What do you do in the wake of a crushing political defeat?

If you’re Jeff Goldstein, you declare yourself to be way cooler than everyone else; if you’re Darleen Click, you draw a cartoon in which the President rapes a woman, then tells her that he and friends will be back to rape her again later. In the clinical sense, Click is the more interesting case because she thinks that the only problem with her cartoon is that it’s racist. I repeat: she drew a cartoon in which the punch line is a gang rape and the only potential problem with it she can see is that it might be racist. Don’t misunderstand me: it’s plenty racist—plays into tropes as old as slavery and everything—but the punch line is that the President and his associates are going to gang-rape the Statue of Liberty with, I kid you not, immigration reform.

In service of the cheapest of laughs, Click asserts that the statue that symbolizes America’s commitment to the tired, poor, huddled masses of the world is about to be raped because of the President’s commitment to those selfsame masses-yearning-to-be-free. Talk about your industrial grade ideological incoherence—and I would, except for the fact that Goldstein, never one to be upstaged on his own blog, told a woman that the only way she would ever be cool was if someone raped her with an icicle. That’s not true, though. Goldstein never said that. What he said, and I quote, was:

For instance, here’s Nishi, whose only hope of ever really touching cool would be to pay somebody to fuck her once with an ice dong.

Such are the depths to which Goldstein sinks to maintain the illusion that he’s cool, which is sad, you know, because he’s a middle-aged man worried about whether people think he’s cool. Then, in yet another example of just how over me he is, he declares me to be the exemplar of uncool.  Far be it for me, a 32-year-old blogger who sports a backwards Mets cap and is currently writing a scholarly book about comics, to complain when someone says I’m not cool, because honestly, I’m not cool. I grew up, got a job, and am working for the Man; however, forty-something bloggers who alternate between whining about how poorly jobs they don’t have pay and writing 10,000-word-long semiotic screeds about Alinksy and catch-wrestling? Not cool. Doesn’t matter how many people whose favorite film is Mr. Smith Goes to Washington say otherwise, because them? Also not cool. But you know what really, really isn’t cool? Unsubtle threats of politically motivated violence against women:

I predict Nishi will look very surprised the first time she’s knocked down by someone who doesn’t much like the glee she takes in the losses of freedom we’re undergoing.

I predict Nishi won’t have as much fun playing the griefer game once it becomes obvious that while she’s playing a game, many of us are not.

I predict that Nishi doesn’t know who she’s fucking with.

I predict Nishi will soon find it best not to post here anymore.

I predict that I don’t much care about “blogging” anymore; I care about my family and my family’s future, and I see barren narcissists like Nishi as threats to my family—all because they get their kicks seeing how much they can connive their way into control and power.

I predict having such an attitude as Nishi’s will turn out badly.

I’m sure my pointing this out will result in a cool discussion about the coolest of abstruse literary theories—intentionalism—and about how I don’t get what Goldstein intended there, and I’d care, you know, but whatever.

Update. Surprisingly for someone who is so over me, Goldstein just devoted an entire post to refuting my argument—I kid, I kid.  He makes fun of my beard and completely ignores the fact that, as Jay and Rich noted, the rape of Lady Liberty trope is so tired that the Onion uses it as a running [insert scary minority here] gag.  He also refers to Click's depiction of the moments after non-consensual sex as a "metaphor," which it would only be were it not actually a depiction of the moments after non-consensual sex.  A picture of a cute puppy isn't a metaphor for a picture of a cute puppy, it is a picture of a cute puppy for the simple reason that things can't be metaphors for what they are.  Click produced a very literal depiction of what might otherwise be a metaphor, but it's not a metaphor: it's a drawing of a callous rapist informing his victim that he's coming back from more.

Update II. By request, as a few of you mistakenly believe that Click can experience shame and will take down her cartoon shortly, I'll report it here:

See how that's a "metaphor" for a violent rape, and not a depiction of the aftermath of one?  Of course you do.

Comments

[John Emerson]

What's this "learning to shoot" bit? The whole thing about firearms is that you can train people quickly and form mass armies.

Of course, snipers are highly skilled. So I guess soon enough every school book depository will have its own resident conservative.

[Rich Puchalsky]

The Onion is always ahead of the wingnuts. Their book Our Dumb Century includes a running bit that, to quote wiki, parodies "newspaper fear-mongering by drawing a caricature of America's enemy du jour (among them, Spaniards, Nazis and hippies) [sexually] assaulting an anthropomorphized Statue of Liberty."

[Shane In Utah]

The South African cartoonist Zapiro is also way ahead of Click on this one:

http://tinyurl.com/yjoj5rs

In the case of Jacob Zuma, the rape metaphor seems more appropriate, somehow...

[Karl Steel]

anthropomorphized Statue of Liberty
Wait, isn't the Statue of Liberty ALREADY anthropomorphized?

(presuming Darlene will take the 'you can't take a joke route,' whereas Jeff will...impossible and mortifying to think about)

[happyfeet]

I thought the rape was more like a metaphor. Like when you say someone's murdered hope you don't mean for reals they're a murderer.

