The Sorensen Monologues

This Week’s Cartoon: “Pundit Retraining”

I realize creative destruction happens when technology changes, and to some extent it’s inevitable.  (The kind of “creative” destruction Romney practiced at Bain: not so good.) But some people become cheerleaders for economic disruption without the appropriate amount of empathy for affected workers, and that annoys me.

If you think the pundit in the cartoon bears a passing resemblance to Thomas Friedman, I won’t argue with you. Friedman isn’t as empathy-challenged as they come, but he’s pretty bad. He endlessly fantasizes about retraining Americans to be high-tech imagineers, even though our current unemployment woes are broad-based, not structural.

“In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle… Average is over,” he wrote in a recent tone-deaf column that glowingly referred to the above-average workers in China who were roused in the middle of the night to work a 12-hour shift installing iPhone screens. Aside from his apparent lack of concern that such labor conditions totally suck, it’s kind of haughty to imply that the unemployed are suffering from a case of averageness. There are plenty of highly-educated Americans who can’t find jobs — never mind the fact that many jobs out there barely utilize your education. If we are to dismiss the average or subpar, then perhaps Friedman’s column should be the first to go.

This Week’s Comic: Fallopitarians Protest Health Care Law

Few things are as grating as watching pundits like David Brooks get on a sanctimonious high horse about contraception and religious freedom, as though they were one with the salt-of-the-earth faithfolk. No matter that religious groups can be quite energetic about dictating public policy for those who believe differently than they do. If anything, forcing employees to conform to your religious beliefs seems to violate their freedom of conscience. It’s not like the owners of Catholic hospitals and universities are being forced to pop the Pill themselves, or shtup with a government-mandated jimmy hat. Somewhere high above, the aliens are laughing at us.

And yes, my rendering of the Fallopitarian bishop is partly inspired by the Church Lady.

Travel Article

Exploring my outdoorsy side once again, I’ve got another travel piece in today’s Oregonian. “Community spirit, Portland expatriates keep Galena Lodge aglow in the snow”

Political Column Illustrations

Lately I’ve been illustrating the Dallas Observer’s local political column, written by Jim Schutze. Jim’s column is something of an institution,  so it’s an honor to be providing the visuals. I’ve learned a lot about the Dallas political scene in the process, and can only say that Molly Ivins was probably right when she declared Texas politics the “finest form of free entertainment ever invented.” Here are a couple recent ones; I may post more eventually.

Column about invasive zebra mussels

Column on FEMA certification going to an unqualified public official

This week’s Cartoon: Komen’s Wardrobe Malfunction

I actually wrote this before M.I.A. flipped the bird at the Super Bowl halftime show, causing everyone to bring up Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction again. Such are the happy accidents of cartooning.

The blowback against Komen has been so impressive, I keep thinking of the March For Women’s Lives that I attended in DC in 2004. It was a massive and awe-inspiring demonstration (though it barely registered a blip in the media). Hard to believe that was nearly eight years ago now.

To give credit where credit is due, my colleague Ward Sutton (whose work appeared on Daily Kos Comics a few months ago) drew a cartoon after the Janet Jackson incident that involved a chestal inscription. That image, unfortunately not online, is permanently seared into my brain. So he’s kinda the Original Breastwriter.

This Week’s Cartoon: Politics 101 – It’s the System, Stupid

If I only had a dollar for the number of times someone has accused me of hating the rich or wanting to punish success, I’d be a card-carrying member of the 1%. OK, I exaggerate slightly. But it’s simply not true that that’s where I’m coming from, nor is that the motivation behind OWS.

A couple weeks ago, the NYT published an article interviewing several wealthy people who had grumbly things to say about the Occupy movement. The quote that stuck in my mind was one from Adam Katz, the founder and CEO of private jet service Talon Air.

To many, 99 vs. 1 was an artificial distinction that overlooked hard work and moral character. “It shouldn’t be relevant,” said Mr. Katz , who said he both creates jobs and contributes to charitable causes. “I’m not hurting anyone. I’m helping a lot of people.”

It may well be the case that Mr. Katz is a decent person who’s done a lot of good. But I find myself wondering: how does he vote? Does he support politicians who make it harder for ordinary people to be successful like him? Who appoint Supreme Court justices who seem hell-bent on creating plutocracy? Does he have any concern at all about our Gilded Age levels of inequality? Does he support the carried interest tax break that allows Mitt Romney to pay only a 13.9% income tax rate? These policies, and the arrogance, rationalizations, and excessive self-congratulation that lead to them are the things I hate. Not the rich. (Props, by the way, to the Patriotic Millionaires.)

