The Sorensen Monologues

Let it Beef

Americans are gluttons for news stories about smackdowns, insults, and personal rivalries. Someone says something outrageous on Twitter? We’re all over it. As for slightly more abstract issues like gerrymandering, we just don’t get as worked up. Some of us do, to be sure. But if gerrymandering could be translated into a simple verbal insult, it might resonate with more people. In this cartoon, I’m of course referring to the recent Supreme Court decision that allowed Texas’s discriminatory redrawing of Congressional maps.

Did you know that sea cows once existed? Now extinct, the Steller’s Sea Cow roamed the Bering Sea before humans hunted it into oblivion. Unfortunately, the sea cow did not resemble an actual cow.

Pros and Cons of the New Supreme Court

While I applaud the efforts to block Kavanaugh from joining the Court, I can’t help but feel that particular pooch was screwed a long time ago. To mix metaphors horribly: the ship of judicial extremism has sailed, the horse of market fundamentalism has left the barn. There isn’t even a barn anymore — it’s now a big box store.

I keep thinking of this dude I met when I was in Wisconsin in September of 2016. He was determined to vote for Jill Stein to “send a message.” I pleaded with him for half an hour, citing the Supreme Court over and over, but in the end he seemed unconvinced. Roe was a stake, and nobody seemed to care.

If you want to feel alarmed, read this Daily Kos diary about Kavanaugh and the environment, and this NYT column about the Court’s evisceration of voting rights. This ThinkProgress post about voting rights is also good.

If Life Imitated Politics

The Supreme Court announcement happened a little too late for my deadline this week, but I’m not sure I have too much to say right now.

Mr. Slowpoke and I have often marveled how U.S. politics can be so awash in unreality while other aspects of life still proceed mostly according to the laws of empiricism. Certainly there are scams and lies in everyday life too, but the idea of truth still exists in many places where society needs it to function. Airplane mechanics: still reality-based (for now)! If other fields took the same approach to facts as the White House, we’d quickly devolve into total chaos. Alas, this may be the case soon enough as all regulation of business ceases.

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Cartoon: Fun with Ethno-nationalist Dog Whistles

Like many progressive-minded Americans, I wish we could do a lot of things here the way they are done in Europe. So I’ve found it ironic and darkly humorous that various factions of the alt-right are touting the greatness of “European culture.” Unfortunately, it’s the fascism they’re drawn to.

Un-American Invasion

Much of the rhetoric the Trump administration uses to describe immigrants applies more to themselves than anyone else. There is an invasion going on — an extremist movement of authoritarian plutocrats using racism to take down our most basic democratic institutions. I thought it would be enlightening to use their own language against them. Notice that I am depicting Republican politicians and their associates, not the rank and file — because many of those people are simply being lied to by Fox. They’re living in an alternate reality, and in many ways are being victimized themselves.

The drawing of Michael Cohen in the first panel is based on the meeting he had with several mafia-esque characters while he was supposed to be in court. If you missed that, here’s the footage set to the Sopranos theme song.

Americans Separated From Their Decency

This is one of those issues that’s so sad, it’s hard to write jokes about it. To make matters worse, the administration is making great efforts to confuse people, saying the forced child separations are the fault of “Congress” or Democrats, so many Americans may not even understand who is really responsible. The disinformation is as significant as the policy.

Under normal circumstances, at least, you’d think there would be a great national revulsion. Back in 2005, the country reached a turning point after Hurricane Katrina, which revealed the Bush administration to be the incompetent buffoons that they were. Granted, it shouldn’t have taken so long for that particular epiphany to occur, but it did. In today’s media environment, such a political turning point seems almost impossible. I was shocked to learn that Trump’s Gallup poll numbers have actually gone up since the Canada/North Korea debacle, and have been trending upward for several months.

Allies of Evil

I have to say, the news from the past few days has me feeling more alarmed than ever. Trump’s behavior at the G-7 was, as others have noted, nothing less than an effort to destroy the West. While this all seems very Putin-esque, I also keep thinking of Viktor Orban, the far-right nationalist Prime Minister of Hungary, who has declared the era of liberal democracy to be over. Given the multi-pronged attacks on voting rights in the US, including Monday’s appalling 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that Ohio can purge people from its voter rolls if they fail to vote frequently enough, I fear we may be farther down the authoritarian path than many Americans realize. And Trump is, unfortunately, just the tip of the fascist-berg. Not to bum you out or anything.

