The 113th Congress will have 20 female Senators, the most in U.S. history. At this rate, we’ll have 50 by the year 2366. And this is progress?
At This Rate
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Thank you for once again illustrating one of the biggest probelms with the left; their constant confusal of “progress at a rate that is not fast enough for me” with “no progress”.
Yes, it’s progress. Period. Point blank. End of story.
And you stand zero chance of increasing the rate of said progress until you at a minimum, acknowlegde that progress is being made.
Whimsical employs, word-for-word, the claim of white, so-called “liberals” against the civil rights movement. MLK destroys this argument in his missive Letter from a Birmingham jail: white people complained that blacks wanted justice “too soon.” Of course, since whites were causing egregious harm to blacks, this argument was, effectively, the claim that whites wanted to enjoy injustice for longer, effectively making it a white supremacists argument. It should shock no one that Whimsical is a mouthpiece for rightwing tripe such as this, nor that he is eager to apply it even in noncontroversial, tangental edge cases, such as the above cartoon.
As usual, sekhmet goes off on an irrelevant tangent when he has no answer to the point that is ACTUALLY being made. This should come as a surprise to no one.
where does he get the year 2366 from? in 2013, we will have three more female senators than in 2011. If we add 3 more every two years, in 52 years we will have 100 female US senators!
as an afterthought…why do we need 50 female senators? it is a representative government and most families are headed by a male. voting for a male senator is just a reflection of what we are accustomed to. the complete disintegration of the family unit has NOT been good for society. if we do ever have 50 female senators would that just be a reflection about how screwed up the USA has become?
At a glance, I’m assuming Ted arrived on 2366 by doing a two-point linear extrapolation using 1776 and 2012 as his two data points. He did this not because he believed it was a remotely accurate prediction, but because it was the only way to make his absurd point.
“All non-instantaneous progress is not progress at all, so start setting things on fire and murdering people. It is the only way, you gutless cowards.”
Whimsical: you are a moron. Please stop existing, or at least please stop existing online. You are confusaled to the point where it is not correctable. While you are not existing, please look into what Sekhmet referred to, MLK Junior’s statement about “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Ted rightly points out that the appalling lack of women in our congress is an important sign of how far we need to go, and now, not later.
gavbrown
So, the fact that there is further to go (which is not in question) negates whatever progress has been made so far? And you called ME a moron.
Progress is never immediate, but progress has been made. Irrelevant tripe about the civil rights movement won’t change that.
All not recognizing the progress that has been made will do is inhibit further progress.
SteveB
Yup, that’s the far left in a nutshell alright. And they wonder my little to no progress is being made on the goals they claim to want.
Great cartoon. Also, laughed out loud reading the LA times cartoon about gay marriage in the courts. Their pathetic married sex life is too funny. Would have commented there, but for some reason that entry is locked in mobile-theme, and I can’t comment in mobile theme. (Can I?)
Here’s an idea for the video blog: book reviews! For instance, (putting self on report), I haven’t read “People’s History of the US”, and I wonder what you thought about it.
@Aaron, Cool idea on book reviews, especially since so many newspapers have fired their book critics.
Tangent? WTF?
You pull some bizarro bullshit standard of “progress” out of your ass and then invent the word “confusal” and accuse others of going on a tangent?
This is the problem with rightwingers. Literally, everything they do they project onto others. Everything. If whims could keep his spite-obsessed trolling on one subject, he’d have nothing to say here.
Why the hell would anyone feel threatened by this cartoon? It’s a mild point at best — but it’s drawn into some ridiculous counterpoint that claims that Rall is saying that no progress at all can be made on any issue whatsoever. This bullshit only flies because rightwing trolls compulsively have to attack anything that doesn’t conform. Anything at all.
Which is useful. Since the attacks have no real substance, the form of the attack is clear. Note that whim has no defense of his methods or even, really, his point: he can’t isolate himself from authoritarian cant because that’s all he has.
“At a glance, I’m assuming Ted arrived on 2366 by doing a two-point linear extrapolation using 1776 and 2012 as his two data points.”
Why the fuck do people come onto a satirists blog then complain about satire? Do you people go to the opera and complain about all the shouting? Are you seriously this worthless in person?
Typical far left garbage from sek- he’s so desperate to deny that any progress has been made he goes on a defelction of truly epic irrelevancy.
Yes or no: has progress been made?
The far left is so ingraned in their ridiculous hatred of Obama and the Democrats that they will go to epic and amusing lengths to deny the obvious- which is the point that I was making.
Note the straw man: Sek cant respond to the point I was making without revealing how his Obama and Democrat hatred blinds him to reality so he brings up irrelevancies and then blames me for not responding to things that have no relation to the argument being made. Sad, really.
I’d be more concerned about the views of these Senators – and their connexions to the corporations that run the country – than about their gender or sexual proclivities. It is questionable if replacing the current incumbents with people like, say, Michele Marie Backman or Sarah Louise Palin, would represent a significant improvement. Still, there’s no question that women are underrepresented in the US Senate, as are non-lawyers. There’s certainly room for improvement – how about dumping «first past the post» and introducing a system of proportional representation instead ? That would certainly lead to significant change long before 2366….
Henri