Real America vs The Coastal Elites
Cartoon by Barry
This strip was drawn by Becky Hawkins.
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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has four panels, plus an additional tiny “kicker” panel under the fourth panel. Each panel shows the same man talking directly at the reader. He has neatly combed blonde hair with a full beard, and is wearing boots, jeans, and a bright red button-up shirt with a brown vest over it. His outfit says “rural salt of the earth by way of L.L. Bean.”
PANEL 1
The man is talking cheerfully to the readers, one forefinger raised to make a point. Behind him, we can see a street lined with stores or businesses; the buildings are all one or two stories tall, a bit quaint, and all but scream “small town charm.”
MAN : I tink the best of America is in the small towns – the wonderful little pockets of what I call The Real America.
PANEL 2
The same man, but now he’s suddenly standing in front of an enormous pile of garbage; we can make out a few things in the pile, like a fish skeleton, a concrete block, a wishbone, and a pile of poop. Rising up behind the garbage pile, we can see a group of ugly brown high-rise apartment buildings. A large plume of smoke (we can’t see from what) rises into the sky.
MAN: Elite liberals are destroying American with their terrible “New York” values. That’s why their cities are burnt-out shells!
PANEL 3
The man is suddenly much closer to the viewer, yelling, his eyes large and bulging. Behind him we can see a chaotic jumble of big-city ills: A red-eyed rat, buildings on fire, a grocery cart filled with someone’s possessions in bags, a syringe, another pile of poop, and a person wearing a mask and a black hoodie who is about to throw a flaming Molotov cocktail.
MAN: DEM CITIES ARE DISGUSTING, RAT-INFESTED HOLES THAT NO HUMAN COULD LIVE IN!
PANEL 4
The man is suddenly on a bucolic, hilly farm. A sheep lies on the ground, munching the green grass, and there’s a black-spotted cow wearing a bell around it’s neck. Further back, we can see a classic red barn with a grain silo beside it, and a hill that’s been tilled and has some crop growing. The man, no longer in tight close-up, is grasping his hands together and looking a bit upward, almost like he’s praying; he has a sad expression, and a single tear falls from one eye.
MAN: And why do coastal elite snobs say such hateful things about their fellow Americans?
TINY KICKER PANEL UNDER THE BOTTOM OF THE STRIP
Barry the cartoonist, raising a finger to make a point, is talking to the man from the strip. The man has a “I’m so above this nonsense” smug expression, eyes closed.
BARRY: Don’t you live in a coastal city? And didn’t you go to Harvard?
MAN: In my heart I’ve always lived on a farm.
This cartoon on Patreon (You can find source quotes there, too!)
Posted in Becky Hawkins collaborations, Conservatives |