The Life Cycle of a Slur

This week’s strip was inspired by the recent Samantha Bee controversy, in which the comedian referred to Ivanka Trump as a “feckless c-word” during a monologue about Trump’s treatment of undocumented immigrants. This came on the heels of Roseanne having her show canceled for making racist and anti-Semitic remarks on Twitter. Many on the right demanded similar consequences for Bee, who later apologized. But the two incidents were not the same. As I tweeted the other day:

Samantha Bee, a woman, calling a white supremacist wannabe-oligarch’s enabling daughter the c-word is punching up. A white person calling a black person an ape and spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories is punching down, historical abomination-style.

When it comes to slurs, it’s not about the word itself — it’s about the context. The meaning changes depending on who’s using the word, and who they’re talking about. Samantha Bee is probably the most feminist personality on TV right now. When she drops a c-bomb in the service of criticizing a woman who is complicit in oppression, it may be a crude insult — but it’s not sexist.

That said, I try to avoid using language in this way in my own work, since there’s too much room for misinterpretation. And there are reasonable debates to be had about the merits of certain types of reclaiming; I’ve even drawn cartoons in the past about the dangers of embracing your opponents’ insults (“tree hugger” being one example that hasn’t helped reframe the debate, in my opinion). HOWEVER! I’m not “making excuses” for Sam Bee simply because I’m a fan. Had she said something genuinely supportive of patriarchy, I’d criticize it. I think Rebecca Traister gets it right here:

It is true that in her critique of Ivanka Trump, Bee used an expletive that is explicitly misogynistic; it is wholly reasonable to object to the word cunt for feminist reasons. It is also reasonable and worthwhile to consider why a term for female anatomy has become such a potent pejorative; why does a word that means vagina also mean “very bad person”? That’s a valid question, but it’s crucial to consider it in this context. Bee was not reinforcing or replicating the crude harm that “cunt” has been used to inflict historically: the patriarchal diminishment and vilification of women. In fact, Bee was using it to criticize a woman precisely because that woman is acting on behalf of that patriarchy, one that systematically diminishes women, destroys families, and hurts children.

Given that we can’t even pass the Equal Rights Amendment, it’s probably a stretch to expect that many people get these subtleties. But one thing that is clear: we can safely dismiss the performative outrage from those who never gave a damn about misogyny until now.

Security Flaw Found in Americans’ Brains

In normal times, this cartoon might feel a bit like a cheap shot, but in today’s America, it’s unfortunately more like an accurate description. Incredible numbers of people have come to believe utter falsehoods, helped along by a roster of moneyed villains. Raising the accuracy and intelligence of our various media would certainly help, but we also need to solve the gullibility problem. Don’t ask me how we’re going to do this.

As one reader reminded me today, the Texas GOP actually opposed teaching critical thinking skills in its 2012 platform. You can’t make this stuff up!

Ballcap Semiotics

There’s been a flood of upsetting news stories lately, but — perhaps partly because of this — I felt like doing something more fun for a change. I recently purchased a Trucker Hat “Lite” at a thrift store after sifting through a massive bin of ball caps (rejecting ones with camouflage or golf clubs), which got me thinking about the powerful symbolism of headwear. Of course everything is political, even hats, so we end up back at Trump.

Doing a little research for this cartoon, I found out that the standard ballcap is actually referred to as a “Dad hat” in industry parlance. I did not know this.

Bourgeois Bubbas

One of the biggest intellectual scams perpetrated by the right is the idea that supporting an inclusive, pluralistic vision of America somehow makes one an “elite.” As a public school-educated daughter of teachers who grew up in a rural area, I especially resent hearing this from blue-blood multimillionaire frat boy types like Tucker Carlson. I mean, check out the Orwellian absurdity of this screenshot (from Media Matters):

Unfortunately, many progressives have internalized the “elite” label which is foundational to conservatives’ victimization narrative. Think of the language they’ve popularized over the years. There’s David Brooks’ “Bobos in Paradise,” which mocked “bourgeois bohemians.” There’s the vapid insult “limousine liberal.” Both terms imply a kind of hypocrisy; yet I would argue that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with progressives having money so long as they put that money towards addressing inequality and vote accordingly. Meanwhile, no such term exists to describe these wealthy posers on the right who fight policies that might actually help ordinary workers at every step.

Victim Mentality 2018

I’m a day late posting this here, as I was in Portland, OR over the weekend for my cartoonist pal Matt Bors’ wedding. This week’s comic addresses a longstanding trope of the right, that “liberals” wallow in a “victim mentality” that makes them weak and whiny, unlike conservatives, who obviously never complain about anything. Of course, we have seen right-wing assertions of of victimhood on full display recently, from the White House Correspondents Dinner controversy to the strangely sympathetic tone some have taken towards so-called “incels” in the wake of the Toronto massacre. Indeed, one might say contemporary American conservativism has become an unparalleled culture of grievance.