Cartoon for July 2, 2009

This one took a while to come up with. I wanted to do one about death, using the Grim Reaper, but I didn’t want to get into Far Side territory (other approaches I was considering included “Death’s Roommate,” “Death’s Intern,” “Death attempts to figure out directions from Southern California to Tampa using his GPS handheld,” etc.). I think I succeeded. We’ll see.

The only thing constant is change

You can thank our team of web interns for our new-and-improved “True Blue” look. They stayed up for six weeks mainlining Hot Pocket juice and Mountain Dew Code Red as they learned CSS at gunpoint. Some even gave their lives. And for that, we thank them each time we buy Hot Pockets.

Also added/subtracted names from the blogroll, though we steadfastly refuse to get rid of the March-2008-vintage Bad Cartoonist. We’re convinced he is not retired, but rather simply waiting in the shadows.

Also with the new theme comes something that WordPress calls “widgets.” On the left sidebar are two widgets that you will find eminently handy. One allows you to follow me on Twitter. The other allows you to stick this blog on an RSS feed (such as Google Reader), which is probably the best way to go about reading it given my irregular updating schedule.

Now let me take a trip down memory lane

Recent events have reminded your host of two old favorites.

On yet another push for the U.S. to meddle in Iranian politics:

January 23, 2006

On yet another push to deny Americans access to affordable health care:

June 14, 2007

This shit writes itself, mainly because it’s the same shit written over and over and over again.

Take the Picture Off

On the heels of this…

…we get this.

Above are two poorly-used images that aren’t really that hard to use. Every viewer approaches the image with a preconceived notion of the Buddha or (to a lesser extent) the red fist — the original purpose of each, after all, was to “stand” for something. But in each instance the artist managed to destroy any chance of the reader being able to quickly absorb the meaning by using the icon completely out of context. If Sotomayor weren’t Hispanic, the cover would have worked (although she wouldn’t have spoken those 38 fateful words). And if anti-tax zealots were genuine about their desire to promote the interests of the middle class, then the poster would have worked.

But neither of those being the case, what we see is a movement whose essence has been boiled down and extracted, like fine, raw San Pedro cactus, to a potent and odd-tasting brew that is palatable to none but the truest of believers.

When your bullshit division starts sputtering, you know you’re in trouble.

The revolution will be conspicuously consumed

OK, I think I’ve figured out how this stuff works.

1) Invade a country, overthrow its democratically-elected leader and install a dictator.

2) Scratch your head as the Western-installed leader is overthrown in a popular revolution thirty years later.

3) Insist that your leader of choice be installed once again thirty years after that.

Look, baby girl, let me be real wit chu for one second. (The author turns his chair around, sits in it backwards in his serious pose) You had no idea who Mousavi was a week ago. Shit, you probably didn’t even know Iran was holding elections a week ago.

The white man’s burden does not include rooting for the Greens, as one might root for the Jets or the Nuggets or the ugly British chick who sang on TV that one time. So let us worry about the brown people we’re already torturing liberating, rather than those on whom the bright light of freedom and democracy and pixie dust has not yet been shone.

See also alicublog, which always does it big.

Afflicting the comfortable, part 1,685

“To be in the hallway when the president walks by with a handful of M&Ms, popping them in his mouth as he goes to visit his chief of staff — it was unbelievable.” Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News

“I frustrate/I increase they birth rate”

College Republicans produce seizure-inducing rap video.

Stick around long enough and your number gets called.

Three pieces of news from this month:

• I was named one of the UWIRE top 100 collegiate journalists in the country.
  
• I also won one of the Red & Black’s two national SPJ awards.
  
• LDSA accepted me into the graphic design program. By the time I graduate, I will be a dirty old man by Athens standards.
  

We now resume your irregularly scheduled blogging.

Begin fiber regimen.

Update! (5-29-09) Atlanta TeeVee Blogging Sensation LiveApartmentFire has a Q&A with me regarding the first item.

Why cartoon politically?

Like Eric B said, it’s been a long time. Plus I’m working a graveyard and trying to stay awake. Here goes.

Generally speaking, editorial cartooning is a reactionary medium. On any given day an editorial cartoon broadcasts to the world what the artist thinks about a particular event. The reader who flips immediately to the opinion page wondering what the cartoonist thought about X issue recognizes this. And the cartoonist who does mental gymnastics trying to figure out what to say about the day’s top story does too.

But is this necessarily a good thing? Take this unscientific sample of cartoons about the Sotomayor nomination:

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

Mike Lane, Syndicated

Nate Beeler, Washington Examiner

Despite the different messages, we can find shared traits between the three. First, they use hyperkinetic imagery to engage the reader. Lane’s feuding “Far Right” stand-ins, Bagley’s crazed elephant and Beeler’s giant, threatening gavel all provide entertaining visuals on the page. Second, they focus on politics while ignoring the substantial issues involved. Instead, they all emphasize personal traits meant to induce in the reader a sense of wide-eyed disgust. “Identity politics,” “all hail Dick and Bush” and “far far right” are all bits of political shorthand. You’d be just as likely to get these bits of wisdom from party hacks.

Why care, you’re probably thinking. Because it reflects (and shapes) the way we view the world. If we are conditioned to view events and issues within a binary right-left scheme, how are we supposed to make sense of events in a global or historical context? What we end up with is NBC’s chief political
reporter only being able to make sense of the Bush/Obama torture regime in terms of the “difficult politics of the time:”

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Maybe Ted Rall is right, that a Promising Young Breed of altweekly cartoonists will save editorial cartooning from this tendency. Perhaps cartoonists will actually one day write substantive pieces instead of easy gags. Or, instead of pretending at being a political operative day after day, the cartoonist will occasionally be content to say “I don’t know.”

kristol methodology

Joan Walsh gets righteously indignant over a wingnut welfare agency giving former New York Times columnist William Kristol $250,000 worth of wingnut welfare.

For obvious reasons, libs find Kristol an easy target. His “what, me worry” mug, his consistent failure to be correct about anything, his cloying presence in the national press — all these traits make him a living, breathing embodiment of right-wing hubris and nepotism. But in monitoring his NYT output, I couldn’t get over the fact that regardless of everything else, his columns were just boring. His prose is breezy and he has nothing interesting to say. His presence on Fox just compounds the droning background noise that is cable news’s main product.

It’s like getting upset at Kenny G — that is, if Kenny G were advocating extrajudicial rendition and torture for Grover Washington, Jr. and David Sanborn.