CSotD: Baby on Board
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Dutch cartoonist Bart Van Leeuwen sets the tone with this portrait of the G-20 leaders — or, as that out-of-focus backdrop says, the "G19.25" — a more devastating comment because of his semi-realistic style.
He's certainly not the first nor only cartoonist to portray Trump as a petulant, willful baby, but this could not be a harsher contrast with the other world leaders, whom he does not characterize. That is, a rogue's gallery of leaders, each with their faults visually satirized, would be a comment on how fallible leaders in general are.
This is specific, and humiliating. When Putin and Erdogan are simply depicted as they are, it's a tacit acceptance that whatever evil they may harbor, whatever bad they may do, is purposeful and planned, while the man-baby simply screws things up because he's incapable of doing them right.
Looking through the newsroom at Cartoon Movement, this worldwide motif repeats: Though other world leaders are harshly criticized, it is only ours who is repeatedly depicted as an infant, as in this commentary by Belgian cartoonist Luc Descheemaeker on Trump's childishly temperamental, unscientific withdrawal from the Paris agreement.
Meanwhile Jeremy Banx, from the UK, offered this before the G-20, eloquently predicting the mood of the gathering.
Granted, certain memes become universal. Once it was discovered that Trump would throw a tantrum over jokes about his small hands, cartoonists vied to see who could draw them the smallest. Who knows if they're smaller than average? Not the point. The point is the tantrum.
The tantrum is not only there for all to see, but it's what's relevant, not the hands.
The small-hands thing may be universal, but it's rarely the point of a cartoon. Like the shady jowls on Richard Nixon or the huge toothy grin of Jimmy Carter or the elephantine ears of LBJ, it's an indicator, almost a side joke like Al Herschfeld hiding his daughter's name in each caricature.
The hands aren't small … or at least not shown as such … in this piece by Archadio Esquival of Costa Rica, the point being not simply that Trump came into the G-20 with a belligerent attitude but that he has the power to impose his will on other countries if he doesn't choose to cooperate.
The critical difference between our man-baby and the one running North Korea is that, at least until his ICBMs develop a little further, that man-baby can be sidelined and ignored.
The US has economic and military power that has to be respected even if its man-baby is not.
There are several cartoonists in the Middle East who find the combination of Trump, weapons and economics to be problematic, as seen in this piece by Jordanian Osama Hajjaj.
It may be that indiscriminate arms trade is something of a constant, but the open boasting about good business dealings in so-doing is an element of bare-faced blatancy new with this administration.
It's hard to imagine either President Obama or President Cheney coming out of an Arab summit so obviously taking opposite sides on the same question and denigrating one of our key allies in the region. While arming it. And its opponents.
As for the meeting with Putin, I'm inclined to give it a little time to settle, but I've already got an embarrassment of riches to choose from on the topic, many of them done in anticipation of the meeting rather than in response to it.
Given that the specifics are still a bit uncertain — and that I don't want to turn this into a aggregator site — Matt Davies gets the nod for a cartoon that only anticipates, rather than predicting.
Incidentally: It's probably worth remembering 2013, when Obama met privately with Putin at the G20 without their discussion even being on the schedule, much less on the record, after which, with no announcements of what they discussed and no admission that any substantive talks had happened at all, Russia "coincidentally" stepped back from its support of chemical weapon use in Syria.
However the whole red-line thing worked out thereafter, it was a good moment that, at the time, suggested a solution might be forthcoming.
My memory suggests, however, that conservative support for cozying up to, and trusting, Putin at G20s seems to be a more recent development.
In any case, there has been enough information coming out of the hot tub to have spawned the …
Juxtaposition of the Day
The fox not only denies having eaten the chickens but offers to help guard the henhouse, and Farmer Trump apparently agrees to the bargain.
Or doesn't.
At 7:50Or perhaps 13 hours later.It looks, for now, that our best hope is in the scenario Signe Wilkinson provides and that Angela Merkel seems prepared to carry forward.
(Yes, bad history. But great music.)
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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