Here’s his latest. Nice body on Palin! But it’s Joe Sixpack there that I’m going to write about. I’ve figured out the Oliphant method: grab somebody or something involved in your topic, make that somebody or something look as vile as possible, and do so with as little originality as you can get away with. So here we have workers being represented by a ’71-style hippie rendering of the hated blue-collar enemy, and I have to ask: what have workers done in the whole Palin fiasco to deserve getting sliced up this way? Did polls find that working-class voters favored her over Biden in the debate? If so, given the number of working-class people in this country, you’d think some poll somewhere would have shown her winning the debate. So far, not a one.
The Oliphant Method
The offensiveness of the cartoon is secondary to the real problem, which is that the thing just doesn’t match the situation it’s trying to describe. You have to wave away a key part of the cartoon and do Oliphant’s work for him — Ok, not Joe Sixpack, instead John McCain and some Fox commentators and they’re the ones cheering the Great Dope. Oliphant has a junior high idea of satire, which is to draw stink lines coming off the principal’s feet. He figures if he draws a booger under somebody’s nose, anybody in frame, it doesn’t matter, then his work is done.
(My last post about Oliphant is here.)
I think you misunderstand this cartoon. This is not an objective “Joe” or a “Joe” that Oliphant really envisions, this is the “Joe” that Palin is blatantly pandering to: someone who doesn’t think, is willfully ignorant, etc. How else to portray the ugly feelings in the public that Palin is trying to stir up, than to show literally the way she sees this audience?
I don’t know, anon. I think you’re bending way, way over backwards to give Oliphant the benefit of the doubt. Palin *isn’t* trying to, and certainly has shown no sign of successfully, appealing to working class voters, caricatured or otherwise. She appeals to evangelicals and conservative activists, especially those for whom abortion is a primary concern. It’s an ideological group, not a class-based one. Oliphant’s refusal to see the difference is (A) stupid and (B) despicable, appealing as it does to class-based prejudices which are every bit as noxious as the crap the Republicans are slinging.
“Palin *isn’t* trying to, and certainly has shown no sign of successfully, appealing to working class voters, caricatured or otherwise.”
—But, respectfully, who *is* the Joe Six-Pack she is mentioning? Who does Palin expect to answer her taunts at her rallies? Is it someone intelligent? I am just going on her words and the reactions the crowds are giving her. It’s turning ugly, and I am alarmed, frankly. I think Oliphant, who is obviously older and has a mindset that is set in the past, is trying to portray the ugliness of willful ignorance and rah-rah ism that the GOP seems to be promoting. The image may seem ugly and exaggerated and out of touch to you. I’m from southern Ohio, and I do know people like this, unfortunately. But this is just my opinion. At least the cartoon has us talking!
Best regards.
Isn’t the real problem here that Oliphant sets a bar as low as Palin’s for himself. I mean, isn’t this target a little too easy? Palin jumps over a low bar…but Oliphant just walks on the ground (or digs underneath it) by making fun of her. Sheesh
anonymous has got me thinking there. I guess if I hadn’t read so many other Oliphant cartoons, I might buy the idea that the “Joe Sixpack” here is simply the GOP’s image of working-class people (each time I say “workers” I feel more artificial). But Oliphant doesn’t go in for implicit representations of other people’s point of view. He draws people looking really stupid; that’s his thing. He keeps pulling this crap time and again.
For me the prime example of his bent is a cartoon he did against the Swift Boat Vets. I have nothing for that group, but I doubt they can be summed up as a bunch of beer-bellied slobs sitting around in a bar and bitching about how they had it tougher in ‘Nam than Kerry did. Still, that’s how Oliphant drew them. Talk about taking the right side of the debate and yet missing the entire point.
Tom, are you aware that Palin herself has claimed to represent “Joe Six-pack”, both on Hugh Hewitt’s show and during the VP debates?
Oh yeah, I know she’s glommed onto the phrase. But that doesn’t mean “Joe Sixpack” is all that crazy about her.
But that’s Oliphant’s point! She’s calling out to Joe Six-Pack as if he is a willfully ignorant, rah-rah, unthinking–drinker! She’s the one disrespecting him, in the way I read the cartoon. Only a dufus would cheer a “winner” with a bar set that low–so Oliphant drew a dufus.
I don’t know…isn’t this the same impasse that came up during the New Yorker Obama cartoon controversy? If you want to mock a person you draw them looking stupid or scary; if you want to mock an idea of a person you need to do a whole lot more work, and I can’t honestly think of a single editorial cartoonist working in America right now with that kind of control, craft, or analytic insight. If someone can argue the opposite, I’d love to be convinced…