Correspondence from a crazy person #2

In this, the second installment of me acting crotchety towards the world in general, I take offense to this political cartoon:



I would be surprised if anyone else reading this DIDN'T find the cartoon pretty offensive. It's a pretty big risk any time you go for the nuclear option and compare somebody to the Nazis. You could get an e-mail like this:

"I can imagine you probably got quite a bit of e-mail after your cartoon that not so subtly compared Pelosi to a Nazi leader. I won't even get into how offensive that is, I'll only remind you that you probably were horribly offended any time anyone compared Bush or any member of his administration to Nazis. In neither case is the comparison anything other than grossly unfair and borderline irresponsible.

Since I'm sure that point has been brought up plenty, I'd like to take issue with the content of the cartoon BEFORE the last panel. On what basis do you have Nancy Pelosi saying that certain people should be killed, and that others should (if I got the implication correct) be sterilized? If that's a criticism of any policy of hers or of anything that she or for that matter any other liberal leader has ever said, then it's one I've never heard. It seems to me it's an extension of the perceived disregard for human life that liberals have based solely on the stance that abortion should be legal. It's a ridiculous stretch, and one that I hope you don't take seriously.

The whole cartoon is a conflation of several legitimate viewpoints on debatable issues including welfare, contraception, sex education, abortion rights, and the responsibilities of government for caring for it's citizens, along with radical ideas that are held mostly only by imaginary, hedonistic, irresponsible, immoral liberals that want to practice some sort of rebirth of eugenics. It seems pretty hypocritical to me to see this cartoon when I remember the outrage you expressed in post-Katrina cartoons at the taxpayers having to help pay for the housing of people who had been so "irresponsible" as to build homes on the coast.

The message I can only infer from the cartoon was supposed to be: "We should think about the policies that are being implemented by leaders on the left and what they can lead to if we aren't careful." But all I take away is that the die-hards on the right will never understand what motivates liberals, or what we care about, and comparisons like these make me doubt if any really care to try.

I wish I could have kept more anger out of this e-mail, but the Nazi comparison always makes my blood boil. That aside I hope you're well."

-Now it's important to note that this e-mail could not be nearly as vitriolic as the one to blockbuster. This particular cartoonist is somebody that I e-mail back and forth with kinda frequently, and while his ideas may be crazy and outdated, he's always been a nice, respectful guy in our correspondence, and is amazingly good at responding to e-mail. Much better than I am in fact, and he probably gets about 20x as much. If I get his permission I'll probably put the whole of the back and forth about this cartoon on the blog.