Moore Room

New Blog Site @ Mooretoons.com

2009-01-03T07:32:00.001-08:00

After experimenting with different blog hosts I finally chose to install wordpress on my own site at mooretoons.com. Please drop by and leave a snarky comment.

I won't be cross-posting over here any more, and this blogger site is really just a mirror that I can't justify anymore. So now it's a pointer to the main blog.

Right Wing Syllogism Du Jour

2008-12-10T19:22:00.001-08:00

Shorter NY Times Caucus blog on conservative reactions to the pay-for-play scandal in Illinois: Obama is from Illinois. Blagojevich is from Illinois. Blagojevich is a scumbug. Therefore Obama must be a scumbag.

Repeat ad nauseum until 2012 or until something else rises from the murk. At least it gets Sean Hannity off of Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. For a little while.

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Wanderlost: Search Party Page 14

2008-12-10T09:02:00.001-08:00

Click the image to read the whole cartoon.

Yep. Black and white. So it goes.

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Scahill Tries to be Heard Through Din of "Change"

2008-12-06T17:48:00.001-08:00

Change change change change change hope hope hope hope hope change change cha -

I'm sorry - did you say something, Jeremy Scahill?

Anyone who took the time to cut past Barack Obama's campaign rhetoric of "change" and bringing an "end" to the Iraq war realized early on that the now-president-elect had a plan that boiled down to a down-sizing and rebranding of the occupation. While he emphasized his pledge to withdraw U.S. "combat forces" from Iraq in 16 months (which may or may not happen), he has always said that he intends to keep "residual forces" in place for the foreseeable future.

It's an interesting choice of terms. "Residual" is defined as "the quantity left over at the end of a process." This means that the forces Obama plans to leave in Iraq will remain after he has completed his "withdrawal" plan. No matter how Obama chooses to label the forces he keeps in Iraq, the fact is, they will be occupation forces.

Announcing his national security team this week, Obama reasserted his position. "I said that I would remove our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, with the understanding that it might be necessary — likely to be necessary — to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq." While some have protrayed this as Obama going back on his campaign pledge, it is not. What is new is that some people seem to just now be waking up to the fact that Obama never had a comprehensive plan to fully end the occupation.

Bu-bu-bu-but - change! Changey change. Hopey change hopey?

Answering anti-war liberal critics who seem surprised that Obama isn't Dennis Kucinich, Scahill parses Obama's voting record, his public statements, and the comments of his foreign policy campaign advisers. Worth a full read.

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Wanderlost Notice

2008-12-04T09:34:00.001-08:00

That's right. December 9th. Next Wednesday. How will this be accomplished? Simple: By taking a break from political cartooning.

Said break will last only a month. I am taking advantage of the holiday season to relax a little and focus on catching up with the "Search Party" story line.

I'm also thinking of some changes for In Contempt. I won't say what those are, as they are a little vague right now. But my thoughts are grounded in my view that political cartooning as we know it is moribund. I want to work on something new, though recognizably political and coherent with what I have done with In Contempt so far. That's all I should say for now. Like I said - "vague."

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Eff The 90's

2008-12-02T07:44:00.001-08:00

Have you been watching President-elect Barack Obama's appointments to his administration with a sense of confusion? A feeling of anti-nostalgia? Crying out, "Why all the ClintonAdmin re-treads!?"

Steve Fraser is your man. Writing in The Nation, Fraser echoes a familiar complaint by liberals about recent appointments, registers dismay at the nearly uniform "neo-liberal" ideology, and compares the group think to the greater diversity that stocked Franklin Roosevelt's cabinet during a transition period frought with peril.

Worth reading for historical boning up, I suppose, but I was more interested in Fraser's call for bolder action:

Under the present dispensation, the bailout state makes the government the handmaiden of the financial sector. Under a new one, the tables might be turned. But who will speak for that option within the limited councils of the Obama team?

A real democratic nationalization of the banks--good value for our money rather than good money to add to their value--should be part of the policy agenda up for discussion in the Obama era. As things now stand, the public supplies the loans and the investment capital, but the key decisions about how they are to be deployed remain in private hands. A democratic version of nationalizing the financial system would transfer these critical decisions to new institutions created by the Congress and designed to pursue public, not private, objectives. How to subject the flow of credit and investment capital to public control ought to be on the drawing boards if we are to look beyond the old New Deal to a new one.

