The Sorensen Monologues

The Gentrification Cycle

The last panel of this cartoon was inspired by a recent NYT article about the Belgravia neighborhood in London, where international jet-setters own much of the real estate. Multi-multi-million-dollar homes sit unoccupied for most of the year, leaving the streets deserted.

Here’s an idea. Let me suggest that the very finest properties be reserved for cartoonists and other artists, musicians and writers. Wealthy benefactors would take a cue from the Renaissance and pick up the tab, honored to support a rich cultural life in their city. The yuppies could then squabble over the crumbling fixer-uppers we leave unclaimed. (Yes, I’ve been spending too much time thinking about housing lately, and getting annoyed at gentrification.)

Chain of Fools

The Obama administration’s plan to cut Social Security benefits boggles the mind. In addition to being unnecessary and cruel, it’s politically disastrous.

Oh, but I’ve heard some downplay the political concerns. “It’s not like people going to vote for the Republicans, who’ve been trying to gut Social Security for decades!” they say. To which I respond: Do not underestimate the cluelessness of low-information voters. Remember in 2010 when the R’s convinced so many people that they were the great defenders of Medicare? They’re going to have a field day with this. (I don’t mean to imply that seniors are low-information voters any more than anybody else; I merely think many American voters tend to have short political memory, and are easily misled.)

Mockery of Justice

Hat tip to my friend Audrey Bilger, who collected some of Scalia’s more outlandish pronouncements about gay people for the Ms. Blog. Scalia thinks it’s perfectly Constitutional to ban not only gay marriage, but gay sex, on the basis of “morality.” Quoth Scalia:

“I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible–murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals–and could exhibit even ‘animus’ toward such conduct.”

Let’s just stop right there. It’s well past time we decoupled the concept of “morality” from sexuality. There’s nothing immoral about sex between two consenting adults (setting aside matters of cheating while in a committed relationship). Scalia is still steeped in an archaic “Moral Values” conception of the universe — not that this comes as a surprise to anyone. Hey, I have moral values too, and they tell me that treating gays and lesbians like second-class citizens is wrong.

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!

National Cartoonists Society Awards

I’ve been nominated for an NCS Award this year in the Editorial Cartooning division. Woohoo! I face tough competition from my colleagues Clay Bennett and Michael de Adder. A full list of division awards nominees is available on the NCS site.

New Abortion Laws

The fetal heartbeat bill passed in North Dakota might not survive a legal challenge, but other radical laws may have the effect of shutting down the state’s lone abortion clinic. So, poor desperate women of North Dakota: you may as well just give up and kick back at Preggers, where every night is Ladies Night.

Ten Years Ago

Amazing to me that it’s been ten years since I drew this. Seems like only yesterday that I was huddled in my room in a group house, feeling sickened as I watched the first bombs drop on Iraq. We didn’t have cable, so I watched lots of NBC, and let me tell you, it was bad.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Times

This cartoon has generated predictable comments about being about a “silly” subject. I get it; a lot of people, including many progressives, are opposed to NYC’s proposed measures to cap soda sizes at 16 oz. Never mind that the chief scientist for the American Diabetes Association predicts that up to one in three American adults will have diabetes by the year 2050. And silly me, paying attention to conclusive studies proving that excessive sugar (with sodas being the primary culprit) is killing people.

“Educate consumers, don’t engage in Prohibition!” some readers have commented. Well, education efforts in situations like this don’t work, especially when competing with billions of dollars in marketing from multinationals. Also, the sugary drink restrictions aren’t prohibition — they’re regulation. You’re still free to swig as many 16-oz. Cokes as you like.

This isn’t about “controlling” or “feeling superior to” other people. This is about challenging shifting cultural norms that are being driven by super-sized industry profits. But hey, keep drinking that corporate Kool-Aid! No one’s stopping you.

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.

This Year’s Hot Startups

I’ll be attending my first SXSW soon, with the Interactive portion providing the impetus for this strip. As a member of the press, I’m getting some pretty entertaining emails about startup launches and other tech company promotions.

While I was working on this, I came across this interesting NYTimes article about the folly of thinking apps will solve all our problems; hence the third panel of this strip. Some apps are useful, but I’m still waiting for the one that will turn me into a super-organized person.

Idle Threat

The Environmental Defense Fund website has some myth-busting facts about idling. Did you know idling for ten seconds burns more gas than restarting your car? Or that diesel engines produce more than 40 hazardous air pollutants? And that sitting in a cloud of your own exhaust with the heater on is really lousy for your health?

I’ve noticed a string of egregious idlers lately. The first was a young woman tapping away at her iPhone in a posh SUV in a shopping center parking lot. Temperatures were mild, so it’s not like she was braving the elements or anything; it was just internal combustion for internal combustion’s sake, I guess. The following day, I witnessed a pickup truck belching putrid exhaust for at least 20 minutes outside a convenience store. In this case, it was cold out, and a woman was waiting in the truck for her companion in the store, but seriously. Go inside and warm yourself by the spinning hot dogs or something! Then, while staying at a motel out of town, I observed a tractor trailer idling in an empty lot from dusk until the next morning. It was cold and snowy, and my guess was that the truck driver opted to sleep in the truck with the heat on — spent fuel be damned! — instead of paying for a motel room. Which is frankly pretty sad, but also alarming if you’re not a fan of global warming or particulate matter in the air you breathe.

After this cartoon was published, someone involved in the production of a documentary about idling in NYC contacted me — it turns out “Idle Threat” is the name of their film. You can watch the trailer here.

Postal Service of the Future

Conventional wisdom seems to be that the financial difficulties of the Post Office are due to the rise of email. The Postmaster General noted this himself as he announced the end of Saturday delivery. But to only look at competition from email is to miss the larger ideological picture — namely, that privatizing USPS has been a goal of market absolutists for decades. The real “crisis” faced by the PO is the absurd requirement, set by Republicans in Congress, that the agency fund retiree benefits for the next 75 years — paying for future employees who haven’t even been born yet! This article on Alternet provides an overview of how the service is under attack. Never mind that the Postal Service isn’t taxpayer-funded; privatizing it is still part of the Cato Institute’s agenda. It seems obvious to me that replacing USPS with a patchwork of private mail delivery companies would be an unmitigated clusterf#ck. Believe it or not, the private sector is not always the most efficient (see: health insurance).