Cartoon : Karl Rove Book Reading

Political cartoon by Jeff Darcy of The Cleveland Plain-Dealer published on 15 March 2010.

This left-leaning political cartoon is critical of Karl Rove’s newly published book about his role in politics. From this cartoon we can cherry-pick some interesting vocabulary. To cherry-pick means to choose the best things or people out of a group.

The cartoonist blames the deaths of US soldiers on cherry-picked WMD intel that turned out to be bogus. WMD is simply the acronym for weapons of mass destruction and intel is the commonly shortened term for intelligence. If you say that something is bogus, it isn’t real even though it pretends to be real. For example, a lot of pills on the market make the bogus claim that they can help you lose weight.

The Rove character in the cartoon makes the statement that he should have done a better spin job. This is when you try to make a situation appear better or worse than what it really is. In other words, according to the cartoon character, he should have spinned the information differently to make it more believable or appear different than in reality. The so-called experts at spin jobs; such as journalists, spokespeople, politicians and political strategists; are called spin doctors.

“My bad” is an idiomatic, American expression for admitting that you have done something  wrong and you are at fault.