It’s not an argument, but perhaps an inroad to making an argument from a perspective the audience didn’t acknowledge before.

Sean’s example, is more I think, a call to focus what is happening within society in the Americas. I could be wrong though.

“What is the sound of one hand clapping?” You need a “left” or “right?”

What is “the essence” of the observation. It is not always immediate sometimes but on further reflection….hmmmmm. Definitiely, an art form:)

But that’s the style that plays in the mainstream newspapers, which don’t want to offend anyone. I read Daryl Cagle’s cartoon weblog for a while a couple of years back and learned that the most anodyne cartoons are the most popular, like when a recently deceased famous person is depicted at the pearly gates of heaven.
Anyway, this old-fashioned style of political cartooning is probably going the way of the dodo, between newspapers paring staff and better ways of communicating complex topics. Ted Rall edited a book titled Attitude: the New Subversive Political Cartoonists, and they all employ a multi-panel narrative form. (Ted Rall has explicitly railed against the old-fashioned Thomas Nast-style cartoons with elephants and donkeys and figures with labels written on them (as in the example above). Then again, he rails against a lot of things.) And you might already be familiar with Mark Fiore’s animated cartoons.

I don’t know how many people are swayed to see a different perspective by political cartoons, though. Probably they are becoming increasingly window dressing for a paper’s known slant and not meant to ruffle any feathers, and you’ll have to go to the alternative press to find anything trenchant.

I don’t think this exercise works at all. I think the artist was trying to do too much and therefore accomplished very little. I think that good political cartoons (both on the right or left) do tend to reinforce existing beliefs but if even if I disagree, if they are really good they at least make me think for a moment about the other viewpoint. At their best they are visceral momentary slices of truth.

Elliot