Time for a look at the Sunday Not-Funnies:
Because I have been one of those on this site who tries to encourage people to adhere to "fair use" in reproducing other words (except when I throw up my hands and give up), I'm going to start with a fair use justification: I reproduce full cartoons here for the purpose of criticism, which cannot be done effectively without my doing so.
The "Nancy Pelosi Knew (something) About Waterboarding (eventually)" story, a flambé cooked up in Republican kitchens so that when served to the public it could distract attention from the main course of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld lawlessness, has brought out the worst in editorial cartoonists -- something it is not particularly difficult to do. They may be willing to forgive themselves their stupidity and move on; I think we should take the time to examine it, savor it, memorialize it.
So let's go to these pictures obtained from the Washington Post's Creators Syndicate page. (The link is to the Tom Toles page -- worth bookmarking -- from which you can access the others.)
Non-computer based cartooning is usually -- or at least it used to be when I was editing my college newspaper -- done in ink on a heavy paper cardstock such as Bristol Board. That leads me to introduce the term "Bristolboarding," wherein a cartoonist inverts an intended figure of derision, covers his or her face leaving it unrecognizable, and then dribbles a watered-down understanding of their situation over them until they feel like they're going to die. Unlike waterboarding, the inversion of reality is key to Bristolboarding; when cartoonists actually get what they're writing about, it's not really torture -- it just feels like it. But when they have no idea what they're talking about, you get the likes of this:
Get it? Pelosi is "twisting herself in knots" claiming "not to have known anything." There are only two problems with that: Pelosi is not twisting herself in knots, nor does she claim not to have known anything.
Rather, Mr. Auth (if someone is kind enough to send this to you), she has said that when she was briefed in 2002 as Intelligence Committee Chair she was told that waterboarding was being considered, but not that it had been used. She was not at liberty to release that information lawfully; had she done so, she would have been branded (in your cartoons, among others) as a traitor and a spy and have done fatal harm to her own political career and possibly horrific harm to her party (which was why this was a "win-win" for Republicans.) She was informed about waterboarding by an aide in 2003. She supported Rep. Jane Harman's protest of waterboarding that year. There was nothing more she thought she could do with this classified information to stop the Bush-Cheney Administration from doing what it wished, which if you remember from that time was probably completely accurate. She has kept to this same story, adding details as others' recollections refreshed her memory, all along.
Meanwhile, the actual story here, along with any indication that you understand that this was "classified" information, is that Cheney et al. are using the absurd diversion of "What Nancy Knew" to keep the likes of you from highlighting the new proof of their own lawbreaking. I guess you're lucky, though, in that you have company in missing the point.
Aside from being sexist, Mr. Luckovich Anderson, it is actually sort of clever to conflate Nancy Pelosi with fellow California Carrie Prejean. The joke here is that we pretty much all know that Prejean is lying about being misled. That would indeed cut to the quick of Pelosi's mendacity here -- were it not for the case that she was misled. The CIA and the rest of the Bush Administration did not tell her the truth in 2002, did not allow her or Harman or Jay Rockefeller to tell the truth in 2003, and was in fact devoted to not letting the truth come out. The worst insult I can aim it you for this one is that it puts you almost at the level of squalling child-with-a-pen Glenn McCoy:
McCoy's stock-in-trade is to generate some insane misreading of what Democrats are doing and want to do and then make fun of it as if it has anything to do with reality. Had he drawn The Wizard of Oz, all of the men would have been made of straw. He also has the "good taste" here to trot out the signature photo graph of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib -- the "Hooded man" photo -- which if he had a lick of self-awareness he would realize argued against his viewpoint. (/That/ guy wasn't faking or fooling around -- he, like Pelosi, was being lied to.) But McCoy has Pelosi pretending to shield herself from this knowledge. He would have to be ten times closer to the point before it would be fair to say that he was merely missing it.
Pat Oliphant, always ready to dredge up a reference that tarnishes either or both Clintons, is at least a little more nuanced: his argument is that Pelosi is being Jesuitical and lawyerly, parsing her words carefully to show that while she was holding the huge Doobie of Torture in her hand, she was not partaking of it. All right, Mr. Oliphant, I'll take you up on your metaphor. Was she holding the Spliff of Torture, or was she, literally, once in the room where it was being passed around -- described as oregano rather than dope -- and threatened with dire retaliation if she told the story? What do you think she could actually have done, Mr. Oliphant? You'd be among the first to slam her for breaching national security -- "Those Democrats Can't Be Trusted, haw haw!" -- had she done anything different. So why is Cheney getting a pass? Was it too hard to draw something about the McClatchy revelations and Wilkerson testimony? Couldn't come up with a Clinton-bashing angle?
Even one of the better cartoonists, Ben Sargent, hasn't been able to resist getting into the game, although he based his effort on misunderstanding a different aspect of the situation. He shows doughty Democrats preparing to investigate the situation and Pelosi running screaming for the exits. That would really shed some comic light on the situation -- except that Pelosi is saying to go ahead with Truth Commissions. The blackmailers already released the incriminating information they had about her, and -- despite the attempts of you and others to make it so -- it simply isn't that incriminating. Many of us would have liked Pelosi had been able to do more to oppose an Administration bent on torture because they thought that an America that was willing to torture was a stronger America. I would also like it if she had laser beam eyes that could have intimidated the Administration more. But, alas, she and her situation were what they were. At least you can avoid lying about whether she wants investigations -- which can lead to prosecutions -- to go forward. The problem with your cartoon is with its careful phrasing: Democrats don't intend to "nail to the wall" everyone who "knew about torture early on"; we want to go after the people who ordered it, facilitated it, legitatized it, committed it, and covered it up. Having been given some information -- or, in this case, partially given some partial information followed later by more information, all that one had sworn to keep secret -- doesn't make one a serious target. We have plenty of targets -- if you ever want to draw about them.
At least one prominent cartoonist in their syndicate has been absent from the Bristolboarding festival: the great Tom Toles. Some of you won't like today's cartoon, but I expect even you will have to admit that it's wicked clever and raises exactly the issues that are of contemporary concern:
Agree or disagree with him, at least Toles is talking about an actual issue of importance here, weighing in on the people who actually have something to say about what will happen. Sadly, among cartoonists this past week, that makes him almost unique. That, folks, is how it's done.