Summary Of The Great Unwashed By John Darkow

The image above portraits a political cartoon that was found on definitelymaybe.me. It was published on April 7, 2007 by Columbia Daily Tribune and the artist is John Darkow. A reason that Darkow could have created this cartoon is to display the difference and the relationship between the persons which would be considered rich or in the upper-class and the persons which would be considered poor or in the lower-class. Upon first glance, one notices a big fat man whom seems to represent one of the very few in upper-class and about 30 other men and women which are looking at each other in confusion and disgust. He undoubtedly made the rich man bigger than the rest of the other men and women on the opposite side to illustrate the difference in

their power. With a closer look one can spot that the rich man has a pin on his shirt that says “The Rich Top 10%,” which means that there is a low amount of wealthy people in the world.

On the other side, the men and women are labeled as “The Bottom 90% (The Great Unwashed),” which means that majority of the people are middle or low class. By what Darkow means by “The Great Unwashed,” is that there are poor people who are looked down upon by most of society. Many would display income as dollar bills, but the author cleverly takes a different approach and illustrates the income by utilizing a pie. The rich man takes half of the pie which means that he gets half of the income and the other half is for the other men and women. The rich man is also saying “Well, I left you half! What are you. Greedy?” The rich man is taking half of the pie for himself which is half of the income while there are a bunch of other people who are left with the other half of the pie, the other half of the income, and they have to share it among themselves. Also, the rich man thinks that the people are being greedy because he at least left half of the income for them instead of taking it all for

himself.
The latent content is the hidden meaning of the cartoon which depends on the manifest content which is the the actual subject matter of the cartoon.

The manifest of this cartoon that the wealthy man is taking advantage of the middle and lower class people. He is doing this by taking half of the income and leaving the lower and middle class with half as well but they have to equally distribute it amongst each other. He is also calling them greedy, when in fact he is the one that is being greedy because he gets half while the others get a whole lot less because they have to equally share it. In the book, Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism, Robert Henier states that there was a substantial expansion in the economy but the ones who benefited the most out of this were the upper class. In addition, the wealthy man is wearing a tie which could mean he is a CEO of a company. With this being said, this would be the latent content because it also states that Congress has cut the tax rate for the wealthiest taxpayers by more than half and instead of paying taxes they actually receive money back as a tax benefit (Heiner, 2013). In addition, wealthy people pay similar or lower rates of tax than lower and middle class people (Heiner, 2013). This means that wealthy people and companies are getting to keep all their profits plus a tax benefit, while the middle and lower class owe the government tax money at the end of each year. The underlying message is that the

wealthy people are only going to get richer and the middle and lower class are going to stay the same or get worse because of how the economy system is set up.
According to Henier, conflict theorists are concerned mostly with equality. However, the social and power structure are always going to benefit the wealthy and powerful people at the expense of the poor (Daniels). This is because the poor are forced to pay taxes at the end of the year while the wealthy and powerful get that money as a tax benefit. He also states that it creates a system of winners and losers because the lower class has to live from check to check and it does not give them a chance to prosper.