[weegee]

The first public questioning of this cartoon arose in a washingtonpost.com chat Tuesday, when a reader noted that the cartoon seemed to make no sense

So now crackpot washingtonpost chat discussions are valid "journalism"? Just when the standards couldn't get any lower.

The WP might as well go trolling Harry Knowles' AintItCoolNews.com website for political insight into the Bush Administration (Possible headline: "Critics Outraged At Latest Bush Decision!!!").

[weegee]

Bob Staake, author of "The Complete Book of Humorous Art," an analysis of contemporary cartooning, calls it "as fascinating as it is suspicious. When you dissect it, as a cartoon, it flat-out doesn't work, and you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what it means. But it doesn't take a conspiracy freak to see it as an odd, twisted, inappropriate slam at a quirky religion."

What a "Complete Idiot". There are comic cultists who have discerned secret meanings in the "unfunny" Family Circus and (Ernie Bushmiller's) Nancy (note, unfunny is not my assessment of these strips). Even fan/cartoonist Bill Griffith refers to Nancy with a comment that there is "hume, humor, and humorous" and that to him, Nancy is a prime example of "hume" (although he thinks that there are more surreal things at work in the strip "3 hairs, 3 rocks").

[weegee]

In analyzing this cartoon, semiotician Blonsky cautions against succumbing to the Intentional Fallacy: In criticism, he says, it is a mistake to give much weight at all to the artist's stated intention. For one thing, it discounts the strength and influence of the unconscious mind, he said. All that matters in artistic criticism, he said, is the effect of the art on its viewers: the way people interpret it. In other words, even if Hart intended no offense, the offense is there.

So it doesn't matter what the artist meant to say, it all comes down to what the critics say it really means. I see. He must be a BS Artist.

I've had a magazine cover I drew misinterpreted to be a drug reference. I have another friend who draws concert posters critiqued harshly for having too much of an undercurrent of "violence" in his posters (there is no blood seen, nor weaponry, mobs, etc.). He's had a poster with 2 men boxing, maybe that counts for "violence" in this PC world.

[Sir Gawain]

So what's the meaning of the cartoon then?

[Liberal Classic]

A cutout star or moon in the door of an outhouse means it's for men or women, respectively. This is equivalent to the modern stick-figure on the bathroom door, because back when chicksales were common literacy was not.