The Sorensen Monologues
New Frontiers in Right-Wing Propaganda
When I first started drawing political cartoons around the turn of the millennium, it seemed like informed people were more overtly appalled by FOX News and the abdication of journalistic standards it represented. Sure, progressives still snark about FOX on Twitter, but in some ways, it has become normalized, just one “side” in a world where every fact, no matter how empirically-derived, must be viewed through the lens of “both sides.”
Enter Sinclair Broadcasting’s proposed takeover of a huge segment of the local TV news market. Trump campaign spokesgoon Boris Epshteyn has hopped straight from the White House to the role of “Chief Political Analyst” for Sinclair news affiliates. And he’s penning op-ed columns too. Here’s one on the website for the local ABC station in Washington, DC in support of Trump’s policy of militarizing the police.
I highly recommend John Oliver’s segment on Sinclair for a more in-depth look at this catastrophe in the making.
Finally seeing the (torch) light
For background commentary, I’d suggest revisiting this cartoon and blog post.
I do think free speech is imperiled these days — by bullies, online harassers, those who practice intimidation to silence others (and call it speech), by authoritarian governments such as Turkey’s, Russia’s, and increasingly our own. See also this article about press freedoms threatened around the globe.
Backseat driver in Charlottesville
I went to UVA and lived in Charlottesville for sixteen years, so the weekend’s tragic events hit particularly close to home for me. At least two of my friends from college came close to being killed. The New Yorker interviewed one of them.
These atrocities were squarely the fault of white supremacists who came to Charlottesville looking to intimidate the community and pick a fight. While Trump has been rightly condemned over his “many sides” comments, it’s also important to remember his violent rhetoric against protesters at his rallies. You can find a rundown of some of the chilling remarks he made during his campaign here.
Today we learned that Fox News and The Daily Caller deleted posts celebrating video footage of liberal protesters getting plowed through by cars, a reminder that Fox is not a “news” network any more than Infowars provides “info.”
Playing the Country Card
Last week, as was widely reported, White House adviser Stephen Miller rather oddly accused CNN reporter Jim Acosta of “cosmopolitan bias.” As this Politico article notes, using the term “cosmopolitan” as an insult has historical precedent in nationalist (and largely anti-Semitic) movements. I wasn’t able to get into that level of detail with this cartoon, but this way of dividing the nation has chilling implications.
I take extra annoyance at such rhetoric, since I grew up in a rural area that is now Trump country. The road in front of my house was routinely dotted with horse manure from Amish buggies. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller grew up the son of a real estate developer in Santa Monica, bought a $450,000 condo in DC at age 23, and now lives in a million-dollar flat in the Gucci district. What we should be flinging right back at the GOP is the phrase “aristocratic bias.” Because that’s what they’re really about.
New plan suggestions for the Dems
As someone who has been drawing cartoons about the Democrats’ tendencies towards wimpiness and capitulation for around 17 years now, I actually think they’ve improved somewhat since the days of the DLC and the Iraq War. So I find some current criticisms to be overblown. Schumer’s “A Better Deal” rollout, however, was about as inspiring as pile of pudding. Perhaps less so, as I happen to like cold, creamy desserts. People want passion and conviction from their leaders, not bloodless boilerplate blather, even if some of the ideas aren’t bad.
Table the Label
Lately I’ve been feeling like progressives have become so entrenched in their own conceptual frameworks that we’re splitting hairs and engaging in name-calling instead of constructively addressing the big picture. This is not to say we can’t disagree; but the abuse of the confusing term “neoliberal” is not helping, considering very few liberals actually subscribe to market fundamentalism. And it’s complicated: Austerity, for example, is a neoliberal economic approach that was (thankfully) not embraced by the Obama administration. It should go without saying that the term “neoliberal” has nothing to do with political “liberalism” – but sadly it does seem to need saying.
On a similar note, I use the term “socialist” in this cartoon because I see it thrown around a lot, but Scandinavian countries don’t actually have socialist economies; “social democracy” is a more accurate way to describe those governments.
This earlier blog post has more thoughts on how we’re prone to labeling ourselves in unhelpful ways.
What Gets Called “Treason”?
The Constitution has a very narrow definition of treason — but conservatives only seem to notice when they are denying something anyone would normally call treason.
One of the supreme ironies of this whole Russia scandal goes back to Ann Coulter’s 2003 book Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. A primary thesis of that screed is that Joseph McCarthy was unfairly maligned by nefarious liberals (Joe Conason has more on why Coulter’s revisionist narrative and worship of McCarthy is absurd). So here we have one of the bestselling books of 21st-century conservatism, proclaiming that liberals who were falsely accused of treason by an out-of-control demagogue are themselves treasonous for merely daring to point this out. Fast-forward to 2017, when Coulter seems strangely unconcerned by the Trump family’s coziness with Russia, a repressive authoritarian state that kills journalists, quashes dissent, and is actively engaged in a plan to destabilize America and Western Europe.
Camp Suburbia
I don’t mean to insult people who live in campers out of necessity — it probably does make a certain amount of financial sense in some of today’s real estate markets — or eco-campers utilizing solar power and generally trying to be quiet and responsible. What I’m talking about is the phenomenon I’ve observed in my own recent travels, of oversize diesel pickups hauling enormous RVs hauling all manner of “toys” — motorcycles and 4-wheelers and dune buggies; of gargantuan RVs that literally look like tractor trailers; of people using, yes, weed whackers and obnoxiously loud generators that are the aural equivalent of a hammer to the head for hours on end. Back in the ’90s and early 2000s, we used to make fun of SUVs for being road hogs. Remember when Hummers seemed excessive? Now everything is getting bigger and louder and more disgusting, and no one even seems to notice anymore. The fact that Americans seem more oblivious than ever to this stuff, at this moment of climate crisis, with ice shelves collapsing and coral reefs experiencing a mass die-off, is astounding.
The Cult of Market Fundamentalism
A “classic” for the Fourth of July. While Trump doesn’t follow the dogma exactly when it comes to free trade (for better or worse, probably worse), he and most Republicans in Congress do seem to be true believers in this peculiar form of witchcraft (no disrespect intended to Wiccan readers).
The first step of confronting the problem is to name it. “Market fundamentalism,” a term I picked up from George Lakoff, should be a buzzphrase on the tips of everyone’s lips. It has become THE defining force — paired with racism — of Americans’ economic lives. Pundits and Democratic politicians should be throwing this concept around, ridiculing it like the joke it is. Instead, we’re fixated on the right-wing term “political correctness,” which blinds us to the real problems facing America. Swap these two out and you change the playing field.
Lunch shaming is a shame
Taking a break from headline news this week to talk about the lesser-known topic of lunch shaming. If you aren’t aware of this phenomenon, this provides a quick rundown.
