Some people blame Sandra Bland for escalating the situation during her traffic stop, suggesting she should have been more respectful to the barking officer. Funny how all this finger-wagging about manners when dealing with law enforcement didn’t seem to apply when the person in question was Cliven Bundy, the freeloading rancher who put up armed resistance over paying grazing fees. Apparently rebellion is virtuous if you’re a highly-armed white cowboy/militia leader/Tea Party activist, but if you’re a black woman who forgot to signal while changing lanes, do not even think about behaving ungraciously towards police, no matter how abusive they are.
Other panels in this cartoon were somewhat inspired by a recent David Brooks column, which was written as an open letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates in response his new book. Beneath a veneer of what struck me as patronizing faux-humility, Brooks pretty much slipped into ye olde “why don’t you stop wallowing in victimhood and pursue the American Dream?” line of attack.