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Centennial, Colorado requests anonymity for school shooter; I agree

Families and officials in Centennial, Colorado, the scene of the latest school shooting, have been taking a subdued approach to discussing the identity of the shooter, requesting that the media not name him or show his picture. I wholeheartedly agree. I have long maintained that extensive coverage of the shooters themselves is unnecessary and contributes to the problem.

Some members of the media bristle at this; it smacks of censorship, they claim. It prevents us from understanding why the shooting happened. But mass shootings are media phenomena; the media is part of the story. It’s not just a passive vessel for static facts. We can understand what led to a mass shooting without the exhaustive, titillating exploration of every detail of the killers’ lives. Moreover, this sort of sensational coverage of the shooter himself leads us to believe it’s an individual problem as opposed to systemic. I would argue it gets us farther from the truth.

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Comic in Bitch Magazine

I drew this month’s “Adventures in Feministory” comic in the back of the latest issue of Bitch, out now. I got to interview the great humorist writer Cynthia Heimel, author of “Sex Tips For Girls” and long-running columns in the Village Voice and Playboy. Heimel was one of my early influences, so this was, like, the coolest project ever. Print-only, so look on newsstands if you don’t subscribe.

Escape From Ronald Rump… Again

Matt’s latest cartoon has moved me to share a comic I drew seven years ago, the last time we went through a Donald Trump-oriented media frenzy (click for larger version).The corresponding blog post from April 27, 2004:

I sometimes watch late-night comedy shows while drawing the strip. One night recently, THREE shows in a row had interviews with Donald Trump or a sketch about Trump. When the networks want to ram something inane down our throats, they sure don’t hold back. No wonder a majority of Americans still think Iraq had something to do with 9-11, even though the White House once quietly admitted this was false (it was barely covered).

So, you see, this happens once every seven years. He’s like a PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS!

Slowpoke on NPR

Just found out my latest cartoon is on NPR right now. The comments section seems to have quite a few people trying to depoliticize the AZ shootings, blaming “both sides” for their partisanship. (Personally, I don’t think questioning the violent, paranoid rhetoric of Palin, Angle, Bachmann, et al, makes one particularly partisan, but whatevs.)

Not that there’s anything wrong with having strong political convictions. As reader AC wisely pointed out, people mistakenly believe “it is partisan politics generally, not any actual positions on either side, which is the problem.”

Supreme Debacle

The Supreme Court ruling overturning the Chevron doctrine was largely overlooked in the wake of the debate, but possibly even more apocalyptic. In short, the Republican majority gutted the precedent that gave deference to scientists and other experts at setting regulations for pollution, safety, worker rights — i.e., basic functions of government. Everything now has to go through the courts, which are jam-packed with Trump appointees and other Federalist Society-backed corporate extremists. This Slate article provides a good overview. To quote Justice Kagan, who I attempted to draw in the first panel: “the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue—no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden—involving the meaning of regulatory law. As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar.”

We all breathe air and eat food, and I assume many of the justices have children that they don’t want poisoned. No one escapes the impact of these rulings. But it’s their reality now and we’re just living in it. 

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Cruzin’ under the radar

This Bloomberg profile of Ted Cruz’s biggest backer, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, is so chock full of delicious details, I implore you to read the whole thing. For example, more on those owls:

Mercer has dubbed his house the Owl’s Nest. Owls seem to be something of a familiar for Mercer. He’s commissioned a succession of yachts, all called Sea Owl, the latest of which stretches to 203 feet, with a pirate-themed playroom for the grandkids and a chandelier of Venetian glass. At least one Sea Owl was fitted with a medical center and video links, so a stroke at sea, for instance, could be diagnosed and treated remotely by a former White House physician ashore…

At the Owl’s Nest, visitors pass through pillars crowned by a pair of owl statues, their wings outstretched as if taking flight. People who’ve been inside describe a pistol range, a series of secret passages, and an octagonal tower holding a two-story library.

