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Comic Riffs is a blog devoted to the comics fan. Come in, sit down and put your feet up as we celebrate, contemplate, eviscerate and pontificate on cartoons.
Since last weekend's tragic shooting in Tucson, two polarizing cartoons have particularly stirred debate: One by NYT-syndicated Jeff Danziger, another by the Washington Examiner's Nate Beeler. On Tuesday, Comic Riffs interviewed both cartoonists about their work in response to the Arizona rampage.
Beeler's cartoon, notably, was a response to all those -- especially some editorial cartoonists -- who he believes would, with full intellectual dishonesty, spin the tragedy into a partisan event. As Beeler told us: ""They exploited these nonpolitical murders to create vitriolic partisan cartoons denouncing vitriolic partisanship. As keepers of the public trust, cartoonists should be smarter than that."
Some readers objected to Beeler's depicting the shooting victims to make his point, especially a small figure that the reader can interpret to be 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green.
What Beeler surely wanted readers to understand was the undiluted power of his point: It is outrageously heinous that pundits assign partisan blame and seek political gain from the "carnage." By depicting the victims, he wants us to share his moral outrage.
Objecting to its visceral power, it seems to me, is to deny the force of its very message.
Now, Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly is asking his viewers whether Beeler drew his cartoon too soon after the tragedy. In other words, is he "a pinhead or a patriot"?
No matter their responses, positive or negative, readers must rightfully understand Beeler's cartoon within its larger context -- as a response to a response. To not interpret it in context is to take the pinhead's approach.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
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