The Sorensen Monologues
This Week’s Cartoon: “A Taxing Day at the Polls”
I’m growing increasingly worried about the impact of these noxious voter ID laws. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos wrote over the weekend about a lawsuit brewing in my home state of Pennsylvania, led by a 93 year-old woman who has voted in nearly every election for 60 years. She now finds herself unable to cast a ballot, thanks to the fact that the state lost her birth certificate. And Ohio now allows poll workers to refuse voters information about where to vote. And we dare to call ourselves a glorious beacon of freedom sauce? Warning to the rest of the world: DO NOT EMULATE.
The First Order of Change
I hope you’ve got those loins fully girded, per my earlier instructions. The first thing I’m changing around here is that I’m de-emphasizing the name “Slowpoke” and using my name instead, the way most daily editorial cartoonists (and op-ed columnists) do. You may have noticed this week’s strip lacked a logo. Or not. It’s pretty subtle, actually. I’m pretty entrenched with the old name, so I’m not going to start calling the strip “The Cartoon Formerly Known as Slowpoke” or anything.
Why the switch? Well, Lil’ Bow Wow eventually had to become Bow Wow at some point. (Hopefully someday he’ll just be Wow.) I’m designing a new site that encompasses all my different projects, and this keeps everything simple.
This Week’s Cartoon: Data Dump
I like talking to people on the internet as much as the next person, but there are now officially too many ways to share. I can’t keep up with what my friends and colleagues are doing across five different social networks. Sometimes I feel like a bad friend. I’ve missed so many birthdays on Facebook! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to post links to this cartoon in five different places.
Change is Afoot
I want to let regular readers know that there will be some changes around here, concerning both my website and my real life (I’m moving again). This means I’ll probably post extra-minimally on the blog for a while. So gird your loins, or do whatever it is you need to do to Be Prepared.*
*Actually, there is nothing you need to do.
This Week’s Cartoon: Take and Give
I recently finished Robert Frank’s Richistan, which provided the inspiration for this one. If you aren’t familiar with the book, it’s about the hermetically-sealed reality inhabited by today’s ultrarich. Trust me, it’s even worse than you think. Frank is far too blithe about political corruption, but otherwise the book is a fascinating read. Some of the people described are real pieces of work.
I don’t wish to impugn the many good philanthropists out there. I’m talking about the jerks who spend their lives making things difficult for ordinary people, the suddenly feel a pang of noblesse oblige to “do good.” Like, maybe if Mr. Aristopants didn’t fight environmental laws to reduce cancer-causing pollutants, his money wouldn’t be needed so much by that children’s cancer camp. It is, like so many things, a cycle of absurdity.
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This Week’s Cartoon: Daddyshack
As upsetting as the “War on Women 2012” has been, I managed to keep my cool, I think, until last week or so. But at some point between the Masters Tournament at creepy Augusta National and the character assassination of Hilary Rosen (whose perfectly valid point was twisted wildly by everyone from the Romneys to the NYT’s clueless Frank Bruni), things hit critical mass, and I truly began to question the wisdom of being born female.
IBM is one of the top sponsors of the Masters Tournament. Its CEO has historically been granted membership at Augusta National, which is denoted by a highly-coveted, silly green jacket that evokes shades of Rodney Dangerfield-meets-Richie Rich. Well, what to do when the CEO is a lady? Because that’s what the current top dog at Big Blue, Virginia Rometty, happens to be. Apparently, if you’re Augusta, you still deny her membership, so that she’s forced to wear the crumpled pink jacket she brought balled-up in her roller luggage. (Just kidding; I’m sure her corporate jet has a very nice place to hang jackets!) Another day, another chick hits the Grass Ceiling.
I’m sure I’ll get some emails saying, “They’re a private club and they can do what they want!” While this may technically be true, it still doesn’t mean they’re not a bunch of retrograde douchesprockets.
This Week’s Cartoon: “Coffee Shop No-No’s”
A non-political cartoon this week, as I’ve been busy traveling and trying not to think about politics. All of these offenses except the cigar-smoker were observed recently. Personally, I cannot imagine extending my personal Sphere of Entertainment (or Sphere of Commerce) to those sitting around me in a public space, but hey, that’s just me. Skype makes loud cellphone talkers seem almost quaint, doesn’t it?
Coffee shop proprietors: feel free to print this one out and hang it on the wall. Use the larger click-through version. I’ll be grateful.