Among Mercer’s other financial beneficiaries is an idiosyncratic guy (to say the least) conducting experiments on 14,000 vials of urine on a sheep farm in remote Oregon. It’s hard to explain, and even harder to fit into a cartoon, unfortunately. You’ll just have to read about it.

This would all be purely amusing were it not a reminder of the growing power of the far-right fringe, especially in the era of Citizens United.

Of course, this cartoon is by no means a complete list of Cruz’s shortcomings. The man is vile in too many ways to enumerate here.

Brand New World

Corporations sponsoring sporting events is obviously nothing new, yet the U.S. Open seems to take commercialism to the next level. In addition to the ubiquitous logos of upscale products and financial services splashed on every available surface, there are odd little promotions such as the instant replay (technically a “line call” to determine whether a ball was in-bounds) being rebranded the “Chase Close Call” as described in the comic. At the end of a match, the winner whacks balls into the crowd as part of the “Emirates Ball Flight.” There was also something involving Grey Goose Vodka that I can’t quite recall, aside from the fact that I found myself craving a greyhound cocktail afterwards.

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Pardon Our Mess

As you may have noticed, some parts of this site are still incomplete. For example, if you click on the “Order a print” button, it takes you a Store page filled with Latin gobbledygook. And the Illustration portfolio has just a few images in it, due to some technical difficulties with the plugin. I can assure you, this will all get fixed soon — I wanted to make the switch to the new site now, since my old site’s hosting plan will be expiring soon.

I’m especially stoked about the new site’s highly-searchable, visual archives — click on a subject in the tag cloud, and you’ll get thumbnails of all the comics on that topic. And cartoons are now connected to their respective blog posts, instead of being on separate pages. I look forward to doing more blogging now that everything is so up-front and easy to find. So yeah, stay tuned!

Scenes From SXSW Interactive

It’s probably a good thing that SXSW ended, or I’d never be productive again.

A couple of these drawings were purloined from a series of illustrations I was doing for the Austin Chronicle. I maintained an informal “SX Sketchbook” for their blog. You can check out my coverage here (this page links to previous installments).

I was particularly enamored with the trade show booth of an established HR company called TriNet. Realizing, perhaps, that their business is on the dry side, they invented a fake company called YamTrader, and set up a giant yam with food inside (albeit no yam dishes, if memory serves.) They had a yam mascot and everything. Note to self: next trade show, we are building a larger-than-life beet to catch editors’ attention.

Pride and Prejudice Anniversary Comic

Ever wonder what Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” would look like as a one-page comic? For the novel’s 200th anniversary, NPR Books asked me to create such a thing.

A technical aside: this was the first time I’ve ever had to lay out a comic specifically with mobile device readers in mind. Apparently NPR gets huge amounts of mobile traffic, so they split the comic up into individual panels that rearrange themselves depending on platform/screen size. Pretty interesting, and something Jane Austen likely never imagined would happen to her novel as she wrote it two centuries ago. (For a truly meta experience, check out this Storify of a Twitter conversation about making comics “responsive” between two news design people and myself.)

As a creator of complex female characters, of course, Austen was very much ahead of her time. Two hundred years ago, she was more highly advanced than most Hollywood screenwriters are today.

About

Jen Sorensen is a cartoonist and illustrator whose comic “Slowpoke” has been reprinted in such fine publications as Daily Kos Comics, the Village Voice, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, Funny Times, LA Times, CampusProgress.org, and dozens of altweeklies around the country. Her illustrations have appeared in MAD Magazine, Nickelodeon Magazine, The American Prospect, Legal Affairs, University of Virginia Magazine, and the Women’s Review of Books. She also enjoys writing about politics, and traveled to Denver to blog the 2008 Democratic National Convention for C-VILLE Weekly. In 2010, Jen received a Grambs Aronson “Cartoonist With a Conscience” award, part of the James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism given out by Hunter College.

For more information, and links to interviews with Jen, please see her bio page.

Slowpoke Tumblr

I set up a Tumblr page for those who want to keep up with me that way.