The Sorensen Monologues
This Week’s Cartoon: Masters of the Universe-ity
As a University of Virginia alum, I’ve been following the recent drama surrounding the ouster of President Teresa Sullivan very closely. Yesterday, Sullivan was reinstated by the Board of Visitors, to the great relief of just about everyone in the university community. It’s been heartening to watch the rallies and see good old-fashioned activism (aided by new-fashioned social media) clearly rewarded.
While this particular battle may have been won, the corporatization of higher education remains a problem. More than anything, this situation has revealed the dangers of the awesome hubris that can develop among certain wealthy individuals in positions of power. The handful of people behind Sullivan’s ouster included a couple billionaire hedge fund managers and a condo developer from Virginia Beach with a soft spot for the musings of David Brooks. Such experience does not qualify one to make sweeping decisions in secrecy about a major public university. Here’s a suggestion for those who think their success in extracting wealth from the marketplace means they’re brilliant Renaissance People capable of running anything: take a few of those millions and buy some humility. Please.
For more on the subject, I recommend this Prospect article by another U.Va grad.
Website Weirdness
I know, I haven’t updated the site lately. My host did a massive upgrade recently, which always seems to happen while I’m traveling, and it seems my FTP login was reset. I’ll sort it out soon. In the meantime, I have to prepare to fly to Rhode Island tomorrow for Netroots Nation!
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
Follow Daily Kos Comics at http://comics.dailykos.com
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.
Rebuttadendum
Most people seemed to appreciate this week’s cartoon, but I’ve noticed a couple comments elsewhere suggesting that I’ve been dishonest with my statement that more whites than blacks receive food stamps. These critics assert that because America’s white population is significantly larger, a higher percentage of blacks receive nutrition assistance, and I’m a big fat liar for not presenting things this way. To which I say: these nitwits are totally missing the point.
It’s no secret that poverty runs high among African-Americans due to a variety of historical factors, and I’m not trying to cover that up. Nor am I trying to pit racial demographics against one another. I’m simply pointing out that when you hear Republicans talking about people on food stamps, they tend to explicitly (or sometimes implicitly) refer to blacks, despite the fact that 5.15 million white households receive food stamps vs. 3.2 million African-American, as of 2009. The fact is, poverty is pretty diverse, and no one group should be singled out as “the food stamp people.”
Out of Touch
Tagg Romney recently tweeted this:
Har! Just a fun-lovin’, booty-stealin’ marauder! I’m sure these guys would get a real kick out of it:
Above video via a Plum Line post about a conservative laid-off mill worker who says Romney (and Bain Capital) destroyed his life.
Slowpoke Tumblr
I set up a Tumblr page for those who want to keep up with me that way.
Splitting Goatee Hairs
A number of readers have tweeted, emailed, and commented to inform me that I am confusing the Van Dyke beard with the goatee in this week’s cartoon. I call this goatee strict constructionism — sort of the Clarence Thomas view of facial hair (setting aside the fact that Clarence Thomas is actually a judicial activist). I believe in a broader interpretation, a living goatee, if you will. Or, to quote from previous-post commenter Mike Peterson:
So it turns out that absolutely nobody is wearing goatees these days after all.
The only other possible explanation is that language isn’t frozen in amber but grows and changes with time, and we know that can’t be the case.
I would also point readers to this Cincinnati Enquirer article on the history of goatees, which places the Van Dyke firmly in the chronology of goatee evolution (or devolution, as the case may be).
I mean, when’s the last time someone famous (Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart, Brad Pitt) sprouted one of these and everyone called it a Van Dyke? No, we use the word “goatee.” Oh, and Olbermann shaved his sprouting goatee just a day after this cartoon appeared on Daily Kos. COINCIDENCE???
This Week’s Cartoon: The Rise and Fall of the Goatee
Before a torrent of angry, goatee-defending email is unleashed upon my inbox, let me say I am mostly a fan of our furry friend. I find a well-maintained goatee to be far more appealing than a scraggly hipster beard filled with artisanal doughnut particles. What I’m talking about here is how the chin beard has been bastardized, its centuries of coolness diluted by present-day dipwads.
I’d already been thinking of doing a cartoon on the shifting symbolism of goatees when I noticed Pepper Spray Cop had one. He’s clean-shaven in the head shot that’s been floating around the internet, but he does have one in footage of the UC Davis incident (via Queerty):
The Simpsons Beat Me!
In the comments to last week’s cartoon blog post, reader Nick furnished this screenshot from e Simpsons episode, which bears an eerie resemblance to the first panel to last week’s strip.
Pretty eerie, huh? I have no memory of that Simpsons gag, even though I probably saw that episode at some point. But to give credit where credit is due, I thought I’d post them both here. The placement of the well is especially mind-blowing, but I would add that that’s where it goes, composition-wise.
