The Sorensen Monologues

RFK Journalism Award

I’m incredibly honored to announce that I’ve won a 2013 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for political cartooning. Known informally as “the poor people’s Pulitzer,” this award is especially thrilling because you learn of it through a phone call from Ethel Kennedy herself. I happened to be in a flooring store trying to find something to replace an ugly carpet in my house when the call came. Let’s just say Ethel Kennedy was one of the last people I expected to be at the other end of that unrecognizable phone number. Afterward, I completely lost my ability to focus on carpets.

The award is due in part to my comic for Kaiser Health News, “An Open Letter to the Supreme Court About Health Insurance.”  Many thanks to KHN for giving me the opportunity!

I’m looking forward to meeting Mrs. Kennedy at the awards ceremony on September 26 — and shooting the breeze with the great economist Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Book Award.

An Ugly Decision

The Trayvon Martin decision was announced just a bit too late for my deadline this week. As it turned out, I was already working on a cartoon about a different court case — less tragic, but similarly mind-boggling in its outcome. The Iowa Supreme Court, which you can see in all its demographically-limited glory here, actually ruled for the second time that a male dentist could legally file his female assistant because he found her too attractive. Via TPM:

“Coming to the same conclusion as it did in December, the all-male court found that bosses can fire employees they see as threats to their marriages, even if the subordinates have not engaged in flirtatious or other inappropriate behavior. The court said such firings do not count as illegal sex discrimination because they are motivated by feelings, not gender.”

Maybe in the past attractive people have had advantages in the workplace, but no longer in Iowa!