This cartoon is by me and Becky Hawkins.
Becky says, “an unexpected challenge of drawing the big head style is that a man’s hat is the same size as his whole torso. I REALLY wanted one of the salesman to be raising his hat in greeting, but it looked like he was holding a medieval shield or something.”
After Becky finished coloring the cartoon in a program called Clip Studio Paint, I was looking at the file and I noticed a turned-off layer, on top of all the other layers. I turned it on and was surprised to see this:
Apparently, Becky’s partner Naomi was using Becky’s computer at some point and decided to leave a little sketch in the file. :-) Aw, look at the little heart!
The cartoon is, I hope, funny, and makes an obvious point that’s still true and needs to be pointed out a lot: The people who say that we can’t afford social welfare programs never think affordability is a problem when it comes to police, building new prisons, or going to war.
It’s particularly aggravating when people say this about programs that will pay for themselves in the long run (as panel three mentions). “We can’t afford it” isn’t generally a real argument: It’s an excuse to avoid making an argument.
This cartoon has four panels. All four panels show the same scene and the same two characters. We are outside a middle-class looking house, looking at the front door. The door is open, and a 1950s-housewife-looking woman, with a bouffant hairdo and a green dress, is standing in the doorway. She’s talking to a man in a gray suit, with a matching fedora, carrying a brown suitcase.
We’ll call these two characters “Housewife” and “Salesman.”
In addition to the four panels, there’s a tiny “kicker” panel under the bottom of the strip.
PANEL 1
The salesman stands talking to the housewife, one hand outspread in a friendly fashion. The housewife looks nervous and has a hand resting on her chest in an “oh my” gesture.
SALESMAN Good morning, ma’am. I’m a door to door domestic policy salesman, and–
HOUSEWIFE: I’m sorry, we just can’t afford anything.
PANEL 2
The salesman, smiling in a friendly way, is holding his case out and open to display his wares. The housewife turns her head away, holding up one palm in a “no no no” gesture.
SALESMAN: But I’ve got universal health care. Very popular – lots of nations have it.
HOUSEWIFE: No no. We could never afford anything like that.
PANEL 3
Warming to his own sales pitch, the salesman is jubilantly holding a bunch of pamphlets, raising some of them towards the sky. The housewife looks very flustered.
SALESMAN: I’ve got policies for your kids that’ll save you money in the long run. Universal pre-K, lead removal…
HOUSEWIFE: Oh, gosh no. We couldn’t afford anything like that.
PANEL 4
The salesman, looking disappointed, has turned away and is looking at his pamphlets to see what else he can offer. Behind him, the housewife is smiling big with an excited expression, and holding two huge bags of money (we know it’s money because the bags are labeled ” $ “) to offer the salesman.
SALESMAN: Hmm… I’ve also got a big increase in policing and prisons. But it’s expen-”
HOUSEWIFE (very large font): WE’LL TAKER IT!
TINY “KICKER” PANEL UNDER THE BOTTOM OF THE STRIP
A similar but different salesman (gray hair, brown fedora) is speaking to the same housewife, as he raises his hat in greeting. The housewife is eager, and her eye is drawn as a heart.
SALESMAN: Good morning, ma’am. I’m a door to door war salesman.
HOUSEWIFE: Just give me a sec to mortgage my house.
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is an obscure and outdated cartoonist expression for meaningless but hopefully entertaining details in a cartoon. This cartoon has two pieces of chicken fat:
Panel 1: A balding man is peering over a fence in the background.
Panel 3: On the lawn in the background, a rat, wearing pink cats-eye sunglasses, is sunbathing lying on a rat-sized outdoor chaise lounge.
Good job to Becky and Barry!
It’s not often that I’m rooting for a door-to-door salesman.
I can’t imagine worse job for me than door to door salesman. If there’s a Hell, that’s what I’ll be doing in it.
I can think of lots of worse jobs. Anything in a meat or fish processing plant/slaughterhouse for just one example. I mean, I’d absolutely starve if I had to do door-to-door sales but… I’d rather starve doing that than starve slaughtering hogs.
Telemarketer?
Dianne, door-to-door sales is like telemarketing plus mosquitoes and bad weather. And, in some neighborhoods, people who draw weapons on you instead of just hanging up on you. (You get yelled at in both jobs, of course.)
JOS – definately depends on the person. I can cope with dull, repetative, even disgusting work. The nature of the human interactions is what’s most important for me. Door to door sales would be very bad for me. Nurse in an understaffed hospital, where people die on your watch because it is humanly impossible to get to them all is the worst I can think of for me, at the moment..
I have to admit that Jacqueline is right, at least for me: I would find working in a slaughterhouse even more torturous than door to door sales. But I had to think about it.
Watching people–or any creature–in pain and not being able or, worse, not being allowed to do anything about it would be even worse than door to door sales for me.
Really, these are all jobs from hell. We’re just arguing about which is the job from the lowest circle.