Cartooning Obama

ight off the bat, I want to say that I'm not accusing contemporary political cartoonists of creating racist depictions of Barack Obama. But I do wonder, is that tough to avoid? Political cartoons typically accentuate the subject's features in unflattering ways. They're caricatures. Remember George W. Bush's enlarged ears? The problem is that, with the nation's first African-American President, cartoonists have to avoid a whole history of racist cartooning. They have to simultaneously do what they've always done, which is make fun of the most powerful person in the world, but without referencing a racist visual history.

Consider this racist cartoon:

(Image from the Ferris State University Jim Crow Museum)

Tags:

• Drawing
• Obama
• political cartoons
• President
• Racism

• Nate Kreuter's blog
• 1 comment
• Read more

For those of you interested in cartoons...

Submitted by Jillian Sayre on Fri, 2007-11-30 18:22

Wonkette runs a weekly feature in their "Joke and Dagger Department" in which they get the "Comics Curmudgeon" to look at the week's political cartoons. This week focuses on the (wo)man-beasts slouching towards the White House: