I was just IMing with a BP colleague about a negative piece of reader feedback we got that seemed to be on the tautological side, complaining about something for being what it was supposed to be. With his permission (we’ll call him Stan), here’s a bit of the conversation:

Steve: I got that about a YCLIU a few entries ago. “I realize that history is the point of this column, but it’s just too much about history for my taste.”

Stan: I like that he felt the need to say it.

Steve: I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with people like that. Apologize for living?

Stan: I think the appropriate response in a cartoon would be to say nothing and slap them with something heavy. Then walk away.

Steve: Where is Bugs Bunny when you need him?

Keep that in mind. Down in the comments for our first entry back, Jerry writes:

Wow….what a surprise! You vote for a guy without a shred of administrative experience and are surprised that he has failed. You lefties make me laugh.
You never learn.

Here’s the thing, Jer. I would have ordered off another menu had one been offered, but the Red Kitchen was offering a dish that combined overdone beef with raw vegetables. Obama wasn’t my candidate, but neither was Hillary, or Edwards, or, well, anybody. If the ‘Publicans had bothered to run a serious candidate, I would have, at the very least had an open mind, but they put forward an old guy who doesn’t even stand for the things he stands for. Then he doubled down by putting a truly dangerous loon in the one-heartbeat-away spot. I wasn’t under the illusion that Obama had any fixed convictions either (and he doesn’t), but at least the things he pretended to stand for were closer to what I believe in. There’s a reason that independents went for Obama, and it’s not that they were born-again Democrats. Like I said in the post you replied to, who the hell would root for that loose coalition of clods? It’s that they couldn’t believe in McCain.

But here’s what really bugs me about your response. “You lefties.” Could we grow up after all this time? Can we get away from dumbass, reductionist labels? In yesterday’s Pinstriped Bible, I said, with tongue in cheek, “Whoops! There we go again, supplying binary solution-sets to complex problems.” Yet, here you are, doing the same thing. Most people couldn’t even define what “lefty” or “righty” really means in the current political context. Or at all. I defy anyone reading here to find a definition that’s non-pejorative and accurate in that it’s actually applicable to a large group of people. Oh - and do the same thing with “Socialist” while you’re at it, because I strongly doubt that the people who keep tossing that one about actually have the slightest clue what they’re talking about. It’s just an epithet, just name-calling. We’re Americans, not Sneetches, and we need to build bridges between people, not isolate them with playground bullshit that substitutes aspersions for action.

I’m not holding out hope for the anvil falling, but man, as Stan said, sometimes it would be good to have one handy, as a cartoon response is entirely appropriate for cartoon argumentativeness.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 1:24 pm and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.