My favorite film is Fargo I think.

[happyfeet]

but there is animosity in your post, no? ... I think the thing I would key in on is the expression of concern what is voiced about the losing of the freedoms. Nobody likes to lose freedoms. Except socialists, but I mean Americans.

But also I think that the treatment of Bush we saw... that alone rationalizes a boisterous excoriation of the little president man we have now just on general principles, and then the excoriation has to be taken up a notch from there cause of what he done on our little country.

What a mess.

[KJE]

Scott, all this time lately spent on such unworthy prey--it's like the rhetorical equivalent of pushing a blind guy in front of a bus. I say this as a long time reader and admirer--you're losing me a bit. Bring back the comics analysis and deft pedagogical anecdotage!

[SEK]

KJE:

Bring back the comics analysis and deft pedagogical anecdotage.

More pedagogy next week, once the Spring Quarter starts. This is my one week off until the end of June. More comic stuff, however, is in the pipes, I just haven't finalized it yet. Stick around, I promise there'll be more of the fun stuff shortly.

happy:

I thought the rape was more like a metaphor. Like when you say someone's murdered hope you don't mean for reals they're a murderer.

It is a metaphor, at least until you make it not one, which is what Darlene did. If you literalize it by having Lady Liberty crying naked on a bed and President Obama putting his clothes on and telling her he'll be back with friends, it's not a metaphor anymore: it's the thing itself. She depicted the aftermath of nonconsensual sex, which is rape. Click probably thinks that mentioning that she consented two Novembers ago absolves her of that, just like husbands can't rape their wives because they're married; which, however, is patently untrue.

but there is animosity in your post, no?

Actually, there isn't. There's quite a bit of it in Jeff's aggressively formulated posts and comments, but I'm actually perfectly fine with not being cool. It's just sad to see someone have to argue that they're cool, which when you think about it, pretty much guarantees you're not.

I think the thing I would key in on is the expression of concern what is voiced about the losing of the freedoms.

True enough, but I don't see that I've lost any.

Karl:

isn't the Statue of Liberty ALREADY anthropomorphized?

The only question is, then, an anthropomorphized what?

Rich:

Their book Our Dumb Century includes a running bit that, to quote wiki, parodies "newspaper fear-mongering by drawing a caricature of America's enemy du jour (among them, Spaniards, Nazis and hippies) [sexually] assaulting an anthropomorphized Statue of Liberty."

The fact that it's a running gag about racists would, you think, undermine Click's argument that there's no racial angle to it. But, you know, it won't.

[SEK]

John:

What's this "learning to shoot" bit?

Didn't you hear? There's no such thing as a liberal soldier, or a liberal redneck, or a liberal inner city black youth, or, you know, something.

[happyfeet]

it's a provocative cartoon...

but just cause you don't feel you lost freedoms doesn't mean you're more free... you're just desensitized is all I think. Please to be jumping out of the pot.

[Fritz Hemker]

A crushing political defeat? Crushing? 13% of the Democrats in the House defected; 59% of the American people are against (or, charitably, confused about) Obama's plan. Neustadt, who should be taken seriously in these matters, wrote that "The power of the President is the power to persuade." Who did President Obama successfully persuade, exactly? Remember, the big topic of discussion prior to passage was whether Speaker Pelosi was going to use a parliamentary technique to allow her party to avoid direct responsibility.

Maybe you can explain to me how, exactly, were the Republicans supposed to "win" given that they didn't have control over any of the political branches? It's a defeat, sure, but more Thermopylae or Dunkirk. In other words, if you have to lose, the Republicans did it in the best way possible.

I think that Beinart identifies the cleavage in the Democratic party aptly. In any case, the true determination of what this defeat, crushing or otherwise, really means will come in November.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Beinart's analysis is moronic. Obama didn't "[choose] Karl Rove’s politics of base mobilization over Dick Morris’s politics of crossover appeal, " He tried to use crossover appeal over and over, and only gave up when it was apparent, even to him, that it wasn't going to work. He didn't then reluctantly agree to pass the bill because he was choosing a politics of base mobilization -- he did so because he ran on health care reform, and he needed to accomplish at least one of his major promises.

Sure, Obama performed miserably. Which doesn't make it any less of a crushing defeat for the Republicans. They failed to stop something that, at least according to their own strategists, is going to turn the middle class firmly against them for a generation. You can't argue that it was inevitable that they were going to lose because they had lost all the branches of government when just until recently they were claiming they were going to win.

[Ahistoricality]

As an historian, my first impulse reading this is to try to find an equivalent hard-fought legislative or elective defeat for the Democratic side and see whether equivalent actors used equivalent rhetoric. I don't have the time or energy to do it now, but it would depend, as always, on the definition of 'equivalent.'

[Richard Pennyfarthing]

I think I agree with Happy for once.

Picking on two such lowly targets as Darleen and Goldbrick is too easy these days.

[Fritz Hemker]

Ahistoricality,

It's harder yet: unified party government isn't the norm in American history.

