Biden Came Through: A Satirical Ethics Conversation

A Lord of the Rings reference that would have kept me from sleeping at night

I never posted to Substack this cartoon I drew for Counterpoint that was published on July 10th. I wanted to take a moment to share the thinking behind it.

The cartoon is modeled on this famous frame from The Return of the King when we first see Frodo hesitating to finish his mission.

Remember how Frodo almost destroyed all his progress by threatening to keep the Ring at the very end of his journey?

And then how he didn’t?

Some suggested to me during the early stages of brainstorming the cartoon—both conservatives and liberals—that I draw Biden as Gollum, calling the presidency “my precious.” Gollum’s the guy who says that (I say, pithily and rhetorically to make a point, knowing other characters do too). Gollum is the clear character choice, right?

I disagree, pretty strongly.

Depicting Biden as Gollum would be making a fundamentally different argument. It would disregard the work Biden did to save our democracy from authoritarianism up to this point. Remember 2020? Remember how we felt when Joe Biden won the election? Remember what it was like to have the guy who orchestrated January 6th pushed out by none other than… Joe Biden?

I can’t draw Joe Biden as Gollum. Gollum murders his cousin in the very first scene he’s in. He’s depicted as pitiful but never sympathetic.

Gollum tried to kill Frodo and Sam about ten times. He used and betrayed them repeatedly. That’s not Biden.

Would only Lord of the Rings fans know this stuff about Gollum? Only a Sith deals in absolutes, but I definitely don’t think so, especially given that Gollum’s general image in the pop culture lexicon is that of a conniving villain. Maybe he’s taken on a bit of a humorous air thanks to the many parodies of the Lord of the Rings over the years, but he remains a key villain in Tolkien’s stories and Peter Jackson’s movies.

I couldn’t draw Biden as a murderer and traitor in good conscience, no matter how funny it might look to people who don’t know who the character is, as well as people who do.

Drawing Biden as a hero, albeit a tempted one, was both more faithful to the truth of Biden as a man and a president, and key to the thesis of the cartoon.

Much of the suggestion to draw him as Gollum came out of the idea that Biden is old, and Gollum is also old, and that more people would find the cartoon funny because of Gollum’s recognizability, and the humor of drawing Biden in a loincloth.

I completely understand the argument that drawing Biden as Gollum would probably be more eye-catching, and certainly more funny to most people. It would probably get picked more by editors. It would get more laughs.

First of all, political cartooning is a famously unfunny art form. Who am I to question tradition?

I thought an allegory that acknowledged good intentions instead of pretending they weren’t there for a surface-level visual comparison was more productive, and more true.

I also felt like I couldn’t have written my silly little undergrad thesis on the importance of ethical satire—political commentary that acknowledges the truth while simultaneously entertaining—and sleep at night having drawn Biden as Gollum.

I took this really seriously. Several times along the way, I wondered… is this me grinding my heels in on differentiating Lord of the Rings characters for a political cartooning audience who haven’t necessarily heard of Tolkien?

I don’t think so.

Does this matter?

I think it does.

I think, in all my youth and inexperience, that the more that satirists acknowledge truth and show respect where it’s deserved, the more respected we’ll be.

Maybe we’ll even get paid more and get more jobs. The stuff we want.

The great thing about the way this cartoon came out, though, is that if you want to see this as a Gollum reference, you can—he’s saying “My Precious,” which is more associated with Gollum than Frodo for the eye-catching factor.

And yes, Biden already looks more like Gollum than Frodo from the get-go. But at least I did what I could to make clear my authorial intent.

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