Cartoon Punch Down

Bokbluster

 bokbluster.com/

. . . "Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau’s approach is different from the Fawstin way. He explained it in his acceptance speech for a Polk lifetime achievement award last month. It’s the punching bag theory of cartooning. He says that satire must always punch up at the powerful and never punch down at the powerless.

"Now they tell me. There are rules for satire.

"I like Doonesbury but haven’t liked its politics ever since the entire cast cheered Nixon’s wage/price controls back in the early 70’s. But that’s no reason to not appreciate a good cartoon. Doonesbury has been like an ongoing play with well developed characters who grow over time. It’s witty too. Most of the time.
. . .


 "Mark Steyn, on the other hand, hates Trudeau’s guts. So I picked out some of the good stuff from his column  'A Contemptible Man Strikes Down':" . . .

A Contemptible Man Punches Down

The offices of Charlie Hebdo: That's cartoonist's blood on the floor

. . . "Ah, so Charlie Hebdo is to blame for provoking ordinary, peaceful, moderate Muslims into supporting the Allahu Akbar guys who killed them.

Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny—it's just mean.

By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech.

"Is Islam, which will be the world's largest religion by mid-century and already controls a 58-member voting bloc at the UN attempting to impose a global blasphemy law, really "a powerless, disenfranchised minority"? Does even someone as blinkered and parochial as Garry Trudeau think Charlie Hebdo was "punching down"?" . . .

 Charlie Hebdo dead, Vilks in hiding, Hedegaard shot, Rehman firebombed, Nekschot vanished, Molly Norris fled, Kurt Westergaard attacked by an Islamic axeman... But Garry Trudeau is on stage congratulating himself on "afflicting the comfortable". You can't "punch down" much lower than sneering at the dead and those no longer able to speak, can you?

This same "disenfranchised minority" has the world powers quaking in our boots, bowing and apologizing before them in fear.

This German cartoon needs no translation: