Oops Again
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, then a short essay, then the past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics written and drawn by my partner, Wayno whose weekly blog post I recommend highly.
Here’s the ANSWER KEY to this week’s Secret Symbols in the Sunday comic, above.——————————————————
Okay, so in several recent posts, I’ve been saying I had only converted three of my goofy little poems into cartoons, but here is another. As I’ve said many times, my poor math skills are why I’m a cartoonist and not a rocket scientist. That, and my low I.Q.
When my kids were young, we had a little blue and green pet lizard that one of my daughters named Eduardo Lizardo. Once a day, I would catch some flies with a butterfly net and put them into his terrarium. He’d race around at lightning speed and snag them out of the air with his slingshot tongue. It was fascinating and entertaining to watch but occasionally I’d get a little disgusted watching him chomp down on flies. Long story short, this is one of the very few cartoons I’ve published that was written from personal experience.
An interesting update on last week’s Sunday cartoon with the Dr. Seuss-style poem: I mentioned in my post that Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss’s real name) had been criticized because some of his illustrations contained “racially insensitive images or stereotypes.” Since I did not intend to comment on the controversy itself, I didn’t research it, I just read a few headlines.
A couple of days after my post, I got an email from a Japanese American who wanted to inform me that Geisel was an unrepentant racist and he provided some background and images that proved his point beyond a shadow of a doubt. I don’t want those images on my blog so I’ll let you search for them yourself. But it wasn’t just his use of stereotypical images of non-whites that caused the controversy; there was more. Here are a couple of incomplete quotes from the email I received:
“At the beginning of the Second World War, his was a leading voice advocating the wrongful incarceration of the entire Japanese American population along the West Coast of the United States. He falsely accused our community of treason, sabotage, and worse…”
“…The result was that more than 110,000 of MY people, mostly US citizens, were ripped from their homes, their jobs, and their businesses and incarcerated in concentration camps located in desolate parts of our country. Please note Geisel personally profited from this action. My Dad lost his farm and his home. My Mom’s family lost their business. Yet no Japanese American was ever accused of any act of treason or sabotage. Indeed, the segregated all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team emerged from the war as the most highly decorated combat unit of its size in the history of the United States military. My Dad was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his service with the US Army Military Intelligence Service. In the decades that followed Geisel never acknowledged the wrongfulness of his actions, apologized to any of the communities he denigrated, nor did he make any effort whatsoever to ameliorate any of the harm he profited from causing.”
I enjoy this kind of respectful feedback from readers and appreciate being educated. I knew that Japanese Americans were unfairly treated (to put it mildly!) by the American government during the war but I had not known the extent of Geisel’s involvement. My father was a child during WWII and because his parents were Italian-Americans, they feared they might be next since Italy sided with the Nazis. Though a handful of Italian- and German-Americans were detained as enemies of the state, it was nothing like the wholesale persecution of Japanese Americans. Gee, could they have been spared because they were white?
Finally, as I exchanged emails with this reader, I glanced at his name and thought it was very familiar. A quick Google told me my suspicions were correct. The email was from Lance Ito, the judge in the O.J. Simpson trial. I thanked him for his time and perspective and asked him if I could mention his name here. Not surprisingly, he said he’s already on public record as being against racism, so he agreed. Thanks, Lance!
My partner-in-ink, Wayno is against racism and also boredom, so let’s look at what Bizarro cartoons he fashioned to entertain us this week…
Dude. Wake up and hear the whooshing.
Why does your office always smell like carrots, doctor?
Stop playing with your puke.
Entrails never tasted so good.
A scene from the pilot episode of Star Spud.
Dogs are no better at math than I am.
That concludes this week’s cartoon coincidence. Thanks for sticking around to marvel at the timing of it. If you like our work and appreciate that we post it for free and don’t subject you to ads and clickbait, please consider helping us keep it that way via one or more of the links below. We’ll be in your debt.
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