The wingnuts cartoonist Tom Tomorrow has skewered for years are busy affixing turbans to their lawn jockeys. Yea, verily, the end of the Bush years approacheth. Meanwhile, Tomorrow's This Modern World cartoon remains one of the few artistic endeavors that perfectly captures the cocktail of disgust, frustration, anger and bitter amusement that's been the necessary tipple for many of us who've been along for the crazy ride of the Bush years. I feel much worse and much better once I've read it—it reinforces that reason and reality do still exist, but it also reveals that Bush conservatives have long been busy undermining reason to accomplish heaven knows what.
Now, of course, in the wake of Obama's victory, the dyspeptic laughter This Modern World prompts has become something more in the neighborhood of a relieved guffaw, with a garlicky hint of revenge. How much sweeter, then, to peruse the pages of Tomorrows past?
Tom Tomorrow (the handle de plume of Dan Perkins) just published a collection of his cartoons, The Future's So Bright, I Can't Bear to Look, dating back to 2005. That year was in some ways a turning point in the Bush era—even the numbest among us were noticing that maybe the mission wasn't really so accomplished, or even accomplish-able, as our fearless, feckless leader would have us believe. This collection is, in some ways, a handy group of prompts for those who wish to replace the memory of living through frustrating political battles past with a handy new sense of rightness, not to mention a confirmation that reality still calls for up to be up, down to be down. Flipping through the pages brings up any number of dimly remembered greatest hits: complaints that Ann Coulter's legs were Photoshopped into grotesquery by Time magazine; Dick Cheney's shooting victim holding a press conference to apologize; the revelation that millions of White House emails were "accidentally" erased. It goes on and on.
Tomorrow's cartoons are perfectly pitched to address the astounding madness of conservatives in the era of Bush, when practically any argument would do, no matter its audacity or easily demonstrable falseness. Well-coiffed and suited conservatives blather, and stiff clip-art-style characters ponder with great seriousness the pseudo-logic of the Republican noise machine. Characters who go up against these stiffs find (often literal) circles of argument and absurdist versions of reality sprouting all around them. It's hard to precisely describe his aesthetic, but its effect is clear: he conjures the largely irony-free air of decades past, undercutting it with wickedly placed jabs at political con men and the uninformed who line up to buy their blather.
Tomorrow is unapologetically dedicated to bringing hypocrisy into stark relief; This Modern World is the ultimate enema for blowing all that pent-up bitterness right out of your head. There's no doubt he will continue his righteous skewering, and that the wingnut choir has merely retreated to learn new tunes. And if Obama strays into hype or misdirection, it seems likely that Tomorrow will sharpen his wit to point out that madness, too.
Still—pausing for a while to peruse these pages is a refreshing fortifier for the battles that still lie ahead for the forces of reality. Thank heavens Tomorrow's here.
