I'm back from my trip to DC, where I had a rocking good time at the Small Press Expo and the book signing at Politics & Prose. Got to clink glasses with my cartoonist chums, meet some cool new people, and eat a stroopwafel, which is now my new favorite food. A special shout-out to Warren and his cats for their hospitality.

I'd been kicking around the idea of tolerance wars for a few weeks, and the wingnut rationalizations for the Foley scandal -- that the "culture of tolerance" is to blame -- made it suddenly timely. A quote from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council:

When we hold up tolerance and diversity as the guideposts for public life, this is what you end up getting. You get congressmen chasing 16-year-olds down the halls of Congress. It’s a shame.

Ah yes. Once you start arguing against bigotry, it's only a matter of time before you wind up instant messaging jailbait-aged underlings about their "cute bouncing butts."

The cartoon points out the silliness of demonizing "tolerance" by showing it as a cause of unlikely historical conflicts. It crossed my mind that some of these peoples' views are already so extreme that they might not see the strip as satire so much as an accurate reflection of their views of the lib'ruls. It can be hard to parody views that are already a parody.