Let's analyze the New Yorker's cartoon of the day.

                           “I drink up your country!”

I never saw the movie — meant to, just didn't — but I realize this plays on something in "There Will Be Blood." Know Your Meme gets me the details: 

I Drink Your Milkshake is a catchphrase originating from There Will Be Blood.... It tells the story of a silver-miner-turned-oil-man on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the film, the phrase was intentionally used as a metaphor: sucking milkshake from someone else to demonstrate not only oil drainage from prized land, but the harsh nature of how cruelty often trumps meekness. In its original context, the scene is meant to evoke contempt for the character of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) and pity for his adopted son H.W. (Russel Harvard).

Interesting happenstance, the appearance of the verb "trumps."

The video at Know Your Memes is not available, but I've found it. Here:



Okay. I had never seen that before. Very intense. I get it. Here's the text (which you won't fully appreciate without hearing the performance):

That land has been had. Nothing you can do about it. It's gone. It's had... You lose.... Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy. Drained dry. I'm so sorry. Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? Watch it. Now, my straw reaches acroooooooss the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I... drink... your... milkshake!

Back to the cartoon. Is the other man — the little man with his back to us — supposed to be Putin? I assumed so. It was the cartoon of the day when Trump first encountered Putin in the flesh. But the setting is the Oval Office, and that's not where Putin and Trump met. And I don't think a world leader in the Oval Office is ever seated on the other side of the President's desk. But maybe the cartoonist resorted to the simplest indication that this is the Oval Office. And yet, come on, cartoonist (Farley Katz), you don't even have Trump's hair swooping in the right direction.

And why the distracting extra-long tie? I know it's stock humor about Trump — he wears his ties very long. We can veer into phallic symbology. Or are we supposed to focus on the tie? Is it the equivalent of the straw that reaches across the room? Are we to picture the drinking of Putin's (or whoever's) country as accomplished with the tie?

I like the idea of Daniel Day-Lewis playing Trump. He played Abraham Lincoln in a movie — another movie I haven't seen. Maybe there's some reference to that movie that might make the cartoon click into place for me. But I'm a little confused. I do think the little guy in the movie looks a bit Putinish, and it's funny to think of Trump towering over him, yelling at him, humiliating him, and reducing him to a quivering mass of jelly. But that doesn't seem anti-Trump enough for New Yorker cartoon-of-the-day purposes. So... maybe back to the tie. It's long but limp....

IN THE COMMENTS: I'm prodded to see the little man in the chair as Obama. David Smith points to "the big ears... the half-tone shading on the face." Laslo Spatula observes the "Vaguely tight, smooth afro (no hair lines drawn to indicate wavy, straight, etc; Trump has line detail in his hair). Big ears. Skin tone darker than Trump."

I realize this idea did cross my mind, but I was so stuck on Putin when it was cartoon of the day on that day. To see the other man as Obama answers my problem of a world leader seated on the other side of the President's desk. And now I notice the door behind "Trump." When the President is seated at his desk in the Oval Office, there are windows behind him. The Trump character there is pre-presidency Trump, looming over President Obama and threatening him.

But why would he say "I drink up your country"? The United States is Trump's country too! In The New  Yorker's view, perhaps, there are 2 Americas. Red America and Blue America, like 2 milkshakes, and Blue America might have been happy with its own milkshake, ignoring Red America over there. But Red America is cruel and greedy. It will drink up Blue America.

AND: Yet it doesn't make sense — or it makes only horrible sense — for Americans to picture political power in terms of draining the country, with the Democratic Party having its share and the Republican Party the other share. It might make sense — but I don't think this would be The New Yorker's sense — for Trump to be talking about getting votes that Democrats think belong to them. A politician is doing a fine job if he wins votes that have traditionally gone to the opposing party. But when people cast votes, they aren't drained. They've simply participated in the most recent election and they fully retain their vote, to be cast in the next election. I guess there might be some kind of insinuation that these voters, duped into voting for Trump, will have their interests drained... or maybe that a Trump presidency will destroy democracy and their vote really will be lost.

Have I thought about this more than The New Yorker did? Maybe it simply hit the editors as surreal and bizarre, and — because of a solid assumption of Trump hate — it seemed to just work.

ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: I think pacwest sums up the New Yorker's thinking:

That is Obama behind the desk in the oval office. He created an America greater than any other. The evil fat monster Donald Trump has just been elected and is going to suck all the juices out of his divine creation. Bwaa ha ha! The horror!