in part because they’re kids.”
Both of those are leniency. They are leniency in that they seek to diminish and undermine the fact that there is a clear victim in this, clear perpetrators, and a clear question of right-and-wrong. Trying to spin this in the light of moral relativism (their ages do not, contrary to your beliefs, matter to their crime) or giving focus to what happens to the criminals rather than the victim is in the same vein of limiting the definition of rape, of establishing the idea of ‘legitimate rape,’ or of responding to charges of rape by asking the victim “What were you wearing at the time” and “Did you actually say ‘No’?”
It’s all leniency, it all undermines and diminishes just how serious rape is and it all builds up to a society that underplays or outright dismisses the issue.
*
As for Trayvon Martin: I used ‘kid’ in terms of his youth combined with his innocence (and because ‘kid’ is a common term one uses for those younger than them, often regardless of their actual age). There is no clear line delineating childhood from adolescence to adulthood, but in regards to Steubenville there is no way to justify calling two proud, braggart rapists “children.” They are not. There is no innocence there, no naivety.
And someone who has read through almost 1400 posts really should not be talking about what does or does not make sense.
After Trayvon Martin was shot, I don’t remember the NRA saying that every black teenager should go out and get a gun for protection…
Counting last week’s ‘story’ as one extended take on the Trayvon Martin shooting, this makes 8 straight days Muir has devoted to it even though no one else is talking about the story anymore. And now he’s moved from his expy-character to his other mouthpiece, Mr. “I’m black, so I give Chris Muir’s views on race credibility.”
And how credible his views are! “The Left” (that is, every single liberal, all part of a singular hivemind) demanded that Trayvon’s choice was… wait, what? The Left demanded his only choice was…
What the fuck does that mean?
Does he mean “The Left claims Trayvon had no choice but to see himself as a victim”? Which meant he had to attack Zimmerman? Is that what Muir is trying to say here?
Moving on, because otherwise I’ll burst a blood vessel trying to figure this out. Apparently Muir thinks “The Left” views black as helpless (like helpless Barack Obama, kept down by The Man and robbed of any and all opportunities and left with no choice but to become president) and thus they support Trayvon attacking Zimmerman when harassed by him.
Because, as I said yesterday, Muir thinks this incident can only be viewed as an either/or thing. Either Trayvon was completely innocent (and thus Zimmerman was completely guilty), or Trayvon was completely guilty and Zimmerman was completely innocent (Muir believes the latter choice, in case you couldn’t figure that out yet). The possibility that both parties may have made bad choices eludes him. It’s all just “Zimmerman is a saint and those nasty liberals are attacking his good name! Why don’t they leave him alone?”
So it seems Muir isn’t the only one still trying to make hay out of the Trayvon Martin shooting and Obama’s presumed influence on the matter. It just raises questions like
-How is Obama’s influence ‘unraveling’?
-For that matter, what influence? What has Obama said or done in relation to the shooting and/or George Zimmerman’s trial recently?
-Why are conservatives like Wise and Muir so insistent on taking the position they’ve taken? I asked this yesterday when talking about Muir’s recent storyline, but people like Muir have tried so hard to paint Zimmerman as a saintly, innocent victim who could do no wrong. The flipside of that claim, however, has been the necessity of making Martin out to be completely in the wrong. He smoked pot before, he was suspended from school, here’s a picture of a black kid (not Trayvon) from Facebook where he’s striking a gangsta pose. Do or say whatever you can to make Trayvon out to be a deserving victim.
I’ll say again what I said yesterday: I have never seen Muir say anything like “It’s a tragedy that Martin was killed that night, but George Zimmerman had the right to defend himself.”
No. He hasn’t done that. He probably can’t do that. He can’t take any position that is not rooted in the starkest black and white view of ‘Zimmerman good, Martin bad.’
I can’t say with 100% certainty that Wise has the same lizard-brain view, but the Martin shooting and Zimmerman’s trial haven’t come back to the national news spotlight (from what I’ve seen), so they question is why are they talking about it now? And, as I asked above, why are they trying to link it to Obama?
Oh my god, Muir actually wants to continue with this story.
Even more oh my god, I was right. Yes, we learn after the fact that the black guys had juvie records and drug paraphenalia, so the Muir-expy was perfectly justified shooting first! Just like how George Zimmerman was justified in shooting Trayvon Martin, because Martin smoked pot once.
I’ll repeat what I said this morning: even when Muir is writing his own story and can arrange the facts in whatever way he wants, he still comes up with an unintelligible, basically racist story that (shockingly) does not put a new spin on the Trayvon Martin shooting that has made me (or, I guess, anyone else) reassess the story.
And why is Muir suddenly on that story again? The rest of the country has moved on from it (take that however you will), so why does he want to bring it up again? Why is he so set on making George Zimmerman out to be this perfect and holy victim? Has Muir expressed a single shred of sympathy for Martin, the person who was actually killed?? Has he said anything along the lines of ‘Of course Zimmerman had a right to defend himself, but it’s a tragedy that it turned out to be fatal.’? A young man was killed and Muir is trying to make Zimmerman out to be a fucking saint who didn’t do a damn thing wrong. Starkest black and white view possible.
