Political Discussions
Crossing the Line
Posted by NewBlogger2008 • 10/05/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: political cartoon
Does this political cartoon cross the line between common decency and normal political debate?
editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/76573/
User Comments
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Well, it isn't accurate and not particularly funny, but do I think it crosses the bounds of common decency? That is hard to say. For me it comes close, but then again it is art and so that blurs the lines a bit.
Let's just say I don't like it. -
It doesn't cross the line in the context of our contemporary political rhetoric, but it is utterly ridiculous, just like the other Nazi analogies that I have seen from the opposite end of the American political system. Maybe that is the point it is making, but maybe not. Maybe the cartoonist really thinks like this.
Thanks for the example, though. I am trying to explain this to my students. So far I have done so only in the abstract, because the examples will only make me look like a partisan. Being able to pull Nazi examples from both sides of our current debate might be helpful.
Anyone have a particularly good one from the other side that would be effective next to this one?-
Mark- Here is a site that uses a WW2 reference.
mackers-world.com/images/news/donks/obama/change_motiv.jpg -
Here is one more. Being a history teacher, you should get the reference pretty quickly.
www.littlegreenfootballs2.com/wp-content/uploads/obama-nazi.jpg -
Thanks. I'll look in later in the week to see what else has surfaced here.
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I assume you mean crosses the line leaving common decency. No. But it doesn't advance political debate on healtcare either. -
That's absurd! CSI isn't a republican!
*subtle reference to CSI's suggestion of having medical costs be a source of indentured servitude as a means of cutting costs* -
Why does that image make me think of Obamacare, and old people?
I don't think it's indecent, I just think it's stupid and uncreative and the guy who made that should be fired for either being bad at this job or sleeping on the job!-
well, there is also the matter of trivializing the holocaust. Some people find that offensive...
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Yeah, although it should be expected at this point. I mean, the holocaust happened HOW many years ago?
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Sometimes it is better to think before typing. And sometimes you have to consider the existence of people in other generations than your own, or in families with other experiences than whatever your family has gone through in the past couple generations.
"It should be expected"? No it should not. No way. Nohow. -
@c&m: I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood, my friends their really have the same opinion at this point. I'm sorry. This is a place for serious discussion and, while it is terrible, it sadly is really not that remarkable for this grotesque world we live in and vile humanity we live among. It is true that some families still remember, including some of those friends, but may I remind you that Stalins pogroms and Mao's cultural revolution were every bit as bad, and separated from the holocaust by less then 20 years! Yugoslavia might have been as bad were it not for Americas' involvement, as might have the nonsense over in Pol Pots pathetic little kingdom were it not for the fact that it's a small country with not that many people to kill.
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It might interest some of you to read what I told my history students about this topic earlier today: hist100.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/contemporary-politics-and-history/
(Please don't bother commenting on that blog, though. I am only approving comments there from my own students.)-
I've read more then you can know about the holocaust. I've also read about the dozens of other instances from Soviet Russia to China to Ottoman Turkey that were either a) as bad or b) would've been if the countries involved (Armenia and Cambodia) were larger. What my comment relates to is not the suffering felt by the families involved, which of course will never fade, but the tendency of society as a whole. "Expected" does refer here to morality, and I apologize sir if you thought such a horrible thing, but it refers here to reality. Gaze out at the grand canyon or the stars and tell me how big you are.
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It's not a question of how big or small any of us is in the grand scheme of things. Its more about the size of the shadow that an event like the Holocaust casts all the way into the twenty-first century.
But your clarification here and above helps me understand where you were coming from with yesterday's remark. -
You're right to some degree, but it's a shadow that fades, and that's what's happening.
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