I find it interesting that Jeff posted a quote from Walt Kelly the same day he posted an article of letters to president Bush asking him to make our country something we could be proud of again.
Kelly was very fond of placing seemingly nonsensical quotes in the mouth of his character Churchy le Femme. His other famous one is “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I like that. Kelly was also very politically active and was one of the first non political cartoonists to use real people in his strip as a way of attacking the politicians of his time. Most notably Joseph McCarthy made a number of appearances as a poacher in the swamp that the characters lived in.
The true irony of Kelly’s position is that during the Senate hearings on comics and juvenile delinquincy Kelly testified that comics do have a rather serious effect on children and need some sort of oversight, but comic strips and comic books were different. Comic strips had no need for oversight as they had more editors than a book. Granted, that may come from the fact that Kelly had failed miserably at producing a successful, clean comic book before beginning Pogo Possum.
I find this ironic in that Kelly opened the door for creator’s rights in comics by being the first artist to ever fully own their creation, which allowed Charles Schulz and Bill Waterson to have rights that were ordinarily assigned to the syndicate that published them. And his political satire paved the way for Bloom County and Doonesbury. In fact, Bloom County followed a tradition of Pogo by having characters run for president each election cycle. To be such a proponent for freedom and then say that some other group should not possess that same freedom is truly bizarre to me.
The world truly is full of insurmountable opportunities. So, vote your conscience and write your representatives. Tell them that you love your country and you don’t want the best advice when traveling abroad to be “pretend you’re Canadian” anymore. It’s hard to be loved when you’re a country as big as ours, but there’s no reason that we should be hated as much as we are. Ask them if we still think that we are a city on a hill as our forefathers said we should be, and just what is it the rest of the world is seeing. And, most importantly, don’t trust our media. Read newspapers from across the world, a huge number of them are online and free. If you want to know what the rest of the world thinks of us, ask them, they’ll tell you.
Okay, political commentary is over from me. I’ll be back with more silly nonsense about Pumpkins and Amish dolls later.
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