i frankly dont see the problem with the cartoon: but i kinda like toles.
that some of the conservatives above would use a POLITICAL CARTOON to justify refusing to read the post, and by extension, i assume, to not deal with information that is not wrapped in a nice conservative ideological gloss is absurd.
1. the main marketing line from the right about the war in iraq is "support our troops"---it is a clever line---it bypasses the myriad problems with the justificatino for bushwar and would replace political questions---serious, unresolved political questions---with some kind of immediate identification with the american victims of this absurd war--the troops on the ground.
there is nothing normal about this line: it is marketing of war.
during those periods when the conservatives were feeling less--o what's the word--marginal, none of them who support the colonal adventure in iraq hesitated to extend the logic of this marketing slogan to its conclusion: if you criticize bushwar, you disrespect the troops blah blah blah
at the point this administration chose to market its brutal, absurd and ineptly run little adventure on these line, they also politicized the image of "the troops"---and if you want to talk about tastelessness, the conversation should start with this.
but for the Outraged Conservatives above, no thought is given to the politicized nature of this kind of image, no thought is given to the fact that it is their boy and his band of incompetents who politicized it.
and what could possibly be more tasteless than marketing war?
2. the obvious immediate target is rumsfeld and the various assessments of the impact of this misbegotten colonial adventure on the state of the military. this has been said above---i am agnostic on the question of whether the american military is stretched thin or not, simply because i do not feel competent to evluate the various claims either way. but the issue is out there, and it, too, is politicized largely as a function of administration actions. toles did not invent the visual rheotric of the cartoon, he did not put these images into play---bushwar and its associated marketing campaigns, subsequent information and responses set this up.
3. some may find the cartoon offensive, but so what?
it's a POLITICAL CARTOON folks, and giving offense is part of the stock in trade. consider the limitations of the form: one panel.
that's not much space.
that the knickers of some conservatives are in a twist over this is kinda funny.
must be a good cartoon---in that it was able to move beyond the limits of a single frame and the limits of the postioning of political cartoons in the post and into the public sphere as the object of debate.
the cartoon worked, folks, and this debate about "taste" simply confirms its effectiveness.
that the joint chiefs wrote a letter about it is amazing to me.
i kinda wonder if the letter is real--because it is a stupid move on their part----in that it draws attention to and in a backhanded way inflates the significance of a cartoon--had they found it offensive really, they would have been well advised to ignore it.
for example, i might not have known about the cartoon had it not been for the exchange and the recap of it that marv posted above.
it would have passed through the pipelines of image debris and disappeared like so much else does.
responding as a body to tom toles' cartoon was simply a stupid idea.
4. propositions concerning "good taste" from folk on the right are self-negating.
the right as a political bloc has shown itself to be hostile to the arts for years, since the reagan period.
the right has used its backwater standards of "good taste" to undermine or eliminate funding for the arts.
on the other hand, that this kind of thin-skinned puritanism is out there can be seen as a good opportunity---scandal often legitimates and extends the reach of the object at its center--far more people know about serrano's "piss christ" because of the lather produced in conservativeland than otherwise would have: far more people have seen it that otherwise would have...the conservative lather about "taste" is good pr.
side note: one of roachboy's alter egos is a musician. one of the formations in which that guy works uses sounds that gets grouped under the cateogry of "noise" or "noise music"---nothing would help that guy's musical cause like this would:
http://www.mothersagainstnoise.us/
it's a hoax, but i really wish it wasnt....