Where's the swastika on the plane?

I mean, Dubya isn't just like the terrorists, shoot, he's just like HITLER!

dubya is just... a megomaniacal dictator bent on destroying the world! thats why its going to ignore the important and just voices of syria, cameroon, angola, guinea and, not to mention that beacon of wisdom, kofi annan, and barge into iraq to forcibly remove a president who was "actually elected" with a 100% vote, no less!

the nerve!

if only we all waited for iraq and iran to get the rotating leadership of the UN disarmament committee, then saddam could supervise his disarmament himself! who else would be better qualified?

-------------------------

more seriously, that cartoon is a disgusting redefinition of moral bankruptcy.

Isn't Slate bankrupt yet?

That cartoon mocking the memory of the people who died on 9/11 just to get in a little cheap shot at Bush. Nobody with any class would draw a cartoon like that and it's despicable for Slate to run it...

Trevor,

You're thinking of Salon, I think. Who isn't dead, either.

I really don't know what to say here. Yes, it's insulting and disrespectful but it's also so uncreative and predictable that I didn't get much of a rise out of it.

Conrad has combined the worst qualities of illustration into a singularity of failure. Poor taste coupled with no emotional spark. Not even Rall has published anything this bad.

Yes, it's Salon which is on deathwatch (has been for quite a while). Slate has the Father of All Sugardaddies - Microsoft. So, it's not going anywhere.

Really though, words fail. "Morally bankrupt" doesn't quite do it. "Lunatic" neither. Just shake your head.

So... this means that Bush took Crown Prince Abdullah for a trip on Air Force One and his Saudi entourage whipped out their boxcutters and took over the cockpit?

Though it deserves a worse adjective, my vast vocabulary fails me at the moment.

So I'll have to settle on repugnant.

As in the author of that travesty is.

Fucking.

Repugnant.

He's joined the Ted Rall brigade...how incredibly *lucky* the Loony-Left is to have two merde-pilers to illustrate their scheisse.

To be fair to Slate, this wasn't a cartoon commissioned by, or singled out for excellence by, Slate.

Rather, it's part of Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index, which is simply a grab bag of a lot of the major editorial cartoons for the day. I wouldn't be surprised if the index itself is automatically generated by feeds from the major syndicates.

The image is repugnant, but I don't think Slate was purposefully trying to hype it. (In fact, as of the point of this posting, the image was off-line.)

The image is back - must have been a temporary site glitch.

Wait a minute! Isn't this cartoon really saying that Bush is a freedom fighter and the UN has it coming?

The cartoonist's site is here:

http://www.conradprojects.com/

Please be sure to look at the statues he has made.

The cartoon, and many other stupid ones, can be found here:

http://www.conradprojects.com/Cartoons/Contoon1.htm

Oh, and at the bottom of the page at that first URL is a link so you can e-mail the guy. If you so choose.

I will email a comment to Mr Conrad. Does anyone know his syndicator? I would like to give them an earful as well.

He's not a Slate cartoonist. From the link above:
Paul Conrad, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Slate's cartoons are from worldwide artists, and I've seen some even more disgusting than that one.

What we at the UN need to ask ourselves is, "Why does W hate us? What is the root cause?"

Tiny minds think alike:
The editorial cartoon in todays Independent (can't find it online, saw in the paper edition) has President Bush as Dumbo-style elephant, PM Blair (as a poodle) on his back, about to fly into the UN building.
Same cartoonist as did the infamous 'Sharon eating babies', IIRC.

What a twit.

Even setting aside the thoughtlessly obnoxious disrespect to the memory of the victims of 9-11, it's plain to anybody even vaguely rational that it's Bush and Blair who are trying to uphold the authority of the UN (lost cause though it may be), and Chirac and the other weasels who are demolishing it.

Denise and "Jaq" have it right. I have no doubt that Conrad is in the "We brought it on ourselves, and we have to understand the legitimate reasons why they hate us" school of thought regarding 9/11. So quite clearly, Bush has legitimate reasons to destroy the UN, which the UN must strive to understand.

