- comment
F.T. Rea - body
- The tracing defense is as lame as it gets. At best it’s a straw man.
Cartoons, by their nature are stylized drawings. Caricatures generally exaggerate features and expressions for comic effect. There’s almost always a little bit of meanness in them.
The Webb camp would be smarter to suggest that Miller’s huffing and puffing over a ‘toon brings to mind the Muslim zealots, who called for death the cartoonists who depict The Prophet. Whether the flier itself was ever a smart move, or how the juvenile art and copy on it was supposed to convince an adult to vote for Webb, that’s entirely another story.
As far as what Miller ought to say, in my book “No comment,” works. Or, something like, “I’m more of a Popeye, or Flintstones fan.” Anything but, “Make them stop mocking me!”
I’m starting to suspect both camps are cooperating, behind closed doors, to promote this story. Perhaps they think it’s helping them get attention in a race the public has been ignoring. If that’s true they are playing with matches and I hope they don’t burn down the House of Donkey. I’m much happier watching the Virginia GOP eat itself alive over its intolerance of differences within its ranks.
- comment Karen Duncan
- body
- f.t. rea is right that cartoons by nature are stylized drawings. And the political parody has a long and venerable history.
Doonsbury creator, Gary Trudeau, has produced parodies of Bill Clinton, George Bush, and even the late writer Hunter Thompson. All have used comic exaggeration of the person's features.
So, if Harris Miller were an important enough and well known enough figure to be caricatured in Doonsbury, would that make Trudeau anti-semitic?
I think not.
However, believing that the portrayal of Jewish features is anti-semitic may say more about the person making the accusation. Might it be a Roschearch test of the attitudes of the viewer who makes the accusation because he thinks there is something wrong with Jewish features?
- comment Michael Snook
- body
- regardless of whether NLS has distorted the picture, your version of the drawing is clearly too big. Scale it down, try again, then we'll talk.
I think I'll try my own.
- comment Shaun Kenney
- body
- It's pretty universal that the picture was altered by a Webb booster -- either Ben Tribbett or whomever gave him the pictures.
Unfortunately, the excuses given so far:
- TypePad changed the picture size,
- Wrong pictures,
- Got the pics from the wrong person (which was NLS' site)
- The red comparison was altered,
- The photo was resized (impossible since was attached to the b/w comic,
All of these have been terribly lame excuses.
Now F.T. Rea has a more logical and reasoned explanation -- cartoons are caricatures by design and Miller could have responded in a different manner.
Still, all that having been said, when you take the caricature, the money, the cigar, the three-piece suit... the comic was impolitic at best, anti-Semitic at worst.
I worry more about what this is going to do to the tone of Virginia politics if it's not addressed in a direct and meaningful way. Perhaps I've always had an idea of Virginia politics being an honorable enterprise than most, but then again I was born and have lived in Virginia most all of my life.
"The Virginia Way" doesn't seem to be shining through in this primary, and frankly that scares me.
There's also the additional problem of letting instances like this slide, and by doing so you invite worse. That the Webb campaign's response so far has been "well, Miller hasn't apologized for his comments on Webb's stance on affirmative action" just screams of ideologies I previously assumed to be tossed into the dustbin of history.
Why does a Catholic care? Because when injustice happens to one of us, it happens to all of us -- Catholic, Jewish, African-American, Hispanic, Democrat, Republican, etc.
Dignity of the human person, folks. That's square one.
- comment Shaun Kenney
- body
- Might it be a Roschearch test of the attitudes of the viewer who makes the accusation because he thinks there is something wrong with Jewish features?
Seeing as my mother is Lebanese, I don't see how this could be unless you're suggesting some sort of self-loathing on my part.
So it's with a bit of a smirk I read from Ben and others Webb fanatics that I am somehow "unqualified" to speak of how people exaggerate features that are arguably my own.
This having been said, I can forgive comments in the heat of a campaign, so there it is.
- comment
- body
- I'm not buying the anti-Semitism argument in this case, but something that has been gnawing at me is that, in the age of Abramoff, the phrase "Washington lobbyist" is about to carry the same subliminal ethnic undertones as the term "New York lawyer" did for previous generations. Oy vey!
- comment Windham_County
- body
- Did you notice that Mr. Miller doesn't have earlobes?
7 Comments:
Cartoons, by their nature are stylized drawings. Caricatures generally exaggerate features and expressions for comic effect. There’s almost always a little bit of meanness in them.
The Webb camp would be smarter to suggest that Miller’s huffing and puffing over a ‘toon brings to mind the Muslim zealots, who called for death the cartoonists who depict The Prophet. Whether the flier itself was ever a smart move, or how the juvenile art and copy on it was supposed to convince an adult to vote for Webb, that’s entirely another story.
As far as what Miller ought to say, in my book “No comment,” works. Or, something like, “I’m more of a Popeye, or Flintstones fan.” Anything but, “Make them stop mocking me!”
I’m starting to suspect both camps are cooperating, behind closed doors, to promote this story. Perhaps they think it’s helping them get attention in a race the public has been ignoring. If that’s true they are playing with matches and I hope they don’t burn down the House of Donkey. I’m much happier watching the Virginia GOP eat itself alive over its intolerance of differences within its ranks.
Doonsbury creator, Gary Trudeau, has produced parodies of Bill Clinton, George Bush, and even the late writer Hunter Thompson. All have used comic exaggeration of the person's features.
So, if Harris Miller were an important enough and well known enough figure to be caricatured in Doonsbury, would that make Trudeau anti-semitic?
I think not.
However, believing that the portrayal of Jewish features is anti-semitic may say more about the person making the accusation. Might it be a Roschearch test of the attitudes of the viewer who makes the accusation because he thinks there is something wrong with Jewish features?
I think I'll try my own.
Unfortunately, the excuses given so far:
- TypePad changed the picture size,
- Wrong pictures,
- Got the pics from the wrong person (which was NLS' site)
- The red comparison was altered,
- The photo was resized (impossible since was attached to the b/w comic,
All of these have been terribly lame excuses.
Now F.T. Rea has a more logical and reasoned explanation -- cartoons are caricatures by design and Miller could have responded in a different manner.
Still, all that having been said, when you take the caricature, the money, the cigar, the three-piece suit... the comic was impolitic at best, anti-Semitic at worst.
I worry more about what this is going to do to the tone of Virginia politics if it's not addressed in a direct and meaningful way. Perhaps I've always had an idea of Virginia politics being an honorable enterprise than most, but then again I was born and have lived in Virginia most all of my life.
"The Virginia Way" doesn't seem to be shining through in this primary, and frankly that scares me.
There's also the additional problem of letting instances like this slide, and by doing so you invite worse. That the Webb campaign's response so far has been "well, Miller hasn't apologized for his comments on Webb's stance on affirmative action" just screams of ideologies I previously assumed to be tossed into the dustbin of history.
Why does a Catholic care? Because when injustice happens to one of us, it happens to all of us -- Catholic, Jewish, African-American, Hispanic, Democrat, Republican, etc.
Dignity of the human person, folks. That's square one.
Seeing as my mother is Lebanese, I don't see how this could be unless you're suggesting some sort of self-loathing on my part.
So it's with a bit of a smirk I read from Ben and others Webb fanatics that I am somehow "unqualified" to speak of how people exaggerate features that are arguably my own.
This having been said, I can forgive comments in the heat of a campaign, so there it is.
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