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Gift Ideas for the Unvaccinated

Before this cartoon appeared many places, I began hearing from anti-vaccine people. More are sure to follow in the coming days. It’s almost laughable for me to have to type this, but let me say up front: I have absolutely no ties to Big Pharma. In general, I find pharmaceutical companies to be morally skeevy, but this does not mean vaccinations are some sort of conspiracy. Nor does it disprove the science supporting vaccination as an essential part of public health.

When all reputable medical organizations — the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control, etc. –- tell us that that any link between autism and vaccines has been thoroughly refuted, it takes a hefty dose of paranoia to think that you know better. What is fascinating about this issue is that it parallels global warming denial, but with a large lefty contingent. It’s a bit depressing, actually. But if progressives want to continue calling themselves “reality-based,” they have to take on pseudoscience wherever it appears.

This all started with a fraudulent paper in a prominent medical journal, long since retracted and refuted. It then took on a life of its own, fed by celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy and even Robert Kennedy Jr. Nowadays it mostly boils down to the idea that Big Pharma is engaged in a huge cover-up in order to sell vaccines. I’m the first to note the many evils of many big corporations, but you cannot simply dismiss an overwhelming scientific consensus that there is no connection between vaccines and autism, based on many subsequent studies. There is a difference between healthy skepticism and anti-intellectual paranoia, and this clearly crosses that line.

This wouldn’t matter so much if it wasn’t vaccines we are talking about here, one of the most important life-saving inventions of all time. Experts in the U.S. say we are already getting small-scale outbreaks because of the anti-vaccine movement, and experts outside the U.S. are getting increasingly worried about the potentially catastrophic consequences if these ideas get entrenched in the developing world. A recent Center for Disease Control study estimates that vaccines in the U.S. from 1994-2013 will save 732,000 lives. We are talking about untold numbers of lives at stake here.

Here are just a few useful links:

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism/

http://www.who.int/features/qa/84/en/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/05/how-the-anti-vaccine-movement-is-endangering-lives/

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/how_sane_parents_got_paranoid_about_vaccines.2.html

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/29/vaccine-autism-connection-debunked-again/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/10/the-new-pandemic-of-vaccine-phobia/28703/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130716-autism-vaccines-mccarthy-view-medicine-science/

The University of Chicago guide to free speech

The University of Chicago recently sent a letter to incoming students that bluntly laid out the school’s stance on freedom of expression. This NY Times article gives more background, but unfortunately suffers from a dopey headline that uses “political correctness” as though it were an unbiased term. This commentary on the issue is also well worth reading.

Students, like anyone else, can take things too far, but the whole concept of “trigger warnings” has now been picked up and blown out of proportion by conservatives. In the age of Trump and Black Lives Matter and campus protests by minority students, this letter is tone deaf and inappropriate. It’s largely name-calling and buzzwords with an attempt at plausible deniability.

Some will claim I’m arguing that students should be shielded from points of view they may disagree with. I have not said that at all. I do think that when a university brings in, say, a known internet harasser who uses his public profile to intimidate and abuse women online, students have the right to protest the legitimacy being granted by the university. If anything, the letter suggests that the leaders of U. Chicago are trying to make a “safe space” for themselves so they can frame criticism they don’t want to hear as anti-free speech.

Update: Some important background info for people who mistakenly think this whole issue is about “silencing offensive speech”: “What University Of Chicago Students Think Of Their School’s Campaign Against ‘Safe Spaces’“

Illustration

Jen Sorensen’s illustrations have appeared in a variety of publications, including Nickelodeon Magazine, University of Virginia Alumni Magazine, C-VILLE Weekly, Dallas Observer, and other altweeklies.

For examples of Jen’s longer-form comics and graphic journalism work, please visit here.

A Field Guide to Bad-Faith Social Justice Activists

I’m declaring it a rule that every cartoonist gets to do one cartoon with made-up Latin names every five years. They are too much fun.

This cartoon is, of course, inspired by recent events surrounding Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who said a couple critical things about U.S.-Israel foreign policy using language that mildly, and possibly inadvertently, evokes anti-Semitic tropes. In a spectacular display of hypocrisy, the GOP has seized on Omar after remaining silent about, and often encouraging, the very real rise of anti-Semitism within their own ranks, most notoriously among the alt-right. (You will recall they literally chanted “Jews will not replace us” at the hate rally in Charlottesville.) So the grandstanding from the likes of Liz Cheney and Jeanine Pirro, who in a stunning display of Islamophobia linked Omar’s hijab to Sharia law, which she declared antithetical to the US Constitution, should not be taken seriously by anyone. These are bad-faith political opportunists, and the media should treat them as such.