And why does he have to make it about Obama now? Obama only ever expressed a view on the shooting when asked about it by the press. He didn’t take it up as his personal crusade (nevermind Muir’s conspiracy-addled brain thinking the White House dictates what and how the media reports).
But getting back to this comic: what we have is first we see some black guys, nothing to indicate they’re wicked except *gasp!* they’re wearing hoodies and bandanas. Then the white guy accidentally knocks out two of the black guys, and we’re not shown that the black guys were about to do anything untoward. We don’t see them at all, in fact. We never see them, outside of the first strip. So as far as we know it’s clutzy sitcom antics. Then, on day four (I had skipped day two), we finally see the black guys do something ‘villainous,’ but I have to include quotations because I don’t think it’s entirely unexpected that this guy is drawing a gun after seeing someone beat his two… Roosevelts (Urban Dictionary was no help there). He gets shots, apparently by Liberal Stereotype Woman pulling a gun out of… somewhere and firing like every stereotypical woman in an action movie who has never held a gun before (eyes closed, head turned, arms held straight out). Cue revelation that the third black guy was shot by the Muir-expy. Then we get all the justification for this AFTER THE FACT!
I say this again, what we see in the first three strips make the third guy’s decision to pull a gun not reasonable (not at all), but neither unexpected. If you assault someone (or their friends) expect the other person to resist you. As far as we see, Lumber Guy started this.
But Muir couldn’t tell that story, a story about unintended assault and quickly rising tempers escalating to the point that people are danger. No. He had to make the black guys unequivocal villains. They had uzis. They had drug paraphenalia. They had juvenile records (and how did that fact come to light so fast? When is the Obama segment of this cartoon taking place in relation to everything else? Days later? A week?). The Muir-expy was justified in shooting first because of facts brought to light after the incident took place. That’s the same strategy Muir et al have used in trying to clear Zimmerman of any wrongdoing. “Look at this Facebook photo of Trayvon Martin doing some gangsta pose! Zimmerman clearly had no choice but to open fire!”
This story and the comments on Zimmerman in this strip don’t make me want to reconsider my views on the Trayvon Martin shooting. They make me think of Laser Baby. Of how the Muir-expy should have gathered some basic information beforehand, before opening fire. Zimmerman can at least make a claim to self-defense, but there is the question of whether he had stalked/harassed Martin and thus angered him, and therefore to what extent he instigated the entire matter based on nothing more than Trayon ‘looking suspicious.’
But the Muir-expy? He saw two white people and three black guys (two unconscious) and he opened fire. It’s only because this story is fiction, is being manipulated to fit the author’s viewpoint, that there’s the ‘resolution’ (if you want to call it that) in the revelation that the black guys were criminals and had ill intentions.
My reaction, though, is to ask “What if they hadn’t been criminals?” What if someone saw some suspicious black men and opened fire, without provocation, and it turns out they were innocent victims? I find that far, far more likely than “The would-be muggers (armed with uzis) were knocked out before they could do anything and then the would-be victims were saved by a vigilante and oh by the way the muggers had incriminating evidence on them so everything’s fine.” How fucking convoluted is that?
Oh, and I forgot “They attacked you because you were white.” Or maybe because they happened to be the ones passing by. What’s the rationale that we’re supposed to believe the would-be muggers were racist, other than Muir having his character say so? Why should we accept they wouldn’t have attacked a black couple if given the same opportunity? Muir is making assertions about character motivation and plot that he doesn’t actually back up. That’s just piss-poor writing.
Hell, it’s not just piss-poor. It’s shitty. It’s beyond shitty. Ladies and gentlemen, this may be the 2nd Worst Storyline in Webcomic History.
Wait, wait, wait. So the black guys strapped with uzis would only try to knock out their victims? Then why were they armed (which, as pointed out before, would garner them far worse prison sentences than if they weren’t armed)?
And what about this story says ‘Life. Funny thing, huh?’ Just a weird and unusual line of dialogue, I don’t get what it’s supposed to mean here. “Those guys were going to rob us but your boyfriend accidently knocked out two of them. Funny.” That doesn’t make sense.
But what I love about this is that even when Muir is writing the story himself, even when he can make the facts be whatever he wants, the best he can do is provide a post facto explanation/excuse for white people striking and shooting black people.
Remember, at the start of the story we’re simply shown a trio of black men, nothing about them saying ‘Danger,’ except that one has a hoodie and another has a bandana (I don’t know, maybe to Muir such basic wardrobe choices are actually standard iconography of gang members). Then the Russian guy accidently knocks out two of them, and only then does the third one pull out a gun. Maybe he’s overreacting to his friends having just been assaulted for no reason, maybe because he doesn’t want to get knocked out himself.
