Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
FiredUpMissouri has links to two different political cartoons related to the recent Proposition B legislative activity. I thought I would provide a long description for these cartoons for my friends using screen readers.
The first cartoon is from RJ Matson for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It features a dog, standing in a puddle and chained to a beat up dog house, with rain pouring down and lightning in the background. The dog is labeled “Puppy Mill Legislation”, and the dog house is labeled “The will of the voters”. The pole the dog is chained to has the word, “Repeal” on it. A bone lying on the ground by the dog has a label of “Prop B”. A sinister house is on a hill above the dog, labeled with “State Legislature”and in a bubble next to the house the words, “City Voters just don’t understand why we have to treat them like dogs out here.”
In the face of the dog, Matson has done an amazing job of capturing the look of hopelessness and despair of too many dogs in currently licensed commercial dog breeders. We’re heading into below zero temperatures this week, and I can’t stop thinking of the dogs that are forced to stay in outdoor kennels, 24×7, with no more than a little plastic igloo and maybe some straw or a blanket to keep them warm.
The second cartoon is from John Darkow in the Columbia Tribune and features a slick seeming politician in a shiny suit with the label “Missouri House”, tearing a ballot into pieces and telling an older, but savvy looking woman, “Sorry, lady…You didn’t know what you were doing when you voted for Prop B. We’ll do the thinking for ya! We’re sophisticates, you know!” The woman is labeled with “Voters”, as you would expect, and she has a leash in her hand, and a small dog at her side. On her other side, is a big doofus looking hayseed type of guy, with a suitcase and “Missouri House” print on its side. All the way to the right is a bold arrow with the word “Vote” above it.
Darkow did a good job mocking so many of the representative claims made this week that those of us who voted for Proposition B didn’t know what we were doing; that we in the urban settings can’t possibly know about dogs, as they live their lives at commercial breeders. After all, a dog at a breeder isn’t the same thing as a dog elsewhere. At least that’s what we’re told.
One of the commercial breeders, in fact one that keeps many of his dogs permanently in outdoor kennels (“They like it”, I remember him telling one reporter in an earlier interview), was quoted as saying, “Whoever wrote (Proposition B) has never raised an animal”.
Well, whoever is against Proposition B has never had a pet..