Comments on: Reason to Believe http://donklephant.com/2005/09/12/reason-to-believe/ Big Teeth. Huge Ass. Surprisingly Reasonable. Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:46:37 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: jimbo http://donklephant.com/2005/09/12/reason-to-believe/comment-page-1/#comment-2194 jimbo Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:33:20 +0000 http://donklephant.com/?p=844#comment-2194 The Nast cartoon has a circle starting with corrupt big shots and ending with Nast's stereotypical poor and illiterate Irish immigrant voters. Nast portrayed Irish immigrants in ways that today would be politically incorrect to say the least. The Tweed machine that Nast was attacking depended on the votes of Irish immigrants. Those Irish immigrants in turn depended on Tammany for patronage jobs and welfare, which, if it was available at all, was the responsibility not of the federal or state governments, but the city; and it was not a "responsibility", it was unabashedly Tammany's way of buying votes. Is the author of this update of Nast's cartoon inviting us to compare Nast's Tammany-supporting and dependent Irish immigrants to modern New Orleans's government-supporting and dependent African American poor who were the victims of all this government malfeasance? The Nast cartoon has a circle starting with corrupt big shots and ending with Nast’s stereotypical poor and illiterate Irish immigrant voters. Nast portrayed Irish immigrants in ways that today would be politically incorrect to say the least. The Tweed machine that Nast was attacking depended on the votes of Irish immigrants. Those Irish immigrants in turn depended on Tammany for patronage jobs and welfare, which, if it was available at all, was the responsibility not of the federal or state governments, but the city; and it was not a “responsibility”, it was unabashedly Tammany’s way of buying votes. Is the author of this update of Nast’s cartoon inviting us to compare Nast’s Tammany-supporting and dependent Irish immigrants to modern New Orleans’s government-supporting and dependent African American poor who were the victims of all this government malfeasance?

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