But as he’s pulling out his gun someone shoots him, indicating this second person (the Muir expy) had already drawn and aimed at him. Before he drew his uzi. In other words, the Muir expy saw his sister-in-law(?) and her boyfriend knocking out some strangers a la The Three Stooges, and his response was to pull out his gun because… because the other people were black and you can never be too sure?
Seriously, I want someone to lay out the sequence of events in this week’s strips in such a way that does not indicate the Muir expy is a racist who assumed the worst of the black guys he had presumably never seen before.
But oh, wait, those black guys were playing the ‘Knockout Game.’ (Wha fuck? Does he mean they were mugging people? Then just call it that.) So the Muir expy is justified in shooting that guy!
I guess this was supposed to be similar to the Trayvon Martin shooting: a vigilante, suspicious of black man/men, shoots them at the slightest provocation and then, after the fact, justifies it by showing how the other man/men were terrible criminals. I guess in the next strip we’ll learn how the three black men here used to smoke pot and had been suspended from school.
***
You know, Muir could have told this story (black people accost upstanding white people, gun violence saves the day) without it being as racist as it was. For one, he could have had bandana guy pull the uzi first, give the couple time to act scared, maybe try something stupid like Russian guy tries to hit him with the piece of lumber so his girlfriend can pull out her gun (still want an explanation of where she got it), and then Muir-expy comes in and shoots (having already seen the would-be mugger is armed).
There’d still be the undercurrent of ‘Scary black men! Get guns and protect yourselves!’, but at least we’d see Muir is following a more logical train of thought.
***
Also:
“74 year old white guy. I found his ID on them- and his teeth.”
‘Because I’m a cop and therefore I’m justified in searching the guy I shot. Also I’m a medical examiner and I happened to have Jerry Givens’ dental records on me at the time, which is how I was able to identify the teeth as his.’
And now I’m wondering if Muir-expy or one of the other two called the actual cops (or an ambulance), because if so, why is Muir-expy the one delivering this exposition about who the black guys were? Wouldn’t the cops arresting them be the ones to do that?
You know the worst part? Count the shots. She shoots *seven* times. Once in the first panel, six in the second. This is amazing, as that particular handgun should only hold six rounds. Always. Count. The. Shots.Still confused. Isn’t that woman supposed to be the liberal stereotype who, presumably, abhors guns? The fact that she’s closing her eyes and turning her head like every woman in a Hollywood action movie indicates she had no experience with firearms (though how she’s not being thrown back by the gun’s recoil escapes me).
And “You two damn be so-“? What the hell is that guy trying to say? And is ‘Roosevelts’ an actual slang term?
Though I like how he’s pulling out a fucking uzi in response to his friends being hit with a piece of lumber. If they were going to rob the couple shouldn’t he have pulled the gun first, maybe a few feet away from them so they couldn’t use the giant piece of wood as a weapon? Shitty muggers.
In fact, many revolvers only hold five rounds.
I’m curious to see where Muir is gonna take this. I’m feeling this is going to be another take on the Trayvon case.
…also, which fucking ignorant ass gangsta is waving an uzi around casually, in 2012? Everyone knows you don’t keep a gun on your person, and especially nothing bigger than a pistol, because you get more time for crimes commited with those weapons.
Also a point. And yeah, I expect this is related to Trayvon Martin in some way. And I can’t say I’m eager to see where it goes.
OK, 1) It’s been two months since Trayvon Martin was shot, well over a month and a half since the story went national, and over a week since Zimmerman was arrested. You’re a little late here.
2) Red Riding Hood was fictional, Robin Hood probably was, and Robin Hood was by all definition a criminal. Why are conflating Trayvon Martin with him?
Lazy and lame and late and just all around dingy grey shit.
1) Apparently, per the first two panels, Chris Muir thinks Barack Obama controls the media. Is the President in charge of what they report on? Is he in charge of how stories are presented? Is it his concern what the “optics” of the Trayvon Martin shooting are?
1a) Does Muir think Obama has talked about nothing but Martin’s shooting in the past month or so?
2) Regardless of who, if anyone, controls the narrative, the question is not what Trayvon Martin’s character was, or what he had done in his past, or what George Zimmerman’s character is, or what he had done in his past. What matters is that a 17-year old boy is dead, and the man who killed him was allowed to walk without any serious questioning from the police, let alone a trial. A life was ended before it really began, all the potential of what Martin could have been or could have done is now gone and the reaction of people tasked with maintaining peace and justice in our society was ‘Oh well.’
It is nothing short of monstrous how people have tried to justify Zimmerman’s use of lethal force in a post facto manner, smearing Martin and saying that the clothes he wore or suspensions from school justify being killed. Is life really that meaningless among these people that they can handwave a teenager’s death with “Well, he did drugs. It’s not a big deal.”
3) Take a look at the last panel, and then at yesterday’s strip. Have they been holding that pose this whole time? Or did Muir just copy and past that pose (much as panels 5 and 7 were C-Ved, Nielsen’s wonky eyes and all), because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it before in other places.
4) And Airplane? I really have no idea what Muir is getting at here. Why the speech? So the guy can land the plane? What does the plane represent? The 2012 election?
