Discussion for article #227671
Tacky.
4 Likes
Steven Colbert used the same exact image just recently in a piece on the same topic. I was not outraged.
6 Likes
A more relevant comparison would be to compare the airline cabins with steerage on an old Transatlantic liner.
Of course, that would be assuming that the artist were aware of history.
5 Likes
And yet, we cannot integrate, so to speak, the experience of slavery as part of the American experience and thus come to peace and reconciliation if we cannot “work” with the facts of slavery.
3 Likes
Plus, political cartoons ARE SUPPOSED TO OFFEND!
2 Likes
Yes, but he is Steven Colbert and doesn’t work for Fox News.
Did they have reclining seats on slave ships? Oh I get it! Slave ships like modern aircrafts didn’t offer peanuts and sodas. What a dumb comparison!
2 Likes
I don’t see how it should matter as to who is making the comparison.
1 Like
I read this; I read the linked Lancaster New Era and Guardian articles, and then I read the HuffPo (h/t), and only HuffPo even bothered to try to answer who drew the cartoon. If two papers in two different states ran it, it was syndicated. Who’s the cartoonist? What’s the syndicate?
And why didn’t three of four articles on the subject even attempt to address that?
2 Likes
I’ve read the Lancaster New Era when I visited my parents.
This is a deeply conservative newspaper. To my mind, there is no coincidence about their running this offensive cartoon.
Their apology is fine. Substantial soul-searching is also called for by the staff and owner of this paper. Why did they think this was interesting and OK? Why? Hope they try to reflect on this.
1 Like
Probably because they write down to their audience and assume most people don’t even know what syndicated means.
If he’d compared it to Jews packed into a gas chamber would it be okay? If he compared it to the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the genocide in Rwanda or Bosnia, would that just be an example of a political cartoonist “doing his job?”
A third to a half of the people packed into each and every ship that made the Middle Passage died and were tossed over the side to the sharks that followed every ship like seagulls following a fishing vessel. It’s not just that these people were being enslaved, it’s that those ships were instruments of mass murder that makes them things that shouldn’t be the subject of casual attempts at humor.
And no, political cartoons aren’t supposed to offend. They can offend, and sometimes it is necessary to be offensive to make the point. But being offensive isn’t an end in and of itself.
8 Likes
I wasn’t outraged either, but Stephen Colbert’s persona is deliberately offensive - because he’s skewering people who are truly offensive. I didn’t give it a second thought when I saw it on his show, but reading this article and imagining it in a different context… well, it is pretty demeaning. Like people who compare everything to Hitler or the holocaust.
4 Likes
I don’t like the comparison, but I fly pretty regularly. I understand the general point the cartoonist appears to make. The airlines have gone out of their way to reduce the amount of space available to passengers. They pack us in like sardines. All in the name of profit. Of course, that point is going to be lost in the indignation. That is too bad, and probably the biggest reason the cartoon is a total bust.
Maybe a sardine can would be a better more effective comparison.
2 Likes
I guess that’s part of the problem - evidently the cartoon has been deleted, so we can only imagine what it portrayed.
Colbert is very good at approaching such touchy issues in way which informs while still making us wince at our own history, which this cartoon probably did not accomplish.
1 Like
Again, proof of the protective potential of a limited capacity for thought. When one can’t think, why would one be able to feel?
My mentor in Dominican Republic used to say that emotionally stunted people have all the edge in some things.
It is highly unlikely that any movie could be produced which would adequately depict the Middle Passage. And, if it could, no one would be able to keep down what they had eaten prior to the showing.
And, on behalf for my fellow Mexicans, a heartfelt acknowledgement of our African ancestors. According to historian Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, there was about as much African ancestry as Spanish ancestry in New Spain, interlaced with over 60-80% of the ancestry of those who met Cortes…
1 Like
I disagree. Conservatives don’t make fun of “free market” deities like the airline industry.
Bottom line, the airline industry needs to be the focus of this. They have continued to exploit consumers despite countless calls for reform. Let us not forget we bailed them out and they responded to our generosity by raising rates and shrinking seats.
If ever an industry deserved to be taken over by the federal government it is the airline industry. Fire all the executives (without golden parachutes) and nationalize this sumbitch.
1 Like
“being offensive isn’t an end in and of itself”, unless you’re Rush or work for NewsCorp.
2 Likes
Lancaster County is a very conservative county. It was probably run with full realization of what it portrayed and knowing they would run it for the right-wingers and then apologize after the horse has left the barn. Classic right-wing move.