This Week’s Cartoon: If Buying Health Insurance Were Like Buying Broccoli
Congratulations, America! Decades upon decades of struggle for a more civilized health insurance system now rest in the hands of your smug, Newsmax-reading uncle. Or his highly-trained, yet no less ignorant equivalents.
A report from 2010 suggests that 275,000 will die due to lack of health insurance over the following decade. Harvard puts the number at 45,000 per year. That’s far, far greater than the number who perished on September 11. And the judges who will be deciding the fate of those hundreds of thousands of lives — most of whom I suspect have never had to deal with the incredible cruelties faced by those whose jobs do not provide insurance — cannot distinguish a health insurance system from a cruciferous vegetable. I didn’t have room to go into the more complex economic issues about risk-sharing which make broccoli an especially poor analogy, but hey, you can only do so much in a cartoon.
This Week’s Cartoon: “The Hoodie: Apparel of Peril”
The hoodie is about as universal as blue jeans these days, transcending practically every youth subculture. Considering that some 99.98% of hoodie-wearers are non-thugs, you’d have to be a clueless Fox News pundit to find the garment gunfire-provokingly scary.
I regret that I could not include the Great Hoodie Wars of the 7th century between the House of the Zip-Front and the House of Pullovers, as I unfortunately did not have not enough room to draw a giant battle scene.
Relevant links, as provided by Daily Kos commenters: NRA begins selling hoodies with a handgun pocket
University of Texas cartoonist draws mind-blowingly racist cartoon about Trayvon Williams
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This Week’s Cartoon: Comic Strip Controversy
As you might have guessed, this one is about last week’s Doonesbury strips, which over 50 newspapers refused to print. Personally, I’m surprised the number was that high. I may be an easy audience, but I thought the strips were witty and tastefully done. Thursday’s comic was intense, but it was hardly in poor taste. Have these editors not seen reality television lately? Compared to that, last week’s Doonesbury read like a Lewis Lapham essay.
Notably, this week’s cartoon marks the first time I’ve had a strip pulled in over a dozen years of drawing Slowpoke. One of my weekly papers is owned by a daily paper that decided not to run the Doonesbury strips, so the editor, who actually liked my comic, had to ask for a substitute. The layers of irony here are impressive.
For more on the Texas law, I recommend reading about this woman’s experience.
Fallopitarian Bishop Comes to Life!
I’ve gotten a lot of great reader mail over the years, and this just might just be my all-time favorite. You may recall my recent cartoon about the Fallopitarian Church protesting prostate coverage:
Well, reader Miriam Byroade, fresh off of making a bishop costume for her young son portraying St. Nicholas in a school play, took it upon herself to make a Fallopitarian bishop mitre inspired by the cartoon.
Check out the fine detail work on those fimbria!
This absolutely made my day.
This Week’s Cartoon: “Let Them Eat Slime”
I spent way too much time last weekend reading about pink slime. I really wanted to get to the bottom of the slimebucket, if you will. This particular controversy has been burbling (and oozing and gurgling) ever since celebrity chef Jamie Oliver did a segment trashing the stuff last year (it’s a little melodramatic, but the basic sentiment is sound). McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King proceeded to drop it from their beef. More recently, a couple microbiologists condemned the goop as nutritionally-deficient, woefully-unlabeled Not Meat.
Now, I’ve traveled enough and watched enough cable-network food shows to know that gross-seeming animal parts are edible, and possibly even a delicacy, depending on the palate of the beholder. So I wanted to mentally separate the unappetizing aspect of pink slime from the food safety/nutrition issues. Here’s what I’ve discerned:
There’s a case to be made that ammoniated meat is safer because pathogens are reduced. But at the high levels of ammonia that may be required to effectively kill bacteria, the meat starts to reek of ammonia. The Times has a lengthy report on the iffy history of this particular technology. This Prevention article also raises some good questions about what we don’t know.
Personally, I don’t want to be a human guinea pig for ammonia ingestion. It seems intuitive that schoolkids shouldn’t be, either. The fact that they have to use ammonia in the first place is a symptom of the larger problem of industrial meat production. That these scraps are teeming with deadly bacteria in the first place is a result of the appalling conditions in feedlots (or CAFOs). The meat industry, in defense of pink slime, laughably touts the “sustainability” of using all parts of the cow, as though these people give one whit about environmentally-friendly farming practices. And then there’s the fact that the stuff is just low-quality, non-nutritious crap, the logical endpoint of a system built on layers and layers of crap. Is this really the best we can do for our kids?
