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SPX Appearance

I leave tomorrow for the 2011 Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD. I missed the last two, so I’m looking forward to reliving my old Fall ritual again (I used to go every year). If you’re in the area, stop by my table. I’ll be signing books and will probably have some prints on hand as well. I’d tell you the table number, but there might be some reshuffling due to earthquake-related repairs to the hotel, so you’ll just have to find me.

In related news, here’s a Washington City Paper interview with me in advance of the show. Many thanks to the estimable Mike Rhode. Coincident with this week’s cartoon, there’s an ad in rotation on that page with a BIG QR CODE!

Announcing my new gig: Graphic Culture

Some of you have noticed a lack of activity here on the blog, and later posting of cartoons than usual. This is because I have started working as Comics Editor for Fusion, a new media company from ABC and Univision. If you aren’t familiar with Fusion, it’s both a cable channel and digital news outlet aimed at diverse young adults. (It’s OK if you’re not a young adult — you can still enjoy it.)

Last fall, we launched Graphic Culture, a collection of cartoons, comics, and longer-form graphic journalism pieces, as well as occasional animation and articles about cartoonists. The site is still in “Beta” — a whole new site, and Graphic Culture front page, is coming soon. But I invite you to check it out now. We’ve published lots of great stuff already, including this roundup Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

If you’d like to help out, please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. I’m very glad to be able to create new opportunities for cartoonists and bring new comics projects into the world.

So now you know why I haven’t been blogging much. I have a good excuse!

SlowpokeBlog Flashback: On Obama

Two years later, I find it interesting to read what I wrote about Obama on the eve of the 2008 Virginia primary:

Tomorrow is the Virginia primary, and for the first time ever I am considering intentionally not voting… The trouble is, neither Obama nor Hillary have shown solid progressive leadership. Both of them pander to the right to the point of grotesquery. I could almost forgive Obama his weak health care plan even though that issue is extremely important to me, but that “Harry and Louise” ad was so wildly irresponsible, it really made me question his judgment. Wouldn’t it be nice if Obama used his rhetorical talents to promote a real health care plan? He has also repeated right-wing lies about there being a Social Security “crisis”; his praise of Ronald Reagan was steeped in gauzy right-wing frames about the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s; and his campaign actually created an oppo page about Paul Krugman, a true-blue progressive hero whose intellectual integrity I greatly admire… Obama has been so reckless in his approach to these bedrock issues that I simply don’t trust him. Sorry to rain on the hope parade, people, but there it is.

I actually admire Obama for what he managed to accomplish on health insurance — but aside from that, I’d say my misgivings were justified. Not that you’ll ever see me as a vaunted TV pundit.

If Watergate Happened With Today’s Media

I was busy gestating during the Watergate crisis, and not paying much attention to the news, but hopefully this re-creation will resonate with people who lived through it. This comic was of course inspired by the Nunes memo, about which an objective headline might look something like: “Republicans release piece of garbage intended to mislead public about the Russia investigation.”

An amazing and highly-relevant detail that should be household knowledge but that I learned only this week: the origins of Fox News can be traced back to the Nixon White House. The Nixon administration wanted more favorable coverage in the media and hatched the idea of creating a pro-GOP news network. Roger Ailes offered to do it, though it took some 25 years for the network to actually materialize. Via the late Gawker (which was sued out of business by billionaire Trump backer Peter Thiel):

But according to a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the intellectual forerunner for Fox News was a nakedly partisan 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the “prejudices of network news” and deliver “pro-administration” stories to heartland television viewers.

The memo—called, simply enough, “A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News”— is included in a 318-page cache of documents detailing Ailes’ work for both the Nixon and George H.W. Bush administrations that we obtained from the Nixon and Bush presidential libraries.

Flash forward to February 1, 2018. Fox’s Geraldo Rivera tells Sean Hannity “Nixon never would have been forced to resign if you existed in your current state back in 1972, ’73, ’74.” (Hat tip to Daily Kos commenter MiketheLiberal who alerted me to this development, which I’d missed).

Between the corrupt Fox and an intimidated/lobotomized mainstream media deathly afraid of showing “liberal bias,” we have a crisis of journalistic ethics on our hands, one that deeply threatens American democracy and, ultimately, the freedom of the press itself.

(Full disclosure: I currently do editing work for the company that used to publish Gawker.)

This Week’s Cartoon: “Media-Made News, Alternate Version”

I’m not one of those people who like to say, “Why is the news always so negative? Why can’t they report the GOOD news?” I can’t stand those people. News outlets must report unpleasant facts, for sure. But what I question about the case of pastor Terry Jones — who, as you may have heard, threatened to burn the Koran — is its newsworthiness. Had some major American political figure (Sarah Palin, anyone?) threatened to do that, I’d call it news. But some podunk preacher with a congregation of 50? Please. That’s a PR stunt, a “News of the Weird” story at best.

It’s important to remind ourselves that news doesn’t just happen; it gets created. Lots of things happen every day, and it’s the job of journalism to select what’s important. In the case of 24-hour cable news, controversy — especially of the “culture war” variety — will always trump stories about peace efforts. I used to do web work for a professor who ran a number of interfaith programs at the University of Virginia. (Yes, that page still bears my handiwork.) As far as I know, he hasn’t attained even a fraction of the celebrity as that nutball pastor.

This Week’s Cartoon: “This Week in Celebrity Imitation”

For more on the Lady Gaga contact lens phenomenon, check out this NYT article.

