Talking Points Illustrated

What makes political cartooning interesting, in my opinion, is the distilling down of an engaging observation or worldview into a visual. A picture being worth a thousand well-spoken words, as it were. That, unfortunately, seems to be becoming something of a rare bird.

The following takes on Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, with the intention of taking the company private, are little more than partisan talking points rendered as illustrations. Neither Gary Varvel nor David Horsey offer anything in the way of insight or nuance; Mr. Musk will either "own the libs," or allow Twitter to descend into a cesspool of hate speech and harassment. 

But the two cartoons do raise an interesting question: Who is interested in these takes, but can't be bothered to either read or listen to someone making the points directly? Between partisan voices in formal media outlets and the world of podcasting and blogs, people are falling over themselves to tell their respective echo chambers the news.

I suppose that maybe a pithy picture is easier to share on Facebook or (perhaps ironically) Twitter. It's visual media as a means of virtue signalling; people sharing cartoons with friends, family and/or coworkers who are already intimately familiar with the sentiments being expressed simply as a means of reminding those acquaintances of where they stand on the topic. I suppose that it's not that much different than what I do here. I like to think that I'm offering some form of useful commentary, but perhaps I'm simply reminding everyone who stops by that I'm a curmudgeon who thinks people should do something more useful with their time.

Because, of course, there is a market for this sort of thing. While I doubt that anyone's striking it rich on this sort of thing, it likely drives enough clicks to generate steady paychecks. And, to be sure, the above are not Messrs. Varvel and Horsey's best work. They're capable of much better material. Sometimes, offering up a bit of partisan filler is a good way to meet a deadline. (And no criticism of that from this quarter. I've posted more than my share of filler material in the name of keeping to the arbitrary cadence I decided on back in February of 2007.)

And a lot of political commentary, verbal, print or visual, is about trafficking in grievances. It's a popular form of entertainment. Like most of the rest of the news these days.