Just the opposite, in fact: it's an indictment of political posturing doing damage to a serious person.

That's the intent, anyway. Ramirez is very conservative cartoonist, odd though that may sound coming from the LA Times.

I wonder what sort of response a 'caricatured naked, napalmed Hillary Clinton running down a village road with arms spread and face wide open in a scream would have?

(to jog the memory)
http://www.katewerk.com/temp/napalm.jpg

I'm sure someone could drag up some word to write in the cloud behind to license it.

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Kate
http://www.katewerk.com

Analogy doesn't work. Naked body of a little girl isn't equivalent EVER to that of a naked adult post-pubescent female.

Also: Kevin is right. This cartoon's intent is to support the President and his Iraq policy. There's no way such a cartoon about Hillary (or anyone--think of a Vietname-era female who supported that effort) could be read as an endorsement of the action there. Or a reasonable critique. It would just be silly and pointless.

> This cartoon's intent is to support the President and his Iraq policy.

Well, that's not immediately obvious. I know that upon viewing it, I really didn't have the stomach to analyze the intent.

> There's no way such a cartoon about Hillary (or anyone-- think of a Vietname-era female who supported that effort) could be read as an endorsement of the action there. Or a reasonable critique. It would just be silly and pointless.

I didn't say that any cartoon featuring Hillary in the role of napalmed little girl would have to apply to any specific issue. Pick one. Wouldn't matter. To place a current politician in a historic photo where the violence and fear is so uniquely human, so completely personal, is crossing into territory that I think political cartoons should stop short of.

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Kate
http://www.katewerk.com

I can see your having that sensibility. But I'm not sure I agree: political cartoons are supposed to provoke thought and inflame (possibly dormant) passion. I can't really think of a more effective way to do that than to employ a familiarly brutal situation, and place a public figure there.

On second thought: I'll bet there's a line that could be crossed for me. When that happens I'll probably be saying all the same things you are now, and you can call me a hypocrite.

Let's say I feel Ramirez played footsie with the line, rather than actually crossing it.

Heh, guess I'm late to the game -- I just posted that the Ramirez cartoon is pro-Bush. The cartoon is in bad taste, as James says, but the people who should be outraged are Dems.

I know exactly what would happen if the object of this cartoon had been Hillary. I was on Hardball a few months ago debating the issue of free-but-offensive speech. Some sports guy said he wanted some athlete's wife to be "smacked," and during the Hardball debate I mentioned that, after listening to one particularly annoying screed by NY's junior senator "I wanted to bludgeon her with a tire iron."

For a month after, I was pounded on lefty websites for "threatening the life" of Sen. Rodham. What I couldn't get the dopey lefties to admit was that, whatever they thought of the comment, it was ridiculous to call it a "threat." Please.

But they never backed down: "Idiocy in the defense of ideology is no vice" is the new liberal mantra.