The closest analog that immediately occurred to me, mostly because it involved an hitherto unheard of use of presidential rhetoric, was Wilson and the debate over the League of Nations. But, obviously, he had a Republican Senate, so that's not quite right. Maybe Truman with Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. in 1952.

[tomemos]

Fritz:

"59% of the American people are against (or, charitably, confused about) Obama's plan."

That's last week's figure. Get with the program, man!

"Who did President Obama successfully persuade, exactly?"

Happy to be of service.

"In any case, the true determination of what this defeat, crushing or otherwise, really means will come in November."

I have no idea if you're a Republican or not, but this strikes me as perfectly-distilled Republican thinking. Democrats have just achieved the most sweeping domestic legislative accomplishment in at least the last four presidencies, one that's been a Democratic priority for some sixty years…but if they lose a midterm election, that's what will really matter. Republicans really are interested solely in politics, not at all in policy.

[tomemos]

I think I agree with Happy for once.

Picking on two such lowly targets as Darleen and Goldbrick is too easy these days.

Well, I don't see where Happyfeet said that, but it's true nonetheless. There's a running joke where a liberal will point to something awful that Limbaugh, or Beck, or some Republican Congressman said, and a conservative will respond, "Oh yeah? Well, here's a link to a blog commenter on YOUR side saying the same thing!" as if a blog commenter and a Limbaugh or a Bachmann were comparable figures. But Click really is a blog commenter, or rather the next step up the food chain. I'm sure Day by Day has some idiotic take on this too, but what's the point? Let's focus on what real people are saying or doing, not internet people.

[Bob Reed]

For what it's worth we could have had national healthcare in the 70's under a free-market plan concocted by Nixon; if Ted Kennedy hadn't opposed it on purely political grounds. It's strange how the roles reverse over time, and how an idea that Republicans put forth for many years has become, "a Democrat priority for 60 years".

[Adam Roberts]

So, I'm British. My personal political biases aside, it is the case that the National Health Service is one of the very few things that everybody over here, left-wing and right-wing, agrees is A Vitally Good Thing. When the Tories get back into power, as they will in May, they may well roll back the State in many areas: they probably will slash unemployment benefit, privatize pensions, cut local grants; they may privatise the universities and smash the BBC. If they do so, some will oppose them bitterly, and some will applaud them energetically. But I offer his copper-bottomed prediction: they will not privatise the NHS because that would alienate the entire electorate. It's such a palpable good, and it or something like it so palpably works in almost every country in the world outside America that I've watched the enormous kerfuffle on your side of the pond with frank astonishment.

I mean, I understand liberty is one of the big three Foundationally-American things, but those things are ranked, no? Life comes before both liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the point of free-at-point-of-use healthcare is, precisely, to safeguard everybody's life and quality of life.

That said, I still don't understand the ire, here. The barb is that Obama has done something without consent. What has he done? Assuming the cartoonist isn't so shallow as to think 'this bill passed without my individual consent, and that is tantamount to passing without the consent of the entirety of America'; and assuming nobody is confusing 'democratic consent' with 'absolute unanimity', I'm at a loss to see how a man elected President by a democratic majority on the promise of delivering public healthcare, who then passes a healthcare bill through the democratically elected legislature, has done anything non-consensual. There are (as I understand it) opinion polls suggesting that a slim majority oppose the bill, and also polls suggesting that a slim majority support it. Is the point here 'by ignoring the particular opinion poll that coincides with my personal position, Obama is raping American Liberty'? Surely it can't be anything so crass.

I'm a baffled Anglo, I'm afraid.

[Karl Steel]

Fritz, your figure was wrong even before public opinion shifted. A fair majority of Americans opposed the bill prior to passage, but that's because some felt it didn't go far enough, whereas a sizable chunk felt it went too far. Add the 'not far enough' to the 'bill's ok' set and you get a minority of Americans opposed to the bill and a majority who want AT LEAST the bill at this moment making its way through the reconciliation process. Even a dipshit like Wolf Blitzer's figured that one out, finally.

Adam, it's a mystery to me too. I've had various facebook arguments with family who believe that this is the first step towards, essentially, the eschaton. The math is sort of underpants gnomey (famously: '1) steal underpants; 2)? 3) profit'). I suppose it has something to do with liberty, or somesuch,and a mistaken sense of the frontier and self-made men. Of course, we postmodernists have put a stop to such nonsense by our critique of the liberal subject, but some people just haven't received the memo yet.

Arguments against the health care bill are either patently political (and unprincipled), objecting as they do to things Republicans did themselves during the Gingrich years or between 2002-2006, or incorrect ('no one's ever been compelled to buy goods or services to be a legal resident of the US': ask my foreign colleagues, who have to buy health insurance to be legal residents of the US), or just flat out reactionary readings of the Constitution's Commerce Clause. The latter arguments I'm more willing to entertain, but I'd like to see a chart of the effect of returning the commerce clause to its, say, c. 1940 or 1920 interpretation. C

Scott, 'anthropomorphized Statue...of liberty.' hmmm. Now my head's spinning.