Or, for instance, if we are to bail out the auto industry, which we should--millions of jobs, businesses, communities, and what's left of once powerful and proud unions are at stake--then why not talk about its nationalization too? Why not create a representative body of workers, consumers, environmentalists, suppliers and other interested parties to supervise the industry's reorganization and retooling to produce, just as the president-elect says he wants, new green means of transportation--and not just cars?

Why not apply the same model to the rehabilitation of the nation's infrastructure; indeed, why not to the reindustrialization of the country as a whole? If, as so many commentators are now claiming, what lies ahead is the kind of massive, crippling deflation characteristic of such crises, then why not consider creating democratic mechanisms to impose an incomes policy on wages and prices that works against that deflation?

Why not, in effect, assert greater control by the people over the economic forces that affect them? "Cuz that way lies socialism! Aaagh!" Onoz. Heavens to betsy. And, well, probably not. More like neo-social democracy.

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In Contempt (12/2/2008): Change is Coming!

2008-12-01T22:00:00.001-08:00

Click the image above to see the full size cartoon.

And yes, Virginia, I am back on a regular schedule. Hal-lay-loo.

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Greenwald's Running Tally of Revisionism

2008-11-30T10:21:00.001-08:00

Glenn Greenwald has been on a roll pointing out revisionism and hypocrisy (not to mention complicity) among the big media commentariat on subjects like the War on (t)Error, Iraq, imperialism and torture and detainment. Joe Klein and Tom Friedman have distinguished themselves as happy-talking fools in defense of the most egregious actions of state power and utter disregard for human rights. Greenwald's posts are long, but worth reading at least for the twists and turns these "hired pens" (as the ultimate statist Lenin once put it) take in their efforts to justify the abuses of the war-mongering powers. All of which lays the foundation for future wars waged with the kind of ahistorical blindness that made the current mess in Iraq conceivable in the first place:

For a short while, it appeared that the one silver lining in the carnage and devastation wreaked by the U.S. attack on Iraq would be a palliative effect on the war-loving pathology among our political establishment. As Vietnam did for some short period of time, Iraq could have re-taught both the evil and stupidity of commencing optional wars against countries that haven't attacked us and couldn't do so, and more generally, could have underscored the grave error in viewing the battle against Muslim extremism through the glorious prism of "War."

But with this intense Friedmanesque revisionism well underway -- whereby war cheerleaders like Friedman were Right and Good all along and it was only the incompetent Bush and Rumsfeld who ruined everything with their "bumbling" -- it seems increasingly likely that the opposite lesson will be learned. Attacking, invading and occupying other countries in order to change their governments to ones we prefer is the smart, wise and just thing to do. Friedman's term for it today is "collaborating with them to build progressive politics." Especially if there is another terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- but even if there isn't -- the only lesson being drawn from the Iraq debacle in these precincts is that from now on, we just need to plan and execute it better, so that the Good and Just people who cheer these wars on have their noble schemes vindicated a lot sooner and a lot more proficiently.

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Whipped Into a Frenzy

2008-11-29T20:05:00.001-08:00

I will not be the first nor the last person to observe this: the Black Friday stampede at a Long Island Wal-Mart that killed Jdimytai Damour suggests our culture is sick. It represents just about everything that is wrong with our economy: the big box store, the exploitation of low-paid seasonal hires, hyped-up materialism, desperation and greed for "bargains" and a "tradition" of post-Thanksgiving shopping, disregard for workplace safety standards — as a friend of mine observed before Damour's identity was known, "the poor guy was probably an undocumented worker." He wasn't, but given past practices by Wal-Mart and other global corporations, my friend's suspicion was not without reason.

That said, I won't martyrize Damour; he didn't "die for our sins." He died because people — the bargain-obsessed shoppers and the big box operators who whipped them into a frenzy — value things over people, "getting ahead" over courtesy. The store owners could not be bothered to provide adequate security; the shoppers could not be bothered to wait another five minutes for opening time or walk casually to make their purchases. Push down the pregnant woman! What do you mean we have to leave? I've been waiting since 9 o'clock last night!

