The Sorensen Monologues
Soldier Falls Into Hands of American Taliban
The thuggish behavior on the right toward Bowe Berdgahl, his family, and his community has been nothing short of disgusting. In the past week, his parents have received multiple death threats. Officials in his hometown of Hailey, Idaho are being harassed with profane and sometimes intimidating phone calls, such as one promising “consequences” if the town held a welcome home party.
We don’t know all the details yet of what Bowe was thinking when he wandered off his base – or the state of his mental health. But he paid a price for that mistake: five years of hell. Republicans and their media stooges have been trying to gin up controversy about soldiers killed searching for Bowe, but as the NY Times reported by doing actual journalism, the reality was far more complicated. It is reprehensible that CNN has been presenting as fact highly charged claims that this article shows to be very dubious.
I’ve been to Hailey, and saw the weather-worn yellow ribbons flying for Bowe long after the country had moved on from that news story – and from Afghanistan altogether. If Bowe wandered off, so did the rest of America.
Special thanks to Markos Moulitsas, author of American Taliban.
Shooting Star
To be clear, I have no problem with how the Isla Vista shootings have led to a discussion of misogynist hate groups and violence against women. That’s an important conversation to have. What I’m criticizing is the folly of obsessing over details of a shooter’s life and broadcasting his every utterance in the name of “understanding” what happened. Studies show these events are a kind of social contagion exacerbated by certain kinds of news coverage. Austria faced an analogous situation with a spate of subway suicides; a campaign urged less dramatic and personalized coverage, and after Austrian media took this advice subway suicides declined by 80%. (See this PDF from the CDC and other medical groups for details.)
Many progressives bristle at the thought of holding any information back; they associate it with censorship, priggish schoolmarmism, and McCarthyism. But our current methods of reporting on these tragedies do sweep something under the rug: the media context for these events. The news doesn’t just passively reflect reality, and sometimes less really is more. Good journalism does not require publishing shooters’ pictures nor their manifestos, and if news outlets do, they should acknowledge that they are quite possibly contributing to more deaths in the name of keeping the public “informed.”
I’m not saying we shut down all discussion completely; there are ways to report on a mass killer’s motivations without promulgating his entire oeuvre. Responsible reporters can write non-sensationally about the web communities he frequented, etc. And certainly we can talk about the need for better gun control. Changing the nature of reporting is not incompatible with discussing the root causes that lead to these tragedies.
The point I am making is not new. Garry Trudeau made much the same argument back in 1977 in his famous criticism of the New York Daily News coverage of Son of Sam (below I reprint the first of six Doonesbury strips on this topic). Nobody listened then and nothing has changed.
Solar Tax Quacks
As this LA Times article lays out, an unholy alliance of the Koch Brothers, ALEC, Grover Norquist and utility companies is mounting a nationwide effort to roll back states’ renewable energy requirements and penalize solar customers with a hefty monthly surtax. Apparently all that stuff about cutting taxes and drowning government in a bathtub goes out the window when profits are threatened.
Not all conservatives are on board, though. It’s safe to say that taxing solar panels isn’t sitting well with off-the-grid Tea Party types. in Arizona, Barry Goldwater Jr. is leading an effort called Tell Utilities Solar won’t be Killed, or TUSK, stating that “Monopoly utilities want to extinguish the independent rooftop solar market in America to protect their socialist control of how we get our electricity.” That’s an interesting way of putting it, reminding me a little of my “corporate collectivism” cartoon from a few weeks ago.
ABC/Yahoo News interview
When I was in DC for the Herblock ceremony, I did a quick video interview with Rick Klein and Olivier Know at ABC News. The video just went up today as part of the “Power Players” series on Yahoo News (apparently I am now a “Power Player” — ha!).
I will say, this is one of the best interviews I’ve ever done, as the hosts were well-prepared, and the editing is excellent. They spliced in some great images to match the conversation, including one of Voodoo Donut in Portland while we discussed my “Snack Gentrification” cartoon. Coincidentally, I found myself trying artisanal pork rinds at a trendy new restaurant later that night.
Getting a TV makeover was also fun. A mere half hour before this was filmed, I was wandering the streets of DC in a deluge, and they somehow transformed me from a soggy she-beast into a news anchorwoman.
Cloud Control
It was time to upgrade my version of Photoshop last week, and as many a visual artist can tell you, Adobe is steering its users into the “Creative Cloud.” This is a monthly subscription service, wherein the same programs that cost several hundred dollars in 2006 now cost… well, there’s no telling really, since you keep paying into infinity. Apparently paying for software you can install on your computer and use as long as you like is passé. Not long after I purchased an old-fashioned non-cloud program, the Adobe server crashed, preventing people everywhere from signing into the cloud for a day or so. You could almost hear the screams of designers around the world.
