Pages

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Cartooning Obama

ight off the bat, I want to say that I'm not accusing contemporary political cartoonists of creating racist depictions of Barack Obama. But I do wonder, is that tough to avoid? Political cartoons typically accentuate the subject's features in unflattering ways. They're caricatures. Remember George W. Bush's enlarged ears? The problem is that, with the nation's first African-American President, cartoonists have to avoid a whole history of racist cartooning. They have to simultaneously do what they've always done, which is make fun of the most powerful person in the world, but without referencing a racist visual history.

Consider this racist cartoon:

a racist political cartoon

(Image from the Ferris State University Jim Crow Museum)

Tags:

For those of you interested in cartoons...

Wonkette runs a weekly feature in their "Joke and Dagger Department" in which they get the "Comics Curmudgeon" to look at the week's political cartoons. This week focuses on the (wo)man-beasts slouching towards the White House:
political cartoon: GOP pet store


Post Title Cartooning Obama