In the wake of this awful event, consider the reported response by the Toy Industry Association to a letter-writing campaign launched by parents demanding fewer advertisements aimed at their children:

"If children are not aware of what is new and available, how will they be able to tell their families what their preferences are?" an industry statement said. "While there is certainly greater economic disturbance going on now, families have always faced different levels of economic well-being and have managed to tailor their spending to their means."

The full AP article deserves reading. It reports a sociologist and a social worker discussing desperate parents straining their budgets to meet the demands of their kids, despite facing unemployment and homelessness.

And while it is all well and good to counsel such parents on the virtues of saying "no" (with practice, I have become pretty good at it; but then, I'm a dick), the working poor have few other outlets for entertainment than television, where the psychological warfare is waged.

Yesterday — to take a random personal example — my four-year-old son vegged out in front of a full day "Sponge Bob Square Pants" marathon on Nickelodeon. How nice of those programmers at Nick to create 12 hours of non-stop Sponge Bob. They must have done it outta the goodness of their hearts, yes? Uh, no. Sponge Bob sells toys.

"I want that," my son would say on seeing a much hyped toy. Then another commercial. "I want that." And another commercial. "I want that." And so on. All day. Of course, we employed the usual parent artillery: uncommitted speculation ("We'll see...."), disbelief ("You don't even know what THAT is!"), outright rejection ("Not in my house") and sarcasm ("Of course you want that, honey. You want everything.")

Not pleasant, but not unendurable. I take it as part of the challenge of raising children in a crazed consumer culture. I won't shelter my kids from the ugliness of capitalism; I would rather arm them with it. That said, I cannot endorse the trial-by-fire so casually described by a toy industry consultant:

Gottlieb also contends that it's good for children to encounter toy ads — even in cases where products later turn out to be disappointments.

"It teaches, for very low stakes, how to navigate in our consumer culture," he said.

"They are going to have to spend the rest of their lives listening to every kind of marketing approach, and childhood is where they will learn to cope with it."

As for the economic pressure on parents, Gottlieb sounds a fatalistic note.

"Believe me, there are families with much bigger issues on their plates right now then worrying about whether their child will be unhappy because they did not get a particular toy," Gottlieb wrote in his "Out of the Toy Box" blog. "Delivering disappointment goes with the job of parenting."

Wow. That's right. Why change the culture? Why exercise some of that "corporate responsibility" so often given a special bullet point in mission statements? Why look where you're stepping when rampaging through the store to get that useless crap for 50% off!?

Why listen to parents (who, um, do the purchasing, hell-o!) when they ask you to target ads to them and not their children? Apparently that is too "nanny state" or "paternalistic" for champions of "free enterprise" like Gottlieb. Better to exploit a child's natural greed and let him or her nag the parent. Corporations don't want your input, silly consumer; they want your money. Prepare to get trampled.

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Thanksgiving Means Serious Cartoon Delayage, Dude

2008-11-27T09:46:00.001-08:00

Right, so I actually have a bunch of scripts written for cartoons. But the trick is to translate those scribbled words into polished drawings. And that requires a precious commodity we call "time", of which I currently have a negative account balance, thanks to children home from school and this national past time of consuming giant portions of food in honor of treaties broken by European invaders of the North American continent.

So it looks like cartoons will appear in full force next week. Plenty of 'em! Shaking righteous fists of fury at the machine! Deconstructing our bourgeois constructs of normality! Lobbing gobs of epatiér at the dominant paradigm! And probably making snarky comments about shit that pisses me off. Ya know, the uszh.

BTW - "paradigm" should always be pronounced "para-diggum." At least if you want to be taken seriously in polite company.

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In Contempt (11/20/2008): The Beast Cometh

2008-11-19T21:15:00.001-08:00

Go ahead. Click the image. What's the worst that could happen?

Within Glamorous Extremes

2008-11-17T08:07:00.001-08:00

Last Tuesday I posted "No Excuses", a cartoon juxtaposing the post-election meme about African-American possibilities with the realities of systemic racism. Documentarian Byron Hurt recently released "Barack and Curtis: Manhood, Power and Respect", a ten-minute film making a similar juxtaposition between the success of Barack Obama and the life of another popular black figure, 50 Cent, who has led a more difficult life plagued by crime, drugs and violence. As quoted by Reuters, Hurt recognizes both the difficulties confronting young black men and the hope that Obama's example inspires among them:

"The only way that he (Obama) can make a substantial change is if he addresses things like poverty and joblessness and those deep pervasive factors that affect black boys and men," said film maker Byron Hurt.

