1. DaimlerChrysler's Jeep Tricks
It was a nice gesture by Jeep manufacturer DaimlerChrysler (DCX Quote - Cramer on DCX - Stock Picks) this week to mourn the death of cartoonist Bill Mauldin. But we at the lab object to how the company rewrote history in the process. Or, more precisely, redrew it. Some words of explanation for all of you tykes out there. Back during World War II, Sgt. Mauldin became a folk hero among his fellow soldiers, thanks to the series of cartoons he drew for the armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes. Revolving around two beaten-down infantrymen, Willie and Joe, the cartoons depicted war on the European front from the ground level -- not heroic clashes, but a perpetual quest for a decent night's sleep and a dry pair of socks. Mauldin's cartoons were popular enough to incur the wrath of Gen. George Patton, who Mauldin said accused him of lowering the Army's morale. And somewhere in the middle of it all, Mauldin won a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons, with the Pulitzer's board calling special attention to his ironically illustrated panel titled "Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners. (News item)." In short, here was a guy who achieved greatness by drawing life as he saw it, not as the sanitized version others may have wanted him to see. Check out his portfolio on Stars and Stripes' Web site and judge for yourself. Anyway, let's skip ahead to this past Monday, five days after Mauldin died at the age of 81. There in The New York Times we see a full-page advertisement paying tribute to Mauldin -- an ad placed by DaimlerChrysler, whose Jeeps played supporting and even starring roles in many of Mauldin's wartime cartoons. (Well, the semi-Stuttgart-based manufacturer didn't own Jeep during WWII, but that's not relevant to this story.) "With great sadness, the Jeep brand says goodbye to the great cartoonist who immortalized the heroic enlisted men of WWII," reads the ad. And above that farewell to Mauldin, the ad reproduces a classic Mauldin Jeep-centric cartoon: a GI, shielding his eyes with sadness, reaching for a box of tissues sitting on the hood of a Jeep.| Artistic Driver's License From shoot to sanitized |
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