The Sorensen Monologues
Welcome to Vultureville
This cartoon was inspired by a Wall Street Journal article about big investment firms buying up homes — sometimes entire subdivisions — to rent out or flip. Obviously rentals are necessary as many people cannot afford to buy, especially in places like NYC. But corporations hoovering up whole middle-class or working-class neighborhoods serves no public good — it’s just driving up prices and exacerbating inequality, continuing ye olde wealth transfer to the already well-heeled (and almost certainly well-housed, for that matter).
Stacking the Democracy Deck
The poll watchers in the third panel were inspired by the Texas bill that would, among other affronts to fairness and decency, “empower partisan poll watchers by allowing more access to polling places and threatening criminal penalties against officials who restrict their movement.” Ah, what could go wrong?
Truth be told, I’ve been trying to come up with a cartoon about the nutty Arizona “recount” and similar undertakings around the country for a few weeks now, but there’s only so much you can satirize sheer lunacy. There’s no concept to even argue against — it’s just an ever-expanding bowl of nonsense Jell-O.
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Video Vortex
In some ways I was spoiled by my time working in a University library with a vast film collection. I also always lived in places with good indie video stores, which I am feeling VERY nostalgic for these days. Streaming has its advantages, but it comes with fragmentation, and the sense that some cultural treasures are slipping through the cracks never to be seen again except by film scholars.
Crushing Dissent
The criminalization of protest is the biggest attack on First Amendment rights of our time, and a major part of the authoritarian playbook. This Vox article breaks down the dangerous new Oklahoma law, which creates immunity for drivers who are “fleeing.” (Republican sponsors of the bill say it sets a “high bar,” but when it comes to policing and protests, such details seem highly malleable.) Florida, meanwhile, has passed a slew of draconian anti-protest measures that loosely define the concept of a “riot” and pretty much entrap anyone standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, leaving them open to felony charges.
The Defense Rests
Chauvin’s lawyer Eric Nelson argued that the cop who pressed his knee on George Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes behaved as “any reasonable police officer” would. Nelson’s strategy was to sow doubt and spin alternative narratives, blaming Floyd’s demise on his drug use despite overwhelming evidence he was choked to death. This article enumerates the diversionary techniques that were employed to make jurors question what they could see plainly with their own eyes.
“The Establishment”
When the Right labels good functioning government that actually helps people “the Establishment,” this is an Orwellian inversion — turning reality upside down for authoritarian ends by inverting the meaning of terms. The progressive left now uses the term about other progressives, and the whole thing has degenerated into a meaningless insult.
Big Bezos Is Watching
If you haven’t heard about Amazon’s delivery driver surveillance cameras, this Thomson Reuters article is a good place to start. Amazon has a long history of inflexible micromanaging of the motions of warehouse workers, and they’re apparently extending that to the trucks now.
A Trans-parent Pretense
Right-wingers who never seemed to give a damn about women’s sports before are suddenly filled with concern for the well-being of female athletes. Frankly, they can take their hypocritical faux feminism and cram it. You don’t get to use the fight for gender equality as cover for your own bigotry against trans people.
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Border Blather
At some point recently, an idea emerged from the fetid bowels of right-wing media that there was suddenly a “border crisis” and that it’s all Biden’s fault. If you look at the actual data, however, the recent rise in border apprehensions began under Trump, well before Biden took office, and the numbers are not terribly out of line with past cycles. These three handy Reuters charts put everything into perspective (the first panel of this cartoon is based on the “total apprehensions” chart).