...

Even though Obama's election was not a panacea for black men, the importance of the example he sets could not be underestimated, Hurt said in an interview.

"The boost that he has given black men is more symbolic than anything else," said Hurt. "But I don't want to undervalue symbolism and image. When I see images of Barack Obama in a baseball hat taking his daughters to school ... that is a powerful image."

In his film, Hurt shows a wide range of analytic voices commenting on the racist culture that has shaped black male identity, and how everyday black men, poor and middle class, straight and gay, educated and robbed of education, create their identities in response to it. There are more nuances presented here than at first suggested by the dramatic contrast between Obama and 50 Cent, and if you haven't viewed the film, do so.

Fat So Funny

2008-11-14T08:23:00.001-08:00

Election's over, so what's a political cartoonist to do? It's not like there are any really important issues to consider. Could do something about the Congo or Rwanda. But, really, this is America: those places might as well be Oz, for all we care.

I know! There's a new study about obesity! Several studies! Oh boy! Now political cartoonists can do what comes naturally: mock fat people, draw a newspaper with a headline and let a bad pun do the work.

Yes, apparently there is some study about teens getting fatter or something. Causes? Remedies? Flaws in the study? How studies like these fit in a larger culture neurotic about physical appearance, hyper-consumption, and fast food? Who cares? Let's mock fat people — and teens, too!

Ha ha! Get it! Teens only want to get drunk!

But you know what's missing? A tie-in with popular culture. It doesn't have to be relevant, or insightful, or even current. It just has to stimulate some region of the brain that stores random images osmotically absorbed from the general culture environment. Hey, Bat-man!

Good thing the wind is blowing that newspaper high above the skyscrapers in such a way that we can read it. Otherwise I would have no idea what the hell this cartoon has to do with real life.

You know, you don't have to be a hack cartoonist to squeeze out turds like these. You can be a well-respected, intelligent, and talented lion of the field like the great Clay Bennett, whose work I generally love:

Apparently Americans like to shovel their food served on plates decorated with the Presidential seal. Or something. It's kinda abstract, really — so let's go back to mocking fat youth!

Wow, okay, that's enough. I could probably dig up more. If you feel masochistic, cruise through Slate.com's health section of political cartoons and you will find 476 (as of today) that deal with general health issues, the majority of them focused on obesity. All of them will exploit some stereotype of fatness, teenagers or youth culture, consumption and gluttony for the sake of a cheap punchline and at the expense of insight, compassion, intelligence, context, and originality. As my friend and political cartoonist Barry Deutsch has pointed out many times, fat people are easy targets, perhaps the last "safe" target (along with the mentally ill and poor Southern whites) for comedians and other humorists to treat as an "other", that slightly less-than-human category of people who deviate from The Norm and thus deserve mockery and marginalization. Of course, if these studies are true, then more Americans are getting fatter, so these cartoons act as a way of policing our behavior, inducing guilt and shame for being all-consuming gluttons. And there the conversation ends. But I'll let Barry have the last word, because he puts it so well:

The reason fat activists have formed a movement is that it’s unjust to be denied good medical care because we’re fat; we think it’s unjust that we can get fired for being fat; we think it’s unjust that we face job and wage discrimination because we’re fat; we think it’s unjust that we can be charged more for basic services (like insurance) because we’re fat; it’s unjust that people glance at us and assume that we’re lazy and care nothing for ourselves; and yes, although you’ll sneer at this as “the right to feel good,” it’s unjust that fat people are taught from childhood to think of themselves as deficient, wrong, and disgusting.

Anit-fat bigotry isn’t wrong because it’s the same as facing lynch mobs. It’s wrong because it’s unjust. It’s unjust because we’re human and don’t deserve to be treated as second-class people because of the shape of our bodies.

