NEW STRIP :: Portraits of Greatness: Thomas Jefferson
March 29th, 2009 — 10:11 pm
Hot off the presses is this week’s strip, another in our series of “PORTRAITS OF GREATNESS,” the slow and shoddy portraiture of each of our nation’s (if America is your nation) presidents. This week’s subject: Jazzy Thomas Jefferson!
I will say, regardless of any ironic content that may accidentally find its way into these little profiles, most of these early “founding father” types are pretty impressive dudes. You have to remember that most people were autodidacts at this point, at least to some degree, and there was no such thing as the Internet, television, radio, even TELEGRAPH, as a means of spreading information. So you had to bust your hump to get smart–you couldn’t do it accidentally, as most of us have.
Thomas Jefferson was not quite a Renaissance Man, insofar as he wasn’t a super painter, mathematician, all that stuff, like Da Vinci. This is not to say that he wasn’t an impressive storehouse of knowledge. From the Wikipedia article I totally ripped for all the source material:
When President John F. Kennedy welcomed forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House–with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
This is something that pretty much all of the Founding Fathers have in common–they were all incredibly smart people, who found themselves in a position to literally create an entire government out of whole cloth, and did it. They all had foibles, as I take pains to point out in my little cartoons, but they were the foibles of statesmen. This is one of the things I find so enervating about our current president–in Barack Obama are married a powerful intellect, comprehensive education, and the personal charisma of a statesman. Oops, I let my crush on Obama show a little bit–sorry!
In case my older brother Ken is reading this–hello, Ken!–I have to give him a shout-out, as we argued through most of the hamburger and hotdog I had at my father and niece Breanna’s combo birthday party today. The subject was whether or not it was right to revisit some of the less savory elements of these guys’ histories, using the mores and cultural attitudes of today. In this case, me pointing out that Jefferson owned slaves, which I find endlessly fascinating/repulsive, especially considering the fact that he supported abolition. But (again, according to Wikipedia), apparently he was too mired in debt and financial obligation to free his slaves? I find this puzzling and a little hard to believe, but I guess if it’s on Wikipedia it must be true.
This sort of argument, that something was part of the cultural landscape at the time and therefore, while unfortunate, must be viewed within its context… well, I don’t like it. I hear it a lot in the comic book world in regards to Tintin In The Congo, the second of the world-famous Tintin books, originally published in the 20’s. The Africans in the book are depicted as little more than bumbling ignorant savages out of some minstrel show. People call it “typical of colonial attitudes of the time,” but I just call it “straight racist.” I mean, right? Tintin’s creator Herge later expressed some guilt over the thing, and subsequent volumes of Tintin weren’t nearly so racially charged (unless you’re Japanese).
My point: brilliant people are often flawed. Sometimes moreso than their less brilliant counterparts. You can’t travel back in time and convince Thomas Jefferson to just say “Screw It, I’m The President” and free all his slaves, regardless of his debts or whatever. You can’t get that stain out of Monica Lewinsky’s pantsuit either. But you can most definitely be awake to history and watch out for the same malarkey from this generation’s brilliant men.
Okay, I’m all done. I’m late for bed.
Category: BLOG 8 comments »
March 30th, 2009 at 12:04 am
I’m glad somebody thinks about these things.
March 30th, 2009 at 5:39 am
I think you are wrong to refer to Tintin in the Congo as racist because the concept of racism (as we know it) did not exist when he wrote the book.
What is critical about Herge’ attitudes is that he had a willingness to learn and grow as a person.
From The Blue Lotus onwards, Herge went out of his way to depict different cultures as fairly and respectfully as he could. He was not always perfect but he was writing in an era when first hand experience with these cultures impractical. He was very much at the mercy of whatever reference books he could find.
March 30th, 2009 at 7:03 am
I think there are some dangers in being too quick to forgive certain kinds of racism under the guise of art or culture. To be clear, I am an ENORMOUS fan of Herge and Tintin, and have numerous books on Herge’s life and work, as well as all of the Tintin books in color and black and white–including Tintin In The Congo. It is not that I am denying that the book has some cultural relevance–it’s just that that cultural relevance is ugly and repugnant.
I think the best value that a book like Tintin In The Congo can have in the modern world is to provoke conversation and examination of the world that produced it.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:54 am
RIGHT!
Yeah, he might be willing to learn, but seeing that he did this learning and reflecting on the scale of media i.e. in publishing books, denounces that fact again, no? Because it had an effect in the public, underlining what was seen as normal over the heads of people that it affected.
Somebody applying racism in a range that gets quite a lot of exposure, should always be aware that they will be discussed and afronted for it. Even if it’s manymanymany years later.
All the more so as these parts of the story have not only passed his hands/mind but, the ones of the editors and publishers which have a responsibility, not in cencoring a story, but in developing it if it flaws – especially in this sense.
If something at all, I want to seperate his great skill to cartoon and draw from this flaw in his personality, and not smallen the racist tones in it. Because he sure would have been the same great if he didn’t incorporate that so openly – no matter if other cartoonists or authors did so too and it was the wind of the time then.
Also, racism is/was always racism no matter if it’s labeled or not, don’t you think?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m no one to internet brawl – I hate that, I just feel there is more to it.
Huff…
Oh yeah! DUSTIN: WOW! I love what the larger scale does to your drawings, great stuff…
March 30th, 2009 at 11:48 am
I will say one more thing: I find a lot of value in examining some of these less-attractive peccadilloes in otherwise brilliant or impressive persons, as they help me to locate, examine, and hopefully one day dissolve similar little cancers in myself.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Yep!
March 31st, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I read an awesome book called:
An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek
which was real eye opener to me. It’s kinda dense but it was interesting to read about the complex relationship the founding fathers had with slavery. A great book for anyone interested in any of these guys (especially GW).
April 1st, 2009 at 11:37 am
Explaining: I wanna say that what I said above was directed to Mr. Chris T.
Except for the compliment bit of course.