Oy Vey

When I drew this cartoon to tie the fall of the Berlin Wall to the contemporary situation in the West Bank, I expected a certain amount of negative feedback. The UGA campus represents a sort of nexus between your flat-earth right-wing Christian types and your metro Atlanta Jewish types, and as such has several rather sizable Likudnik student organizations. What I didn’t expect was the stack of angry letters fixating on the way I implied that the Israelis bought the Berlin Wall secondhand from the Germans — “on clearance.”

Well, turns out certain people have certain stereotypes about Jews and money. And the “Jews and money” routine itself has a bit of historical baggage.

Anyway, I got e-mails, I got phone calls, I got angry letters from university presidents written about me. Some understood that I was acting in good faith and focused on the substance of my argument. Most got caught up in the IDF soldier’s comment. And to the extent that my message was obscured by sloppy self-editing, I do think there was a bit of merit to those complaints. Folks who publish things have a certain obligation to anticipate reader reactions and get rid of possible confounding variables in order to direct readers toward the intended message. I should have been more direct with the IDF guy’s comment re: getting the wall used. But that’s the only thing I would have done differently.

Side note: it is certainly interesting that the pro-Israel crowd has managed to make a cottage industry out of shouting “anti-Semitism!” whenever Israeli policy is criticized in America. It has always seemed odd that at the same time Likud supporters keep reminding us that the Holocaust was an incomparable atrocity, they devalue the anti-Semite label by comparing every little perceived slight against them to what the Nazis did. And this sort of thing has happened to a Georgia cartoonist before, too. Check out Dylan Woodliff’s brutal, pointed Emory Wheel cartoon from 13 months ago, the hysterical reaction from faculty and ultimate mea culpa from the artist.

So the moral of the story is that your humble webmaster is now your humble, anti-Semitic webmaster.

As Smoove B would say, “Damn.”

P.S. Though I disagree with some of his particulars The Chiego Blog had a pretty good summary of the problems with throwing around such loaded labels.

I Wrote This Rhyme Lightly Off Two Or Three Heinies

You know the acquaintance at the party who, desperate to impress you or otherwise form some sort of connection, hangs on your every word, asking questions and analyzing your behavior to the point of annoyance? Talking Points Memo is that fucking guy now. You make an off-the-cuff remark about meeting up for a beer in a doomed attempt to defuse the controversy that resulted from making a simple statement of fact about something that happened to a guy you know. But you keep forgetting that That Fucking Guy will remember your promise the next day and start sending Facebook messages that are all like, “so u still down 4 beer 2moro?” And he’ll keep getting all up in your grill about it until you finally meet him one afternoon for a sympathy drink.

People talked about Bush as the president with whom Real Americans would want to shotgun Thunderbird or Steel Reserve or High Life or whatever while watching the Dallas Cowboys. This is mainly because Bush understood one fundamental point that Obama apparently does not. Article 301(b) of the Constitution:

No President shall addrefs his Subjects as rational, fully-functioning adult Humans.

Obama’s mistake was to think that his audience would take his “beer” remark for what it actually was–a bit of cultural shorthand for working out differences, airing grievances, etc. But the press once again demonstrated its infantile fascination with unscripted political speech, mindlessly promoting a literal reading of Obama’s remarks. What resulted was the painful photo-op we continue to be subjected to today. An awkward-looking public “meeting” on a Potemkin patio surrounded by a barricade to create the illusion of privacy and intimacy. It’s going to be a long four years eight years painful decline of the empire.

I was tempted to just write a pithy entry about the appropriateness of Gates drinking Blue Moon at the Beer Summit. A mediocre product designed for people who value authenticity, substance and change, created by an Astroturf organization that serves as a front for billionaire corporate suits… I like my beer like I like my presidents.

UPDATE: Corrected post title.