Premature Re-appellation

2008-11-13T08:52:00.001-08:00

A majority of students at my daughter's K-8 school want to rename the school after President-elect Barack Obama, an improvement over the admittedly awkward "Clark K-8 @ Binnsmead". Katie thinks this is a great idea. I am not too sure.

Yes, I voted for the guy. And I hope he'll live up to his promise, though I have several reservations even if he does, mostly grounded in worries about his hawkish attitude towards Afghanistan.

But that's not relevant here. I demur because usually we name schools after Presidents have left office, not, say, before they are even sworn in. We also honor non-presidents, too, such as historic activists like Martin Luther King or Cesar Chavez. Perhaps Obama's ground-breaking win as an African-American candidate qualifies, he has already inspired millions of people, bringing many first-time voters into the process and running on a mostly positive message of transforming politics.

However, history isn't over yet. Being the eternal ray of sunshine that I am, I asked my daughter, "What if in two years Obama's presidency is bogged down in Afghanistan? Or there's a big sex scandal?"

"A what scandal?!" she exclaimed.

Jenn walked away from the dinner table, saying, "Go ahead, Daddy. Explain that one."

Fortunately Katie didn't want an answer. She and her fellow students have already voiced their support of Obama through their choice of chocolate cupcakes over McCain's vanilla, so they are convinced that changing the name of the school in favor of Obama would be a good move. "It will get lots of news stories!" Katie argued, thrilled that two local news stations have reported this possibility.

Jenn thinks a lot of deserving local talent will get short-shrift: Linus Pauling, Ken Kesey, John Reed, Raymond Carver.... Mostly white and male. But they are dead, which is actually a stipulation of the re-naming rules. Ursula K. LeGuin and Avel Gordly (Oregon's first black female legislator) will have to wait for the Reaper to take his due before becoming eligible for such an honor.

I suggested Kwame Toure. Any takers?

In Contempt (11/11/2008): No Excuses

2008-11-10T22:05:00.001-08:00

Click image to embiggen it.

Does Anyone at the Wall Street Journal Know How to Read?

2008-11-08T08:25:00.001-08:00

Former Representative Dick Armey (what a name) shakes his fist at "compassionate conservatism" in the WSJ, declaring Bush's so-called political philosophy a "mistake." If by that term Armey means "incoherent ruse," he's right. But, no, this is the Republican argument that the party, once in power, has lost its way; that its corporate-loving, anti-government ideology is not inherently corrupting. As with Lynndey England and Charles Graner at Abu Ghraib, the fault of abuse lies with a few "bad apples."

What sticks out to me is this bit of Armey's dismay that the "truth" (my irony quotes) about Obama's tax policy proposals has not got out:

A Rasmussen poll of Oct. 30 reported that 31% of likely voters believed that "taxes will go down" under an Obama administration versus just 11% under a McCain administration. Shockingly, 19% of self-described conservatives believed Mr. Obama would cut taxes; only 12% thought Mr. McCain would.

Perhaps this minority of conservatives believed this way because, I dunno — they read nonpartisan reports like this from the Tax Policy Center:

Compared to current law, TPC estimates the Obama plan would cut taxes by $2.9 trillion from 2009-2018. McCain would reduce taxes by nearly $4.2 trillion. Obama would give larger tax cuts to low- and moderate-income households and pay some of the cost by raising taxes on high-income taxpayers. In contrast, McCain would cut taxes across the board and give the biggest cuts to the highest-income households.

That's just from the abstract. (Emphass-is mine.) The entire report is available in annoying PDF form (seriously, is HTML really that hard?) if you feel up to reading it. I know I may be assuming a lot, but perhaps these shockingly 19% of conservatives take tax policy seriously, really want tax cuts, and really want them for average schmucks like, say, Joe Not-a-Real-Plumber. So what did they do? They took time to find non-partisan reports (after all, the media has a "liberal bias") and actually read them.

This inability to read has probably affected Armey's grasp of history.

What will be the fate of free market capitalism in America? Will the 2008 election look more like 1932 -- or 1992?

On both occasions, Republican presidents had abandoned their party's principles for bigger government policies that exacerbated difficult economic times. On both occasions, Democrats took control, largely hijacking the small-government, fiscally responsible rhetoric of their opponents. Of course, FDR's election ushered in the New Deal, the most dramatic expansion of government power in American history, together with policy changes and economic uncertainty that inhibited investment and growth and locked in massive unemployment for nearly a generation.

