January 5, 2009

"Rightbloggers: Blago, Richardson Prove Obama Corrupt, Dems Racist."

I always enjoy Roy Edroso's pithy, pissy roundup of opinion in the "Right-Wing Blogosphere" in The Village Voice — especially when he includes excellent quotes from me.

Here's my post on his first one, which had Tom Tomorrow caricatures of all of us on what I assumed was some kind of Rightblogger A-List. There's a Tom Tomorrow caricature on today's column, but it's not of anyone from that A-List. Who the hell is that guy supposed to be? Tomorrow has a spiffy graphic style, but he's not the best at capturing a likeness — kind of a liability for a caricaturist. Is that supposed to be the left-winger's vision of the generic right-winger — a balding white guy in a desert-camouflage T-shirt? Or is that some actual guy I should recognize from Tomorrow's feeble visual cues?

24 comments:

KCFleming said...

"Tomorrow has a spiffy graphic style"

Really? Ugh.
I liked him for about a year when he first arose, but he can't draw, and hasn't bothered to learn since he started. He traces scanned photos, badly. Nothing has evolved in years; the 1990s are indistinguishable from now.

Further, his humor remains mired in snarky political jabs best left to nerdy college seniors penning for minor alt weeklies, where the badly-drawn panels appear next to ads for sex shops, stickin' it to the man, man.

His style looks like woodcuts made from potato halves.

Mr. Bingley said...

The Morons will be rioting in the streets! Thou shalt not post likenesses of Ace!

Meade said...

from twitter: annalthouse My new thing on the blog will be being super-friendly to my arch-antagonists

Oh man, that will really truly be neutrally cruel... totally fuck them up. If it weren't first thing monday morning, I would pop a bowl of popcorn and get myself comfortable.

Peter Hoh said...

I'm pretty sure that character is one of Tom Tomorrow's regulars.

Bart DePalma said...

Has Mr. Edroso been hiding under a rock the past two years? Blago and now Richardson are hardly the first slimy characters around Obama disclosed in the very bipartisan guilt by association game.

Who could forget the ranting Rev Wright and Father Pfleger, the terrorists Ayers and Dohrn, terrorist propagandist Khalidi and then the sweetheart home deal Obama received from his felon fundraiser, Tony Rezko.

This may be guilt by association, but sooner or later all those associations reach a critical mass that lead folks to start asking questions.

Obama learned his political craft and rose to power in the Chicago political cesspool. It is possible that Obama emerged from that cesspool to the DC cesspool without engaging in the slime, but the odds are against it.

Stay tuned for the next episode.

Bissage said...

I really don’t know all that much about this Tom Tomorrow character. Pogo’s right about the quality of his draftsmanship and ideas, of course, but I’m not in the mood to argue with success. Dude seems to get steady work.

That said, I miss the old days when I used to watch him on the Captain Kangaroo show. I admired him because I thought it would be super-nifty to live in a treehouse and change myself into different shapes with my magic thinking cap.

Oh well, that was then.

Today, all I’ve got left are fond memories and a puppy named Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog.

That’ll have to do.

kjbe said...

Wasn't that Tom Terrific, Bissage?

Anonymous said...

Ah, but Bart, Harry Truman emerged from the cesspool of the Kansas City Pendergast machine. Truman even went to Tom Pendergast's funeral when Truman was VP, scandalizing some, but at that point no one questioned Truman's personal integrity.

My hope is Obama will turn out to be another Truman. My fear is that he will turn out to be an infinitely smoother and more intelligent version of Harding or Spiro Agnew.

Ann Althouse said...

"He traces scanned photos, badly."

The badness of the faces is part of the overall style, which has a crude comics look that I think is basically successful. He's gotten paid for doing it for an awfully long time, though. He's milking it.

Anonymous said...

As a result of using Twitter, I have learned to be more pithy:

Tom Tomorrow's drawings suck.

Even shorter version:

They're embarrassing.

garage mahal said...

Jonah Goldberg in the Headshot Guide is friggin hilarious.

Anonymous said...

Ann - did you really mean "awfully long time," or simply "very long time"?

Either way, shouldn't he change his name to "Tom Yesterday"?

Anonymous said...

Ack -

Sorry about using the dreaded "Ann." Please mentally replace with "Prof. A."

Meade said...

What are you talking about, Bissage? Do we not still have Mr. Green Jeans?

KCFleming said...

"He's gotten paid for doing it for an awfully long time, though. He's milking it."

Agreed. Family Circus, Doonesbury, and Blondie are all still being made fresh daily.

All are doing their same schtick now, some for decades. All suck, more or less. They are the Sears of newspaper comics.

No one seems to read them much, but they never go away.

Pastafarian said...

"Is that supposed to be the left-winger's vision of the generic right-winger...?"

No, I think that my commenting avatar is the left-winger's vision of the generic right-winger.

Jason (the commenter) said...

"His style looks like woodcuts made from potato halves."

Yes, but the cartoony caricatures match the style of the article: take out the nuances so you can create a narrative, which in turn includes straw man arguments you can disprove. You don't want details for stuff like this.

John Salmon said...

Al Hirschfeld, he ain't.

Trooper York said...

Tom might be terrific but he can never be wonderful. That honorific is reserved for only one.

Ann Althouse said...

I remember Tom Terrific, the cartoon character... as much as I remember Crusader Rabbit and Rags the Tiger.

And what's wrong with me, but I find that green jeans guy attractive.

Bruce Hayden said...

Overall the rightblogger consensus is that the Obama almost-Administration is hopelessly corrupt, and Obama's dismissal of a possibly tainted official before he even took office proves it. One can only imagine what they would have made of the removal of sitting cabinet member Simon Cameron by that other compromised Illinois politician, Abraham Lincoln.

Of course it is hopelessly corrupt - not because Obama is, but rather, because his stable of candidates is so corrupt.

Remember, this is the party of big city machine politics and life time politicians. Overall, the Democrats at the top either seem to be corrupt or already very rich, with some overlap, like Sen. Feinstein, who was already rich, but still managed to divert billions of Defense money to her husband's companies, and some of the newer faces who haven't served very long. Power corrupts, etc.

It shall be interesting to see how well the "Culture of Corruption" mantra works against the Republicans, with the Democrats running the two elected branches of government. So far, there is more smell in the expected Obama Administration than there was in 8 years of GWB.

Meade said...

"And what's wrong with me, but I find that green jeans guy attractive."

You are kidding, right?

You're not?!?!?!?!?!

Well, my dear Althouse, there is not a thing wrong with you in my humble opinion as that just happens to be my latest publicity photo.

So you will go out with me after all? OH, HAPPY NEW YEAR INDEED!!!111!!!

Excuse me. My new iPhone is chiming.

Meade said...

Miami calling...

OhioAnne said...

On a site I frequent, there was a poster who loved to post the Tom Tommorrow episodes in response to nearly any argument.

Generally, the episodes would take a certain point that they believed to be right wing philosophy and then claim to rebut it in an "aha" ending. The problem was the author rarely displayed he understood the position he was claiming to highlight (and sometimes simply lied about it) and his rebuttal usually consisted of "because I said so".

Since "because I said so" never struck me as an intelligent point to use in a debate, I remained unimpressed.