Yesterday I laughed so hard I cried at a post...now I am puking so hard I am crying. I think Conrad needs to be thrown into a ring with me, the internation monkey knife fighting champion.

Conrad has his moments (I've always liked his cartoons with baseball themes, and after KAL 007 was shot down by the Soviets his reaction portrayed a hand with a hammer in it extending its middle finger), but mostly he's just a nasty old man.

Shouldn't there be an Air France/Lufthansa/Iraqi Airways flight following up as the second plane? The symbolism would certainly be more palatable.

The imagery is disgusting. However, I have no problems with the UN dropping into dust.

No, no, no.

France, Iraq, etc., want peace. UN wants peace. Ergo, they are supporting UN.

US and UK want war. Ergo, they oppose the UN.

Now, that ignores some minor things like Iraqi intransigence, UNSC 1441, clear language, French statement that "under no circumstances" would they allow use of force, etc.

But that's details, details.

Paul Conrad was a slimebag when Ted Rall was still filling his diapers. Hmmm, bad metaphor since Rall is still filling his diapers ... well, you know what I mean.

If you go back in my archives, you can find a posting where I am disgusted by an Ed Stein cartoon almost as bad.

Dean and Brian, thanks for the correction. I suppose it was just wishful thinking that got me to mix up the two.

I think a "C" on the side of the plane would be much more appropriate in this case.

I instinctively reached for my pistol when I saw that. Then, I
put it down.

That's evil. Exploits murdered people. Draws a moral equivalence between taking a reasonable moral stand, on the one hand, and the worst terrorist act in history, on the other. If the cartoonist would draw this, I'm sure he'd do other terrible things to secure UN power.

I did not understand this cartoon until I read Denise's and Jaq's comments. Well said!
This cartoon should captioned with such an explanatory note and be circulated. I'm sure the cartoonist wouldn't mind as it is standard practice from his part of the world to turn "re-interpret" current events.

"to turn "re-interpret" current events."
Ooops. Damn spell-checker/brain!

Conrad, the second-rate Herblock, has descended from being merely ugly and mediocre to being despicable. I notice Conrad's getting pretty lazy in his senility - note the clever trick of simply reproducing Picasso's "Guernica", putting a caption on it and sending it out as a editorial cartoon. They paid him money for that?

It amazes me that somebody couold go on looking in the mirror at themselves after producing something like that. Then again, the likes of Conrad probably consider theoretical damage to the prestige of the United Nations to be far more of a tragedy than the actual destruction of American cities and the loss of human lives. What a creepy old creep he must be, to be sure.

(And his statues suck. Big time.)

At first,seeing this, i was angry. Im a financial reporter in NYC and I knew about 25 people who died on 9-11, and was personally close to several others.

So I said, rather under my breath, that Mr. Conrad, was "quite a cunt."

Then, Several seconds later, i had another, wholly distinct, emotion. A semi-detached sadness. This guy represents a strain of political thought that has fairly broad support here. This is the best this guy can do--and by extension--a whole political view.

Sad, sort of.

AHHHHH!

Apparently this nut-case won a Pulitzer.

Three...Two...One
*head explodes*

It takes quite a few steps before you can blame Slate for this.

First, Conrad ought to be blamed. He drew superb cartoons in the seventies and eighties. He is past his prime and obviously out of ideas.

Then comes the LA Times, which first ran the cartoon. The Times has been a jumble of bad choices lately. This is the latest.

Next comes Cagle, who saw the cartoon, didn't find it offensive and chose to put it in his index. It was a passive choice. Removing it would have been the active choice, and the right one.

Finally, we get Slate, where the editors, who trust Cagle, haven't stumbled upon the image and reacted to it the way we see here. On the weekend, it's hardly dropping the ball. Judging Slate simply because they let this cartoon get by is Malibu sheriff reactionary.

Conrad appeared for years in the L.A. Times - the only surprise is that he didn't use his "pat" world view - Blame Nixon