Say whatty-what? More of that ole-time revisionism. Oh, wait - to revise a theory based on new information is legitimate. To turn reality upside-down to fit the narrow confines of one's ideology, what is that called again? Sticking one's head up one's ass? Close enough.

Kevin Phillips on Bill Moyers' Journal

2008-11-07T21:49:00.001-08:00

BILL MOYERS: There's an argument apparently going on within Obama's inner circle even as we speak. Some of his advisors say it would be politically and economically disastrous if those billions of taxpayer dollars in the bailout were just to sit in the vaults of the bank. On the other hand, the Wall Street and the corporate types, according to the press this morning, are pushing back. They say leaving the money in the banks would help stabilize them and prevent a further crisis in the credit market. What do you think?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, I think basically that's the most screaming set of self-interested analyses that I can remember. When this thing was passed, they basically had people on television saying that if this bailout doesn't go through, you're not going to be able to get money out of your ATMs, all sorts of dire things were going to happen. And now it turns out that, well, maybe they weren't expected to spend that money after all. Maybe that was all a great camouflage outfit.

Because what they want to do with the money and seemingly it's okay by a lot of the people involved is use it for bonuses, for dividends, for sitting around so they feel comfortable, for mergers. It's mind boggling. They created a panic psychology, which has taken a lot of people's 401(k)'s and savings accounts and pension opportunities and pointed them right toward the toilet. And now they got their bailout, scaring everybody to death, and what do they want to do with it? Nothing.

Full transcript at pbs.org.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel Has a List

2008-11-07T19:09:00.001-08:00

As you may expect, liberal Democrats have a long list of actions and programs they would like President Barack Obama execute once he assumes office. Katrina Vanden Heuvel proposes a realistic progressive agenda for the first 100 days (in some cases, first 1,000).

David Sirota proposes a change of attitude — a growth of backbone, if you will — among progressive Democrats wielding political power.

To meet the challenge, Democrats have to abandon their worst habits.

They must, for instance, acknowledge their progressive mandate, rather than denying it like Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did on Tuesday. "This is not a mandate for a political party or an ideology," he fearfully told reporters.

They should also retire the Innocent Bystander Fable -- the myth about being powerless onlookers. Democrats first cited this fable as reason the Iraq War continued during their congressional majority -- expecting the country to forget that Congress can halt war funding. Today, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says "there's not much we can do" to amend the sputtering bank bailout. In 2009, such mendacity will metastasize from banal dishonesty into grist for scathing comedy-show punch lines.

Democrats need to discard other lies, too -- especially those about Bill Clinton. To hear pundits tell it, Clinton's first-term pitfalls underscore why the next administration should avoid "governing in a way that is, or seems, skewed to the left," as the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus most recently asserted. History, of course, proves the opposite. Recounting Clinton's early years to Politico.com, a lobbyist correctly noted that the new president didn't move left -- he pushed conservative policies like NAFTA, thereby demoralizing his base and helping Republicans take Congress.

If anyone has any reservations that this is somehow "too radical" or "too partisan" or whatever, Paul Krugman explains that Obama has, in fact, a strong mandate for a progressive agenda:

About the political argument: Anyone who doubts that we’ve had a major political realignment should look at what’s happened to Congress. After the 2004 election, there were many declarations that we’d entered a long-term, perhaps permanent era of Republican dominance. Since then, Democrats have won back-to-back victories, picking up at least 12 Senate seats and more than 50 House seats. They now have bigger majorities in both houses than the G.O.P. ever achieved in its 12-year reign.

Bear in mind, also, that this year’s presidential election was a clear referendum on political philosophies — and the progressive philosophy won.

Maybe the best way to highlight the importance of that fact is to contrast this year’s campaign with what happened four years ago. In 2004, President Bush concealed his real agenda. He basically ran as the nation’s defender against gay married terrorists, leaving even his supporters nonplussed when he announced, soon after the election was over, that his first priority was Social Security privatization. That wasn’t what people thought they had been voting for, and the privatization campaign quickly devolved from juggernaut to farce.

