Netanyahu’s cartoon bomb

Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday about the need for red lines on Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew an actual red line — on an actual cartoon bomb.

Two lines of thinking quickly emerged: Was this a poor choice of a ridiculous-looking oversimplified cartoon bomb, created decades before the invention of the Internet by someone with a limited understanding of bombs? Or was it a calculated choice of a ridiculous-looking oversimplified picture, created decades before the invention of the Internet by someone with a limited understanding of bombs — in order to create the one indelible image of the afternoon that everyone would be talking about?

It’s a mouthful either way.

If this was on purpose, it was brilliant. If this was not, it was — silly is putting it mildly, and an insult to comics artists everywhere.

This is the kind of bomb that only men with mustaches are allowed to throw. It violates this bomb’s contract that there are no train tracks or Looney Tunes characters visible in the shot.

This is not even a clip-art bomb. This is a Wingding.

Or, as Jeffrey Goldberg noted, “With all the Jewish comic book talent out there, he had to draw a Wile E. Coyote bomb?”

Then again, why are we talking about this? Netanyahu gave a 40-minute speech, and everyone’s fixated on the graphic design component?

And there you have it. There are two options for critiquing a speech: Try to step back and see the whole thing, or alight on one moment that can be argued about by anyone who made it out of kindergarten. The best is when you insist that the latter is the only intellectually coherent thing to do. “I’m skipping most of these minutes,” you say, “not because I did not watch them, but because it was all there in the bomb.” Forget close reading. Skip the text. Let’s talk about the graphic. My 4-year-old could have made one of those! In MS Paint!

Excerpted from Alexandra Petri’s blog washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost