I have long wanted to do a nice long write-up on how well the Lucy-pulls-the-football-away gag has integrated itself into the political discourse; how it is used by legislators and commenters alike. I think there’s a great piece to be done on that, as it is one way that Peanuts has filled a cultural hole that we didn’t know we had. But… well, that sounds like a lot of research.
But there is one way that I can demonstrate just how big a presence it has. Here are five recent political cartoons, all on the exact same topic… and I’m willing to bet that none of these cartoonists saw the others’ cartoons before drawing their own. It’s just that this is so much a standard political cartoon trope, a part of the language. (Mad editor Bill Morrison, who wrote one of these, tells of having purposely tried to get the cartoon out quickly, before anyone else did the exact same gag.)
Thanks to Bill and several other Facebook folks for pointing me to most of these.
