Some readers have pointed out that today’s cartoon could be read as transphobic, especially because Hitler presided over the mass murder of trans people. This being the Internet, there is unfortunately no way to take back or edit a cartoon — it’s out there. In this case, if I could, I would do one or the other.
By way of explanation, the cartoon is a “what if?” analogy about Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Many liberal women plan to support HRC for president because she’s a woman, and are willing to overlook her record as a pro-NSA corporatist warmonger free-trader — a right-wing political record — because they’re so (understandably) excited at the prospect of seeing the first woman elected President. But…haven’t we just seen identity politics fail with Obama? America would surely have been better off with a boring old white Protestant male who was progressive than Obama, who started several wars, expanded others, and let the banks off the hook.
Anyway, I thought: what if Hitler were a woman? Some women would vote for her anyway! Then I thought: how could he become a woman? Obviously, that would make her a trans woman. Then the cartoon wrote itself.
Nobody knows for sure, of course, whether trans people would really support a terrible candidate with bad politics simply because he or she was trans. That hasn’t happened yet. But we’ve seen it with blacks and Obama and now we’re seeing it with Clinton. There are other examples. People are tribal. They vote for people simply because they’re like them. So yeah, I bet that’s exactly what would happen.
But that’s not the point. The analogy wasn’t clear to everybody. As the cartoonist, it’s my job to make things clear, and this one doesn’t work that way. So if I could make some changes, or just do a different cartoon, I would.
Captain John Quinn says that ‘enemy forces’ really means “potential threats” like — as Dave Barry says, I am not making this up — “inclement weather, heat, failing levees, etc.”
