[Miss Marple]

Here's a test. Print out a copy of the cartoon. Take it to your local Wal-Mart and ask people what they think it means.

You are not allowed to show them the photo from Saigon. You are not allowed to explain it.

I will bet you $100 that most people will not ponder it in its intellectual complexity. I think the reactions will be

1. Horrible. He wants the President to be executed over Iraq.

2. Cool! He wants the President to be executed over Iraq.

If a cartoon is too complicated for most people to understand on first glance, it fails as a cartoon. This is a failure.

[ChadGore]

This is a failure. because it has 2 elements that are against the law.

1) A Gun
2) Pointed at the leader of the executive branch of my government.

[mamelukesabre]

I agree.

I am old enough to remember the original photo and I never would have recognized the cartoon as a copy of that photo had someone not posted it here. So I'm pretty sure I would have got a totally different meaning from it had I actually seen it in the newspaper. It is a bad cartoon.

[Guenevere]

#268...Bravo!

[freedumb2003]

>>If a cartoon is too complicated for most people to understand on first glance, it fails as a cartoon. This is a failure.<<

You are half right. It was in a the #2 leftist rag in the country and therefore whose readership is semi-literate morins who think money grows on trees and that victimhood is good -- that audience will be clueless.

Its TARGET audience is conservatives -- Ramirez is one of the best conservative cartoonists extant. If you are uneducated, you are not a good conervative. One of the cornerstones of conservative thought is thought based on rational reason. This cannot occur in an educational or informational (or grey cell) vacuum.

It doesn't matter the reference was from 35 years ago. The photo used as the basis can and should be seared into the very DNA of all right thinking Americans alive today. It is a seminole image with both an entire subtext and context of who we are as Americans, and for this forum, who we are as American Conservative.

Those lacking the fundamentals necessary -- or lacking the desire to obtain same -- to understand should just join the other side. If this thread is any sign, I would just a soon they join up with the enemy where they can do us over here some good.

[freedumb2003]

I was reviewing the thread -- we seem to have some voices of reason and calm, perhaps yours -- some voices of abject frustration of how people could start ranting so about what is an obvious parallel -- I hope like mine and a few others -- and LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of knee-jerk emotional reactions.

I understand your frustration with ramirez and I think it might not have been his smartest work (although maybe he wanted contraversy?)

I appreciate your thoughts on the thread. Thanks.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"This is a failure."

What's truly a monumental failure here is us. And this cartoon is a huge success in pointing that out.

Something this simple appears to be beyond the comprehension of the majority of the posters on this thread, and we at FR are supposed to be at the forefront of political savvy in the U.S., or at least I thought we were. I have my doubts these days.

As a people, we have reached a point that we can only understand that which is so crystal clear that there can be no possible mistake in its meaning. Having spent decades being dumbed down by everything from pulp fiction, to Hollywood, to television, we appear to be unable to think critically, and to see the meaning of things beyond their appearances.

The shower murder scene in the original "Psycho” was one of the most frightening movie scenes I have ever seen. Today, unless they literally show the knife penetrating Janet Leigh’s nude body, and body parts dropping on the white enamel of the tub, most moviegoers will most likely yawn it at.

The opposition is trying to politically assassinate George Bush. The backdrop portrays the issue being used to do it, and it isn’t Vietnam this time, but a similar attempt at freeing a people from oppression.

It's the very same thing we say day in and day out in FR.