Today’s DBD Cartoon

Chris Muir has an unusually provocative cartoon for today’s Day by Day, one which has stirred up a hornet’s nest here at CapQ. In it, Chris appears to equate a quote from Michelle Obama to the kind of “Arbeit mach Frei” statements of the Nazi regime. Here’s the quote from Mrs. Obama:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Quite frankly, I consider that statement a little creepy. Who is Obama to demand that I shed my cynicism? When dealing with government promises of Utopia, I consider cynicism very, very valuable — and history has proven me correct. Given Obama’s economic agenda, I’d say that engagement will be necessary as well as deep skepticism, at the least.
Also, there’s more going on in this cartoon than just the second panel. For seven years, we have heard the Left compare George Bush to Adolf Hitler. I find the sudden outrage over Chris Muir’s deliberate poking of this impulse more than just a little hypocritical. Try googling “Bushitler” to see the point of Muir’s satire here today.
In one sense, though, the cartoon does go overboard. While Mrs. Obama’s speeches on the stump are completely fair game for criticism, I think using her words to make this point is a little unfair. I’d rather see this level of satire aimed at the candidate himself rather than any of the surrogates, including the spouses.
I probably wouldn’t have drawn this panel. However, I’m not going to ask Chris to take it down, either. Let people debate its propriety and meaning in the comments.