I see by the number of views it received that my column about those who communicate on the Interwebs adding to world peace by just chilling a little and not feeling it is necessary to cry out in righteous indignation at every little thing was about as successful as a solicitation for funds to provide a home for orphan mosquitoes. So I shall give up and just join the seagulls which infest online commentary and cry out against life’s imperfections. Let’s start with postcard artists who can’t draw birds.
You may not think this is a major cause of pain and anguish in the world, but, hey, you must be one of those Luddites whose algorithms bring you nothing but bulletins on recent innovations in steam-powered bicycles. These sickly looking birds (who should be ill eagle) are everywhere in the postcard world. I am fighting to be fair about this. I will not include the two examples shown above, for example. These artists were not going for ornithological accuracy: they just wanted something looking vaguely like a rooster or a goose to make the joke. This is fair game.
This artist, too, was not out to look like a page torn from a Roger Tory Peterson field guide. His joke was about chicken scratches, and if the scratching bits are emphasized, we can all tell what the picture is going for. No complaints.
But had THIS artist ever seen a rooster before? I know, I know: he couldn’t go to Google Images and call up a picture of a rooster as reference. But gee golly whiz, was that any excuse for asking Uncle Jasper to pose with his head tipped back a little and then draw feathers on the result?
Let’s try again. Cobb Shinn here wanted to draw a cartoon duck, and succeeded. We can see what he intended.
This gag, however, is pointless unless we know the child is holding a duck. I guess we CAN see a duck…if we concentrate on the words of the joke and squint at the bird, which looks like that cousin the chicken and sparrow families don’t talk about. But we’re not going to convince that kid, who KNOWS this is a duck stand-in, a cheap duck substitute.
Because it talks, everyone assumes this is a parrot. It looks like a green cardinal, yes, but it handles just the afterjoke, and it appeared in a whole series of postcards where it comments with a wisecrack on the main gag of the card. (Besides, I have seen no cards where anyone claims he IS a parrot. He may just as well have BEEN a green cardinal.)
But no matter how much it looks like a pigeonhawk, THIS, I believe, is intended to be a parrot. (I could be wrong. Suggesting that your empty space at the family table could be filled by a parrot seems rather at odds with the folksy good humor of the image.)
And THIS artist, it is obvious, has been at great pains to draw a realistic image of…what is this thing? Is there a bread of chicken that looks like this, or is this postcard of 1908 or thereabouts evidence that the dodo was domesticated and survived unnoticed in chicken coops in the Midwest for years after it was assumed extinct?
Perhaps I am just too touchy. Perhaps I should take my own advice about not giving away to outrage over every little…. WHAT. IS. THIS? Did someone paint a parrot brown and teach it to say “Cluck Cluck?” Is the man lying in the bed trying to start an online career as a ventriloquist with a turkey puppet? Have the pigeons…. No. Enough. These are bygone birds all, drawn by cartoonists of distant generations, and there is nothing anyone can do about them. Not that THAT would ever stop any dedicated online complainer. I just think maybe I can do more good in the world by going back to learning why they crossed the road.
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