美国社会热点/名家漫画赏析W.D.White(美)

　　Most editorial cartoonists in America stick primarily to political themes, but Wayne Stayskal often ventures into social satire as well. Despite the improvised look of the drawings, resembling things an artist might jot down on a paper napkin at a restaurant, his cartoons are highly polished. They express his usually conservative point of view quite effectively.

　　His observation post is in the suburbs, where most middle-class Americans live. In today's cartoon he lampoons the obsession of many an aging suburban male: the condition of the lawn. Here we see three suburbanites out tending their back yards on a weekend morning. Two are doing their gardening in the orthodox manner. The third has "gone ballistic"①: he is blasting the herbicide-resistant weeds in his garden with a rifle.

　　Stayskal is making two humorous references. One is to the all too frequent American drama of the disgruntled worker who decides to take direct action to deal with his "tormentors" by getting a weapon and letting them have it. Here the drama is played out in harmless miniature. We imagine that this suburban householder is (or was -- he may well be retired) a bit of a control freak②at the office. The rebellious weeds in his lawn have brought him to the end of his tether③.

　　Second, Stayskal puns on the name of the weed-killer that is losing its potency. A "roundup" in the American West means collecting all the stray cattle that have wandered far from the herd -- a hard job in the wide spaces and rough terrain of the region. It is also used when the police arrest all the miscreants involved in a racket at one fell swoop. You put "Roundup" on your lawn to round up the weeds. Stayskal's unhappy householder has to revert to less chemical means for his botanical roundup.