Racist Tea

I decided to do a rhetorical analysis on Mike Lester's political cartoon (pictured above). This blog post may seem a bit disjointed because it is meant to act as a prewriting exercise for an essay I am going to write.

About the Author and his Audience

Mike Lester is an illustrator from Georgia who has done all types of work ranging from cartoons to kid books. He is best known for his political commentary in his editorial cartoons and has won awards for it. His audience for this cartoon was the subscribers to the Rome News-Tribune, where it was originally published. In my opinion though, he is trying to reach out to everyone and finds the disagreement between the conservative Tea party and the NAACP an area of interest. In this cartoon, the NAACP is definitely shown in a bad light.

The Topic

The topic being discussed in this editorial cartoon is the NAACP's disapproval with members of the Tea party who use racial references in their signs during rallies against current government legislation.

The Story

The cartoon is a simple illustration of an obscenely large, black man (representing the NAACP) sitting on the lap of a white man (representing the Media). The NAACP representative seems to be complaining to the skinny man like a kid would to his dad about a bully. In this case, the bully seems to be a harmless protester from the Tea party (the woman on the left), who is holding the sign, "Taxed Enough Already." The large man states, "That racist called me a colored person..."

The Argument

Mike Lester is attempting to make the argument that there are people in the Tea party that have a racially-powered message against current government policies; but that doesn't mean that these few individuals represent the views of the Tea party in general.

Composition (imagery, character, setting)

The editorial is a simple, single frame illustration that relies on the combination between imagery and text to make the argument apparent. The drawing is obviously not realistic in order to overstate the irony of the situation. I believe that a small woman was used to represent the Tea party and a large man to represent the NAACP in order to show the obvious uneven strength distribution between the two groups. A definite class difference is notable between the two characters as well: the woman has on more of a working class style of clothes, while the large man is well dressed with a tie.

The irony of the situation is that the NAACP representative is complaining to the Media that the woman is being racist when there is no racist comment coming from the woman at all. This makes it seem like the NAACP is crying over absolutely nothing, but that it is using its pure mass in order to persuade the media itself to give them sympathy. I do enjoy, as a side note, that the words "colored people" is a different color in order to put extra emphasis on the phrase.

Cultural Resonance

This editorial illustration touches on a key aspect of our society and culture today. We all worry about what the "politically correct" term is that we should use when we say certain things, especially when referring to someone's race. This specific cartoon makes light of this situation by using an incorrect term, but at the same time we all know that there are terms the illustrator could have used that would have pushed this over the edge.

I feel that the author is pointing out that since the NAACP is calling a Tea party member racist then they are stereotyping, which is also a major controversy in our culture today.

The Tone

The overall tone of this editorial is definitely comical, but its subject is very serious in tone. I believe that this combination between the comical and the serious creates a middle ground, which allows a place for dialogue to take place between both sides of the argument. This, in my opinion, is the single most important thing that all editorial illustrators should strive to do.


After this Assignment

After this assignment was due and we discussed it in class, I found that I was very interesting in how powerful words can be when used in conjunction with images. With this in mind, I went out searching for two similar cartoons, one that was powered by just an image and another that was powered by both an image and words. (the two I picked to compare are below)