The Republican guide to screwing the working class

Cartoon Flashback: The Guide to E-holes

I apologize for being a little bit of an e-hole myself, not updating my site until today. I was in DC at the Small Press Expo this past weekend, and came down with a nasty cold toward the end despite my prodigious use of Purell. Still feeling under the weather, although I seem to be improving slightly. On the plus side, I had an incredible time getting to rub elbows with some cartooning legends as well as hang with longtime pals, and will try to post some photos here soon.

This cartoon is from five years ago — but the message about texting while driving bears repeating.

This Week’s Cartoon: Warren vs. Brown Voting Guide

I have not had a chance to fix the stupid FTP problem with my site yet, so I’m going to link to this week’s cartoon over on Daily Kos.

I’m posting from Providence, RI, where I arrived last night for Netroots Nation. I’ll be on a panel Saturday morning with Tom Tomorrow and Matt Bors, sharing our cartoons and taking Q&A. More details here.

Honest Democratic debate questions

I have trouble watching the debates these days because they feel like a gigantic farce. They’re like a holdover from another era, normalizing events that gloss over Republicans’ breathtaking attacks on democratic norms. Here we are, gathering the candidates to discuss the nuances of their policy proposals so Americans can make a rational, informed decision about whom to vote for. Never mind the GOP’s scorched-earth obstructionism, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, Trump’s packed judiciary, absurd gerrymandering that favors Republicans, the Electoral College, and massive voter suppression efforts (more than 1,000 polling places have closed since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act). I realize this can sound a little cynical and defeatist, which isn’t my point. Hearing good ideas and having a vision for the Democratic party is important. But there’s a big authoritarian elephant in the room.

As I was finishing up this comic, I saw that Paul Krugman had some similar thoughts in his latest column.

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Follow me at the DNC

I’m in Charlotte, where I’ve begun my dual-pronged coverage of the Democratic National Convention for C-VILLE Weekly and the Austin Chronicle. Here are the links for following along:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/authors/jen-sorensen/

http://www.c-ville.com/author/jensorensen/

If you’re in a city other than Austin or Charlottesville, pick one; posts will be more or less the same. I’m hoping to integrate my tweets and photos before too long. Go ahead, leave a comment on either site!

New Facebook Page

I’ve started a new Facebook page where I’m going to be posting my comics and other things. This will be replacing the old Slowpoke Comics page, if you’ve been following me there. I hate to lose the large number of followers on the old page, but Facebook is somewhat inflexible when it comes to updating professional Pages.  Please help me rebuild — go forth and Like!

Open Letter to the Supreme Court

I neglected to post this while I was traveling and having some FTP issues, so in case you haven’t seen this elsewhere (it is the most widely-shared thing I’ve ever drawn), please check out this 4-page “graphic op-ed” I created for Kaiser Health News. Click through for the rest of the comic.

It’s a personal piece about my history with health insurance on the individual market. During the Affordable Care Act debate, there was lots of discussion about “death panels” and other complete nonsense, but little about the difficulties faced by self-employed people. Being a freelancer is hard enough — when you throw in this disincentive, it becomes downright impossible for many people.

Suffice it to say, I’m not optimistic about the Supreme Court’s looming decision.

Return of the Selective ‘Free Speech’ Warrior

There’s a certain cadre of pundits who get a lot of mileage out of posing as open-minded defenders of ideas and debate, but in reality they are stuck in the right-wing narrative that the threat is from the left rather than overwhelmingly from the right. It should now be obvious to anyone with half a cortex that the right’s screeching about “wokeness” and free speech is disingenuous, part of a larger strategy to impose their own radical ideology on America and undo all social progress of the 20th century. Creating a moral panic about public schools and universities is all part of the plan. Somehow these useful idiots (as depicted by the above cartoon character) tend to overlook the fact that today’s GOP is openly looking to the illiberal dictatorship of Hungary as a model. Orban has seized control of that country’s universities and cultural institutions to promote what he calls “Christian” values and “national identity.”

For more on the subject, I highly recommend this excellent essay from Dave Karpf.

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