My earnestness at the injustices I witnessed when I was writing 'Random Family' may have been my gravest reportorial offense during the early years of reporting. When I discuss the book with students, they often ask me how I could 'stand by' in the face of so much suffering; the egregiousness wasn't my powerlessness but my surprise.
The best comics enlist you to take accountability for who you are, whether you like it or not.
As a reader, when the writer gets sentimental, you drift, because there's something fishy going on there. You recognize a moment that's largely about the writer and the writer's own need to believe in something that might not in fact exist. As a reader, you think, 'Where did the story go? Where did the person I'm reading about go?'
It shouldn't be a matter of who deserves help or not, but of whether we want to be a country that allows its neediest to continue to need. Condemnation of individuals and their choices mutes all these other really important logistical questions about funding and budget and politics.
