Little Red Riding Hood and Political Cartoons

It's common practice for political cartoons to reference popular culture and classical stories. The tale of Little Red Riding Hood is one of the best known fairy/folk tales out there, so it's inevitable that it would see more than its fair share of references and retellings. Due to the nature of the story, as well as the popularity of defying its original roles and tropes, it sees great use with a variety of topics. In this post, I'd like to look specifically at this strip:

This strip was written in 2009 by Chuck Asay, a conservative political cartoonist who worked for Creators Syndicate at the time. The story of Little Red Riding Hood has many aspects and ideas at play within it, but the one he chose to play on in this strip is naiveté. In the original story, Little Red Riding Hood's ignorance led to her grandmother's death and nearly got herself killed. In the political cartoon, she is not ignorant, but willfully chose to ignore warning signs because she is "opposed to profiling."

Decrying the left as too willing to ignore problems in favor of non-discrimination is common conservative rhetoric. In the strip this is exaggerated and overblown, where not wanting to unfairly discriminate is presented as deliberately ignoring signs of problems. This is a distortion of Little Red Riding Hood's original ignorance, presenting her as knowledgeable about the warnings signs themselves and the problems they represent, but ignorant and naïve about what to do in response.

Personally, I disagree with the message of the strip. Not wanting to unfairly discriminate against entire groups because they happen to share traits with certain problematic individuals is a far cry from ignoring problems despite all evidence to indicate them.