Tow #15 Visual Text
The
United States Government has been trying to balance its two party system as
well as its national budget since the 1940’s. Recently this conflict has escalated, again, to the
point where US Government officials (egocentric politicians) cannot seem to
come to any sort of agreement on the US National budget. The Democratic Party hopes to funnel
more money to public health care and the poor while the Republican Party’
primary agenda is to keep things as close to what the budget was like during
the Bush era, ultimately disrupting the Democratic Party’s attempts to fulfill
their agenda. However it is not a
single party’s “fault” for the recent economic crisis or the subsequent
economic fallout that we are experiencing today. Rather, it is both of these Parties’ faults.
It
is this non-cooperation issue that political cartoonist Matt Wuerker highlights
in his new political cartoon.
Wuerker uses the idea of the field goal in the most American sport,
football, to connect this more “complex” issue to a shared memory/event that
many more Americans can relate too.
Relating this event to a field goal kick also represents how the ball,
budget, will rise and fall when it descends to the ground, or in the case of
the budget; it will come back down in three months. Wuerker uses another football reference by showing the Tea
Party on the opposing team attempting to block the football kicked by president
Barrack Obama who is being assisted by John Boehner, Republican House Speaker
and senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. This is an allusion to the Tea Party’s notorious reputation
for doing anything and everything in their power to delay Obama-care and the US
budget.
Matt Wuerker is a political cartoonist,
illustrator and editor who has had his work displayed in the Washington Post,
The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times to the Smithsonian and the Nation. He has also been the editorial
cartoonist and illustrator of POLITICO since its inception.
http://www.politico.com/wuerker/
http://www.politico.com/reporters/MattWuerker.html
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