Fair and Balanced

EDIT: Wow. It's actually popular. Okay, that's a surprise to me, but I won't complain!

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I can already hear the desperate cries, "he's doing politics, NOOOOOOO!"

I know I should be doing the kind of strange, psycho humor that's making me popular and to be honest, I wrung my hands over making this strip for a while. I kept thinking to myself "what the hell am I going to put in the artists comments". I'd come up with some snappy one-liner like "that's fair and balanced right there" and then I'd change my mind. I even considered disabling comments on this piece, which is something I haven't done even once in the 3 years I've been on DA. And I've avoided political art in general over the years - so much of it is just polarizing nonsense, like pictures of Bush or pictures of Obama drawn as Hitler or as the devil. Godwin's law does nobody any good, especially the artist! In 5 years when the candidate is out of power, nobody will remember you for drawing demonizing pictures of them.

Don't worry. I'm not going to become a heavily political cartoonist. I'll be back to my usual frenzied style soon.

In the meantime, I just felt like something needed to be said.

Although it may seem like I'm attacking the Republican party here, I'm not. I actually sat and watched the entire 6-hour health-care summit on C-SPAN, the day it aired live. And what I took away from that is that despite being obstructionist, most of the Republican leadership are reasonable people. I listened to them express themselves that they support most of what's in the recently passed bill (which leads me to wonder what parts they're planning to repeal, if they're saying now that it's such a huge issue that they're going to run the next election on a platform of repealing the health-care bill).

That's all politics as usual. What really has me frustrated is the fact that a small handful of people have incited violence at home. Specifically Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, the Tea Party movement, Fox News Channel (who encourage it for their own benefit in the form of ratings) and a small number of Republican senators. This is not a jab at the Republican party as a whole, who are doing their job for the most part, despite disagreements. The frustration is with the fact that people like Palin take no accountability for their own actions. People aren't throwing bricks through the windows of public offices because of anything that's in the health-care bill. Go track down any of the folks who did it, and ask them which part of the bill they objected to so strongly they felt they needed to respond with violence. They won't have an answer. What they will say is "Obama's death-panels", the phrase that came straight from Sarah Palin.

And don't get me wrong, the Democrats aren't angels either. They're responding poorly to the situation by doing things like accusing their opponents of racist remarks. I don't want to get into a "they started it" discussion here. They're all acting like freaking toddlers! And they need to grow up and handle the situation like adults. The pundits need to take accountability for inciting this violence (though I doubt they will). And Fox needs to take accountability and either punish their employees for misbehaving like this or fire them. Until they do, y'know, these things really are in our own hands folks! Boycott them! Turn off those cable news stations that deprive you of real information. Stop listening to the fear mongers like Beck and Limbaugh. If you want "fair and balanced", listen to public radio.

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EDIT: For folks outside the US or who don't follow politics, here are a few links.

During the early days of the health-care bill, Palin posted this on her Facebook Blog [link]

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

John Stewart says "so you're standing up against Obama's plan to kill your baby?" [link]

News of recent violence against senators who voted for the health-care bill: [link]

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And lastly, on the art… Don’t try this at home, kids! Holy crap! This thing took me the entire day to illustrate. The line work was the big monster. So many lines! And when I was done, the preview on the export was almost black from the detail. I'm pretty sure this is also the first time I've drawn anything coming out of the frame like the brick in the 2nd panel. Coloring was no picnic either, but I decided not to cell-shade the animals to save a little time.

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