I’d heard Glenn Beck had started an online “university,” but only got around to looking at the website recently. Do you know what premium Glenn Beck website subscribers are called? INSIDER EXTREME MEMBERS. Somehow, this seems highly appropriate.  Even more appropriate? This image of Beck that appears on the INSIDER EXTREME page. Yes, this man, in a straitjacket of caution tape, is perhaps the most powerful political voice in America. Methinks it says it all.

Service Announcement

Thought I’d mention that my online activities may be a little light for the next month or so. Mr. Slowpoke and I will hopefully be moving into our new Seattle digs soon, and I’ve got some freelance work piling up (can’t complain about that!). So I may not be posting much more than the weekly cartoon here until we get settled. In the meantime, I will probably continue to issue occasional bleats on Twitter, and you should, of course, join the Slowpoke Facebook page.

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This Week’s Cartoon: Post-Election Punditspew 2010

You know, as upset as I am that the Democrats didn’t go on the offensive enough, I kind of feel sorry for them. Obama bends over backwards to be bipartisan, faces an unbudging wall of opposition that includes some members of his own party, and the Dems still get blamed for not reaching hard enough across the aisle. Meanwhile, Republicans can be as fiery and filibustery as they want to be. To illustrate this double-standard, I thought it would be a good occasion to bring back Mr. Perkins as the flaming conservative. You can see his previous appearances here, here, and here.

I was pleased to see a reader on the Slowpoke Facebook page noticed the spelling of “faeces.” I like to think the Latinized spelling adds to Mr. Perkins’ pomposity, and also classes up the joke a bit. In general, I try to keep scatological humor to a minimum, although I could not resist the idea of projectile-evacuating pigs here.

Buffer Buffoonery

You can see a graphic comparing the 35-foot clinic buffer zone with the Supreme Court’s luxurious 252-foot buffer zone here.

I’ve been to a couple national political conventions now where the “free speech zones” can hardly even be found by convention-goers. This has always struck me as questionable. And yet the slender measure of security afforded to visitors of Massachusetts’s abortion clinics, which have been subjected to horrific violence in the past, is unconstitutional? Seems like the justices are playing legal Calvinball here.

More recommended reading on McCullen v. Coakley: this piece and this other piece by Dahlia Lithwick on Slate. A key quote:

the First Amendment shouldn’t be a Trojan horse that swallows every other right that we cherish. I think the First Amendment and I need to see other people for a few days.

And yes, things have only gotten worse in the 24 hours since I drew this cartoon.

In the Minority

I spent a lot of time last week reading Muslim cartoonists’ responses to Charlie Hebdo, as well as interviewing some myself. Many hold complex views like the one in the fifth panel of this cartoon. All support free speech and deplore the attacks, despite having varied opinions on Charlie. Many operate under threats themselves. Some mention cartoonist Naji al-Ali, who was assassinated in London in 1987. Most Westerners don’t even know about this.

I haven’t seen any cartoons yet from the perspective of a French Muslim immigrant wrestling with these difficulties. One Charlie cover, in reference to killings of Muslims in Egypt during the 2013 coup d’etat, showed a Muslim man holding a Koran, both being sprayed with bullets under the caption “The Koran is shit.” Were this a Jew holding the Talmud, we would rightly recognize that as anti-Semitic. To say such a cartoon in this context is only about religious cosmology is a narrow, literalist interpretation worthy of our current Supreme Court. Religion and identity are hopelessly intertwined here, amidst a backdrop of history that hasn’t always been pretty.

I’ve seen a number of statements to the effect that we cannot — must not — talk about the Charlie Hebdo cartoons because that would be tantamount to blaming the victims. To be clear, I disagree with the Pope’s oddly-pugnacious phrasing that if one mocks religion, one can expect a punch. That’s a very unsettling way of putting it that excuses violent behavior. I do, however, agree with many Muslim cartoonists that we can blame the terrorists AND exercise our freedom of expression to talk about the cartoons. We can hold these two thoughts in our head. They are not mutually exclusive.

How not to be a sexist jerk this election season

I swore I wasn’t going to do an election strip this week, but the alternative was a comic about excessive amounts of cellulose filler found in cans of grated Parmesan cheese. You can guess how well that went.

Let me say up front that I do not consider Bernie to be a sexist jerk, since I know that’s what many people are going to assume. To the contrary, I think he’s a feminist. He did, however, say something uncool that I felt needed calling out (in the same spirit, let’s say, that he publicly criticizes Obama when he disagrees with him). For those unfamiliar with the backstory, Bernie was defending a controversial comment made by the rapper Killer Mike (who was actually quoting a feminist scholar friend) about a uterus not qualifying one to be president. Setting aside the point that I think most Hillary supporters are factoring in more than just the uterus situation, Bernie’s claim that he would never ask voters to support him because he’s a man struck me as an odd case of false equivalence, the kind of context-free, ahistorical argument we tend to hear from right-wingers shooting down affirmative action or calls for greater workplace diversity. Of course he wouldn’t ask people to vote for him because he’s a man. There’s no need!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not particularly attached to either Hillary or Bernie, but I do think we need more women in politics. While gender certainly — obviously! — shouldn’t be the only factor, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a female president. And while I think the “Bernie Bro” phenomenon has been somewhat overstated, I’ve come to realize that a lot of otherwise well-meaning people just don’t quite take our nation’s glaring absence of a single female president or vice president very seriously. You don’t even have to support Hillary to acknowledge that solving the problem is important. Just as President Obama has provided a positive role model and sense of possibility to countless numbers of people, a woman in the Oval Office would have a powerful effect.