Out of curiosity, I did a little digging about Katz’s political contributions. According to this site, things ain’t lookin’ good.

This Week’s Cartoon: “Consumer Nudism”

I decided to take a week off from the Republican primaries and other assorted nonsense in order to address the pressing matter of “five-fingered” footwear. The other naked-themed items leapt out at me around the same time. I don’t have a problem with minimalist shoes or other back-to-basics products, but I do find them curious cultural artifacts. Simplicity has major authenticity in this cluttered world. (Somewhat-related strip here.)

While researching this strip, I learned that Naked juices are owned by PepsiCo and Odwalla by Coca-Cola. It’s like a high-end fruit drink proxy war!

This Week’s Cartoon: “Romney Straps Worker to Roof of Campaign Bus”

I assume most people have heard about Mitt Romney’s dog-on-car incident, especially now that even Newt Gingrich is attacking him over it, but to recap briefly: back in the ’80s, Mitt stowed the family pooch in a carrier on the roof of the family station wagon for the duration of a 12-hour drive to Ontario. After several hours, the dog, an Irish Setter named Seamus, developed gastric distress that made itself evident on the windows of the station wagon. Mitt stopped at a gas station to hose down the dog and the car, and continued on his merry way, Seamus still riding aloft.

As I drew Mitt’s bus, I got to thinking about the Romney campaign logo. I find the symbolism of these things fascinating. The Romney logo divides the “R” into red, white and blue stripes. It sort of looks like three people standing in a row, or an abstractly-shaped waving flag. But what I see most is an R within an R within an R: the rich protecting the rich protecting the rich.

Rebuttadendum

Most people seemed to appreciate this week’s cartoon, but I’ve noticed a couple comments elsewhere suggesting that I’ve been dishonest with my statement that more whites than blacks receive food stamps. These critics assert that because America’s white population is significantly larger, a higher percentage of blacks receive nutrition assistance, and I’m a big fat liar for not presenting things this way. To which I say: these nitwits are totally missing the point.

It’s no secret that poverty runs high among African-Americans due to a variety of historical factors, and I’m not trying to cover that up. Nor am I trying to pit racial demographics against one another. I’m simply pointing out that when you hear Republicans talking about people on food stamps, they tend to explicitly (or sometimes implicitly) refer to blacks, despite the fact that 5.15 million white households receive food stamps vs. 3.2 million African-American, as of 2009. The fact is, poverty is pretty diverse, and no one group should be singled out as “the food stamp people.”

This Week’s Cartoon: “The Color of Welfare”

You’d think that decades in politics would knock the racist claptrap out of someone like Newt Gingrich, but, well, this is the GOP we’re talking about. Instead, he just substitutes polite-sounding phrases like “African-American community” and “demand paychecks” for “those lazy blacks.” How does one go about demanding a paycheck, anyway? I’d like to be able to do that, and have one show up. That would be cool.

The dialogue in the third panel refers to Ron Paul’s Paranoid Kook Reports, which contained the theory that the LA riots only came to a halt because everyone went to pick up welfare checks. And right-wing noise machine poopshoveler Brent Bozell said on Fox News that Obama looked like a “skinny ghetto crackhead.” Rick Santorum has also made similar comments to Newt’s.

To be clear, my point here was not to pick on poor whites, but to criticize the singling out of one group when poverty cuts across multiple demographics. For data on food stamp usage, I looked at this USDA report (big PDF, via the ThinkProgress article linked above; page 75 has the breakdown) and this, which documents disproportionate rural usage, largely by children.

Out of Touch

Tagg Romney recently tweeted this:

Har! Just a fun-lovin’, booty-stealin’ marauder! I’m sure these guys would get a real kick out of it:

Above video via a Plum Line post about a conservative laid-off mill worker who says Romney (and Bain Capital) destroyed his life.

This Week’s Cartoon: “2012: A Mad Lib Odyssey”

Three years ago around this time, I was asked to draw a comic for C-VILLE Weekly about events in the year ahead. At first it felt like I’d been asked to predict the future, and I thought it would be difficult. But after a bit of mulling, I found I could write an entire two-page comic addressing many of the “big” news stories of 2009 — Obama’s inauguration! The Star Trek reboot! The First Puppy! — before the year even happened. It made me realize just how much news is formulaic. Not to diminish the importance of good journalism; on the contrary! It is the antidote to normalizing fluff.

So I decided to do a mini-version of my “predictive” comic, in a sense. Just remember it in November when you hear some pundit waxing triumphant about the American electoral process, which will most assuredly have sucked in a thousand ways, no matter who won.