TOW 10

Michael Ramirez

The political cartoon below is a commentary on Obamacare.  It is meant to be a criticism of how Obama went back on his comment that if you like your healthcare you can keep it.  He later changed this when it was found that millions of people were loosing healthcare they liked.  The comment was then that you couldn’t always keep your healthcare but you could get something “better”.  This cartoon was created by Michael Ramirez, an acclaimed political cartoonist who has won two Pulitzer prizes in so far for his work.  Many of his works contain conservative viewpoints.  In the case of this cartoon, as with most others, humor is a major device.  Ramirez offers a few jokes in his drawling.  The most obvious joke is the women’s retort “What about our president?”  There are also more subtle jokes for example the t-shirt by the character meant to depict Obama is one that says “with stupid” and an arrow at Obama’s character.  These jokes are meant to appeal emotionally and do a good job of this helping to convey Ramirez’s criticism of Obama.  Another aspect, which is subtler, is the dog growling at Obama’s character.  This also appeals to emotion as dogs are often a good judge of character, so with the dog in anger people looking associate themselves with the dog in dislike of Obama.  This cartoon was likely created for conservative minded citizens who also likely pay attention to politics.  This is because he likely targets like-minded people and these conservative minded citizens are fans of his commentary.  Because of this targeting Ramirez knows that he is not trying to change anyone’s political ideals, but instead trying appeal to what they already believe.  It is like an inside joke, he does not to put in much of the context or any logic just emotional appeals and the joke.