Political Cartoon Assignment (03)

Snodgrass 1 Matthew Snodgrass Dr. Hyson Introduction to Canadian Politics 18 Sept 2009 Jack Layton: Contradiction The biggest thing on the CBC news, and many other stations and media sources, is the unwanted anticipation of the rumoured election. A simple way to put it is that the opposition parties, New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP), Bloc Québécois (Bloc), and Liberal Party of Canada (Liberal), are willing to join forces to take down the Conservative Party of Canada (Conservative), and start a election. This very topic leads us to a Political Cartoonist, Tim Dolighan. His cartoon, which can be found at http://www.dolighan.com/image-view.php? image=sep1509.jpg, depicts just how the decision of such an election was given to Jack Layton, NDP's leader, to decide. After the three political parties where set on the goal of taking down our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, there was a problem. The public did not like the idea of another election to be so soon. This lead to the Bloc to go over to the Conservatives side for their budget plan. This left only the NDP, as the Liberals where obviously not going to side with the Conservatives. The cartoon, in which case, shows that the public did not want the NDP, with the Liberals, to start another election, as they would not win. Along with the story of the cartoon comes its satire. With the shirt being a symbol and the dialog showing Jack Layton's Conservative support, it leads the reader to enjoy the chuckle of Layton's contradiction. Layton has been mocking the Liberal party for quite awhile for co-

Snodgrass 2 operating with the Conservatives, and now, just for the survival of his party, he is now giving his support to the Conservative party. This message becomes apparent because of how well Dolighan displays it. The use of the cheerleader outfit in combination with the symbol, piece of paper on the ground, indicating that the numbers are low for NDP displays Dolighan's two main cartoon tools, Satire and Clarity. With getting the reader to share a laugh at the cartoon, Dolighan is able to display the message of Layton's contradiction quite well, not only by the message itself, but by grabbing the attention of the reader. It is also good to point that the cartoonist had no bias in his political cartoon. Since this is a thought that is showed in majority because of the fact of Layton's morale switch, the cartoon is just to put reader's own thoughts into an image they can see. With the main story, the satire that was used to strengthen it, the use of symbols and dialog to add to clarity, and the clear message without bias, Tim Dolighan has made a very humours cartoon that shares one message: Jack Layton needs to check his integrity.