I like the Coast Guard and feature its people in cartoons from time to time. The one you just read netted me – by far – more USCG complaints than all the others combined.
I think they (or you, if you are a Coastguardsman) just get tired of the “shallow water Navy” jokes, and I can understand why. When the weather gets bad, they don’t head to port. They sail into the storm. Like the Marines, they head toward trouble and chaos.
They are the rescuers.
And it’s not like they never deploy. The Coast Guard is in the Middle East, serving alongside the other services. But its men and women also fight crime near our shores, which makes its mission unique.
They even patrol within our borders, something the other guys (except the National Guard) rarely do.
It is a beloved branch of our armed forces, embraced by the nation and appreciated by its sister services. Its people are true professionals who risk their lives every day for those in peril. They are true heroes.
That being said, I’m still going to make fun of them. I have to. Like the immortal Judge Smails once said when faced with a similar dilemma, “I didn’t want to do it. I felt I … owed it to them.”
To do otherwise, to strop drawing cartoons about them, would be to buy in to the notion that the Coasties are somehow on a different level than the other services, and I cannot do that to them because I respect them too much.
Ear patches and all.
(updated 3/24)