If you’re a cartoonist who doesn’t need all the latest advanced photography features, I recommend buying one of the vanishing copies of Photoshop CS6 and sitting on it.
Herblock speech
The Herblock Foundation has posted the video and transcript of my acceptance speech on their website. The whole thing went well, but for some reason the camera makes me look about twenty pounds heavier than I am. I assure you I have not been celebrating my Herblock win by gorging myself endlessly on honey hams and chocolate tortes, although a chocolate torte would taste pretty good right about now.
Gift Ideas for the Unvaccinated
Before this cartoon appeared many places, I began hearing from anti-vaccine people. More are sure to follow in the coming days. It’s almost laughable for me to have to type this, but let me say up front: I have absolutely no ties to Big Pharma. In general, I find pharmaceutical companies to be morally skeevy, but this does not mean vaccinations are some sort of conspiracy. Nor does it disprove the science supporting vaccination as an essential part of public health.
When all reputable medical organizations — the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control, etc. –- tell us that that any link between autism and vaccines has been thoroughly refuted, it takes a hefty dose of paranoia to think that you know better. What is fascinating about this issue is that it parallels global warming denial, but with a large lefty contingent. It’s a bit depressing, actually. But if progressives want to continue calling themselves “reality-based,” they have to take on pseudoscience wherever it appears.
This all started with a fraudulent paper in a prominent medical journal, long since retracted and refuted. It then took on a life of its own, fed by celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy and even Robert Kennedy Jr. Nowadays it mostly boils down to the idea that Big Pharma is engaged in a huge cover-up in order to sell vaccines. I’m the first to note the many evils of many big corporations, but you cannot simply dismiss an overwhelming scientific consensus that there is no connection between vaccines and autism, based on many subsequent studies. There is a difference between healthy skepticism and anti-intellectual paranoia, and this clearly crosses that line.
This wouldn’t matter so much if it wasn’t vaccines we are talking about here, one of the most important life-saving inventions of all time. Experts in the U.S. say we are already getting small-scale outbreaks because of the anti-vaccine movement, and experts outside the U.S. are getting increasingly worried about the potentially catastrophic consequences if these ideas get entrenched in the developing world. A recent Center for Disease Control study estimates that vaccines in the U.S. from 1994-2013 will save 732,000 lives. We are talking about untold numbers of lives at stake here.
Here are just a few useful links:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism/
http://www.who.int/features/qa/84/en/
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/29/vaccine-autism-connection-debunked-again/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/10/the-new-pandemic-of-vaccine-phobia/28703/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130716-autism-vaccines-mccarthy-view-medicine-science/
Delayed posting + WaPo article
I had a whirlwind of a week in DC for the Herblock ceremony, and did not get around to posting the latest cartoon on Monday as usual. Fortunately(?), Donald Sterling is still making headlines by putting his foot in his mouth.
Also, be sure to check out this truly wonderful Washington Post article by Michael Cavna that was published the day of the Herblock event.
Society of Professional Journalists Award
Well, I’m having a good year. I’ve been named a winner of the SPJ’s Sigma Delta Chi Award, along with my colleague Angelo Lopez. Angelo is a talented cartoonist, and I encourage you to check out his work.
Let’s Talk About Checks
The Paycheck Fairness Act, recently torpedoed in the Senate, addressed some glaring problems that have generated less discussion than they should. This useful post (“Why Do Bosses Want Their Employees’ Salaries to be Secret?”) by Michelle Chen on The Nation explains the need for protections for workers who discuss their salaries:
Lily Ledbetter had been a loyal employee of Goodyear Tires for nearly two decades before she discovered she had been underpaid for years. What angered her most wasn’t the lost pay but the betrayal of her economic dignity.“When I was hired they let me know that if I discussed my pay, I wouldn’t have a job. So I had no way to know,” she said in a 2012 interview on One Thing New. When the 60-year-old Alabama mother realized (thanks to an anonymous tip) that she had been paid less as a plant supervisor than male coworkers, she recalled, “I felt devastated. Humiliated…. It just really made me sort of sick that all this time I had been getting awards and being told I was doing a great job, and no one had ever said I wasn’t making what I should be. I had no idea how much less.”
…
The struggle for fair pay isn’t captured in wage statistics; it’s part of a struggle against the asymmetry of knowledge that divides management and labor—and fundamentally, a struggle for a democratic workplace.
Well-said, and remarkable that so many Americans accept this asymmetry so unquestioningly.
The National Women’s Law Center has a handy PDF about what the Paycheck Fairness Act would actually do.
