G.Bush in political snuff cartoon!!!

DEVELOPING STORY!

Appearing in the LA Times:



Appearing about 28 years ago (Pulitzer Prize winning photo from Vietnam war):



This appears to be the first political cartoon in which the Secret Service has taken significant interest.

More coming.

BRAHAHAHHAHAHA
The prisoner in the photo looks like Bush!

The Vietnam execution footage is rather gruesome when you watch the blood vessels at work in the accused spy's head after taking his shot. The executioner owned a restaurant for some time in the deep south, not sure if he still does.

Was this cartoon originally published in the LA Times, or was it copied by them from somewhere else?

No, he just got celebrity status for being filmed executing the spy, and he used to be interviewed from his restaurant about it.

I know which of the four characters I would like to be if I was forced into a situation of choice, but obviously some unfortunates will view this satire as an incitement to assassinate.

Anyway, if guns don't kill people, then cartoons sure don't kill people.

People kill people.

That old argument.

drunk's second post on this topic which enquired whether I knew the executioner in the Vietnam photo just got deleted before my previous post.

I removed it. It was a pointless response for a thread that may evolve into one that discusses the current administration's attempt to squash political satire.

But MA response was appropriate dont you think?

drunk

I understand William's point.

The subject matter here is how some people will view this as political satire gone too far. The characters in the original photo are not so important (but I am still interested in lifestyles of no-so-rich and famous executioners).

You're right William sorry for that inane post.

drunk

Now you could say some more about whether you think the cartoon takes it too far.

I think it is very marginal.

1. Some people won't see the Vietnam context or the satire.

2. Some people would see it as taboo to display a gun pointed at the head of a caricature 'president', no matter how corrupt, useless, or deserving of execution they think the idiot might be.

3. Some people might represent that the cartoon encourages a self-professed martyr or hero to go and complete that job.

4. Some people might snicker and say, "If only".

5. Some people might stop buying the L.A. Times.

6. Some people might start buying the L.A. Times.

Tough choice for an Editor in a country with a free speech backbone. I think the right decision was made, as I take the cartoon as figurative: the "politics" figure is not a person, but it is the fate of this 'president' looming larger each day.

What do you think?

The parallels with the vietnam photograph is a good one i think. Clearly Mr. Bush is not the main driving force behind all the crimes and lies, but Mr. Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, etc... If this whole matter is not investigated and if Bush takes the blame for everything, he will have the role of traitor, and while the real evil-doers have already left the playground, he will be politically executed by the american people.

And you republicans are just furthering this end, by blindly defending the administration, so that the blame rests on bush.

..But are we to defend cartoons and editorials condemning the supposed acts of the Bush administration as freedom of the press only to push for censorship of those that might offer a different view condemning the assertion of political interests ahead of the best interests of the country? If we "assasinate" the credibility of our current administration does it not still hold true that we have undermined our country in the eyes of the world as was with the impeachment of Bill Clinton...or are we to finally admit a double standard which we all are well aware exists? If so, does this not give a weakened appearance thus spuring ruthless feeding frenzies of terror organizations worldwide?

I don't think anyone has suppressed any cartoons that try to make a$$es out of Democrat voters or the current poor representation of that party, or poking fun at any other anti-war position.

It's just that they're not funny.



[Edited on 21-7-2003 by MaskedAvatar]

Thet ares hilarious! Deth ta te illeterate(spelling? hahaha! get the joke?)

Anyways, he a disgrace politically to America, at least Clinton was just a moral and personal embarressment. He was a great president. Economy up, jobs up, unemployment down, crime rate down, all good. Then Bush, a republican gets into power. Remember this, everytime we have a republican, bad economy. In fact a republican was in power for the great depression, while a democrat was president when we got out of it. Have we ever had a good economy with a republican? I can't remember anytime within 100 years.

Besides, at least with dsemocrats we get advancement. Only time we got advancement with a rep was with Lincoln, and that was just to keep the Union together, not really a war on slavery but a war on seperation.

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
I don't think anyone has suppressed any cartoons that try to make a$$es out of Democrat voters or the current poor representation of that party, or poking fun at any other anti-war position.

It's just that they're not funny.



[Edited on 21-7-2003 by MaskedAvatar]

The press has the freedom to make a statement. I could do the same. Would I come under scrutiny for this kind of caracture? Probably. The individual who drew this is a conservative and was trying to make another point-ironically, pro- Bush....in essence saying politcs was killing him...


MA- I saw the original assasination photo when I was a child in the 60s. I can not see, even with your blind hatred, how anyone can find this "funny". The man being shot was accused of being a sympathizer- one day we may be in the same position.

Big T

The execution was also captured on movie camera. That is how I saw it. It is gruesome, not funny at all. I can't see how you infer that I think it is funny?

I hope it doesn't come down to this for Bush sympathisers. You are absolutely right.