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.

cartoon 9-5-08

Back at the Red & Black. Here’s my first entry:

A single-minded obsession with abortion makes for some interesting instances of cognitive dissonance among the GOP faithful. See Palin, Sarah.

now with 100 percent more human rights violations

Lest we forget our prime directive, let’s look at the wide range of opinions editorial cartoonists have given us on the Olympics. A cursory glance at Cagle reveals the following:

Crowson, The Wichita Eagle, 8-3-08

Chan Lowe, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 7-30-08

Turner, 8-08

Rice, 8-08

Bill Day, Commercial Appeal, 8-08

Nease, 8-08

Steve Greenberg, Ventury County Star, 8-08

Stephane Peray, 8-08

Dan Wasserman, Boston Globe, 7-08

Olle Johansson, 8-08

Give a cartoonist a universally recognizable logo attached to a well-known controversy, and without fail he will give you the above. The first four cartoonists go with the gas mask. We can surmise that the Chinamen don’t deserve the Olympics because they didn’t clean their yellow planet’s atmosphere of poison gas, or something. And nobody wants to see Bob Costas doing play-by-play for Amazonian beach volleyball players choking on poison gas. Besides, you can find that stuff on the Internet for free.

Bill Day goes with the slightly more universal skull-rings motif. The repetition of the skull indicates that it serves as a visual stand-in for death at the hands of the depersonalized, commodified post-industrial capitalist order. His image, then, evokes a sense of moral equivalence between the Olympics and the branded commodity — in this case, a bucket of bony, white-meat chicken. Day is clearly decrying the ubiquity of KFC franchises in Beijing, but he leaves unclear the question of whether or not such a moralistic response is an appropriate mechanism for dealing with the imposition of a neoliberal global order. Perhaps it will become clearer when the Chinese win pole-vaulting.

Following that, we see the repeated use of the Chinese factory blowing out smoke rings. One can clearly see the thought process at work: “Olympics! Rings! Pollution! Smoke! Smoke Rings!” The cartoonists condemn the Chinese for their use of the latest in pollution technology. The Chinese, an especially tricky people, cannot be trusted to rape the Earth as gently and tenderly as Americans can.

And lastly, we see Olle Johansson doing something particularly thoughtful — reminding the reader that somewhere towelheads are plotting to kill you, so enjoy the poison gas Olympics, but be eternally vigilant. At least somebody comes out with a positive message.

shorter next four months of progressive blog commentary

Obama loves the surveillance state. And scolds the impoverished. But at least he quotes Jay-Z and lives in the city. Perhaps he even owns an iPod.

He is truly a window into ourselves.

talking loud and saying nothing

This is hilarious:

We are all appeasers now.

starving children, reconsidered

The other day we wrote about the abuse of starving African children by editorial cartoonists. Adding to what we discussed then, here we present an “ethanol is starving African children” wrap-up:

What political cartoonists consider daring and controversial is often sanctimonious, heavy-handed and obvious — the Vultures Over Darfur school.

Katy Roberts, New York Times editor

We can agree that starving African children is bad policy. We can also agree that corn ethanol is bad policy. But cartoons like those above manage to conflate the two without making any sort of substantive critique. “We shouldn’t use ethanol because children are starving.” Does that sentence even make any sense at all?

Considering the far bigger problems of which corn ethanol is symptomatic — U.S. subsidization of corn, the resulting obesity epidemic, our country’s overreliance on cheap gas, our government’s complicity in the supression of sustainable energy R&D — one would think that cartoonists would come up with something better. But a girl can dream.

living in a post-racial society is so awesome

Overseen in Athens delves into the burgeoning market for racist amputee humor.

But did you hear the story about Obama’s radical pastor? Obama did a favor to all Good Americans — both Right and Sensible Left — by denouncing Jeremiah Wright. Now the only question is, did he denounce him hard enough? I shore do hope so. It’s great to see Obama denounce and reject race pimps like Wright. You see, what professional victims like Wright don’t understand is that racism is no longer tolerated in America. And that means we have to make it our solemn duty never to discuss it again — ever.

you wanna battle, get a deal first

This would be interesting to watch. Not because I’d expect “Clinton, Hillary Rodham” to be added to the index in future copies of American Rhetorical Discourse, and not because it would change the race (unless PBS sandwiched the debate between new episodes of “Charlie Rose Presents: Mudfighting with America’s Next Top Model” — but oh, my elitism betrays me), but because it would be interesting to see how the campaigns stayed on message in an L/D format. Or, failing that, how drastically the format would have to be changed to accommodate a politics that isn’t currently debated from a rational-critical perspective at all, even among elite actors.