Originally posted by Tyriffic

MA- I saw the original assasination photo when I was a child in the 60s. I can not see, even with your blind hatred, how anyone can find this "funny". The man being shot was accused of being a sympathizer- one day we may be in the same position.

A child in the 60's? How old ARE you?

MA, maybe I misunderstood the "...they're just not funny" reference. I also saw the film and it is gruesome.

I apologize if so.

Big T

Gotcha.

I was saying that the recent cartoons against the Dems, portraying them as a$$es/losers and incapable of getting a campaign going, were not funny.

Not saying that executions are funny.

Not even going to admit to a wry smile as I think of George W Bush sweating it out waiting for his time.

From Salt Lake Tribune:

Dyer: U.S. news media should have been tougher before the war

by Gwynne Dyer

Every night when they go to bed, just after they have said their prayers, U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair each tuck a tooth under their pillows. They have been good boys and they won their war fair and square, so surely one of these days the tooth fairy will come and leave some Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in its place. But the days turn into weeks and months, and still the tooth fairy doesn't come.
Meanwhile, the crowd outside is getting ugly -- especially in Britain, where Blair's credibility has been severely damaged by the perception that he distorted what the intelligence services actually said about the alleged threat from Iraq in order to manufacture a case for following the United States into war. Public outrage in the United States is still at an earlier stage and will probably only grow in step with mounting American casualties in occupied Iraq, but some awkward questions are being asked at last.
So one cheer for the fact that (some of) the truth is finally coming out, but where were all these newspapers and politicians in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq? You had to be willfully blind not to know at the time what they are now discovering in such breathless shock -- that the U.S. and British governments were telling brazen lies in order to manipulate their peoples into supporting the war.
Even now, the new doubters confine themselves to specific issues like Blair's claim that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons in 45 minutes and Bush's reference to (forged) documents about alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa. In both cases, the official defense has been to blame the intelligence services for the false information (which is a fine reward for serving up the conclusions that the governments wanted). But never mind the details: The whole story was incredible.
Why would anybody in their right mind have believed that the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, completely dismantled by United Nations arms inspectors in the early '90s could have revived despite sanctions since the U.N. teams were withdrawn in 1998, and have advanced so fast that it already posed an urgent threat to America and Britain by 2003? How did thousands of journalists swallow the story that Iraqi nuclear weapons were a threat so urgent that they justified defying the U.N., aborting the renewed inspection process, and launching a "preventive war"?
Disbelieving such a fantastical story was not an ideological choice; it was just common sense. As for chemical and biological weapons, it turns out that Saddam Hussein was telling the truth when he said Iraq had destroyed them all in 1991-92, but it wouldn't have mattered much if he had been lying. He had no delivery vehicles to get them beyond his immediate neighborhood if they had existed, nor were terrorists going to deliver them for him. Quite apart from the lack of a plausible motive for such an attack, there was no evidence that Saddam's Iraq had ever had any connection with Islamist terrorism. Three months after the war, there still isn't.
And by the way, any journalist with decent contacts in Washington or London would have been aware that for most of the past year people high up in the intelligence world were desperately signalling from behind the curtain that the story being peddled by their political masters was not what the professionals really believed at all. The CIA and MI5 were leaking on an Amazonian scale -- it was practically coming out by listserve -- but the leaks just weren't being followed up by most of the mainstream U.S. and British media. Why not?
The whole cover story to justify the invasion of Iraq was ridiculous, nonsensical, patently untrue -- and occasionally very funny, like the tale of the balsa-wood drones with which Saddam was going to spray us all with poison gas. So the real question, once again: Why did most U.S. and British media, including serious newspapers like the Washington Post and the London Times, treat this farrago of transparent misrepresentations as serious news? In the United States it's mostly down to post-9-11 chill: Most American journalists were reluctant to question their government's truthfulness in a perceived time of crisis. Dissent was widely seen as unpatriotic, and so the most blatant lies went unchallenged. Despite the recent flurry of reporting on the bogus uranium purchase that featured in Bush's eve-of-war speech, this chill still restricts the range and tone of stories in the U.S. media, and will probably continue to do so unless the aftermath in Iraq gets completely out of hand.
In Britain it was always more nuanced. Of the eight daily national papers, only the five whose owners have strong North American ties and large interests there -- the ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch (now a U.S. citizen to get around U.S. media ownership laws), and the ex-Canadian Conrad Black (who traded in his Canadian citizenship for a British title) -- blindly supported the Bush-Blair line. British-owned papers and the BBC were more doubtful from the start, and by now the rest of the media has been forced to follow suit. The story is just too big to ignore.
It's impossible to say if the progressive unravelling of the lies will ultimately ruin Bush or Blair. They are both adroit politicians who know how to turn the public's short attention span to their advantage. But the tooth fairy is clearly not going to show up -- and the truth fairy is on her way at last.