This year, however, Mr. Obama ran on a platform of guaranteed health care and tax breaks for the middle class, paid for with higher taxes on the affluent. John McCain denounced his opponent as a socialist and a “redistributor,” but America voted for him anyway. That’s a real mandate.

All of this sounds great. Next week I will be posting a cartoon on unrealistic expectations I have heard liberals heap on Obama's shoulders in only the last couple days. Yet there is nothing in the articles I link to in this post that I believe is unfeasable. So long as Democrats take Sirota's advice, of course. Perhaps the kind of disappointment many of us have felt in the recent past has prompted Obama to appoint Rahm Emmanuel as his bull dog. Cross yer fingaz!

Sketchbook: Watching the Election 2008

2008-11-06T00:22:00.000-08:00

I created another page of sketches drawn while watching election coverage on CNN last night. Enjoy.

In Contempt (11/5/2008): One Step Back

2008-11-05T21:21:00.001-08:00

Click the image to expand to a legible size.

Whew

2008-11-04T20:57:00.001-08:00

There are any number of reasons to celebrate. First and foremost, an African-American has achieved the presidency. It has not been easy, a two-year-long slog against some of the most vicious smears we have heard in modern elections at a cost of some 700 million dollars. Obama has achieved all of this while maintaining admirable coolness of head, speaking to people not only in the soaring rhetoric for which he has earned fame but more importantly by respecting the intelligence of voters. He spoke to us as adults. He appealed to common cause. He campaigned in states that his fellow Democrats had previously written off, as if other voters mattered beyond "the base." He ran a ground-and-internet operation that has changed politics in a more populist direction, motivating millions of people to vote who had never voted before.

I have a long list of concerns about war, the economy, health care and so on. But there is plenty of time for that - plenty of cartoons to draw on those subjects in the future. For now I am relieved. The rest of the world has been watching this election, wondering if we have learned anything from the mistakes we have made. The real test of that is coming. The election of Barack Obama demonstrates that we have the potential to renew ourselves at home and abroad.

Election Day at Elementary School

2008-11-04T18:23:00.001-08:00

To celebrate our democratic ritual, my daughter's class had cupcakes: chocolate for Obama and, yes, vanilla for McCain. She reports that there were a lot of vanilla cupcakes left untouched.

Not red and blue. Chocolate and vanilla. Even here in über-librul Portland, shit is fucked up.

Election 2008 Sketchbook Page

2008-11-04T11:42:00.001-08:00

Above is a sample of sketches I have done recently on the election and posted to a special Election 2008 Sketchbook Page. I am too freaked out right now about all the things that could go wrong today, so I can't really think straight. So in lieu of an actual political cartoon, please enjoy these sketches. A real cartoon will appear Thursday.

While We Are Sleeping

2008-11-01T20:16:00.001-07:00

Three more days until this election over, and since I voted last Sunday and dropped my ballot off at the library two days later, the wait could not be more tedious. After Tuesday most people will tune out of politics and even the politically interested will pay attention to the highlights: inauguration speech, showdowns between Democrats and Republicans over health care, the impending troop escalation in Afghanistan, and whatever soap opera/scandal becomes news cycle fodder.

But not everyone is sleeping. In fact, local tax activist Bill Sizemore, who already has five initiatives on the Oregon ballot this year (and they all suck), is busy preparing initiatives for the 2010 ballot. Quothe The Oregonian:

Sizemore has filed 13 initiatives for the next general election, including ideas voters have already rejected and another they will decide Tuesday.
His proposals for 2010 would curb the reach of labor unions, suspend land use laws for building homes, grant a homestead tax exemption for seniors and give juries the power to ignore "bad" laws.

The early filings show how initiative petitions, once a seasonal venture in Oregon, have turned into a full-time business, especially for Sizemore.

"His main goal is to keep filing dozens of initiatives for which he gets paid a lot of money," says Scott Moore, a spokesman for Defend Oregon, a coalition fighting Sizemore's current measures.

"As long as this is his career, and it seems to be a fairly good one for him, he'll keep filing no matter what voters say."

If you don't live in Oregon, you may think, "Well, sucks to be you, Boregonian, but no skin off my nose." But if you live in a state with a citizen initiative process — a concept that, in principle, I support — you may already be aware of a similar professional initiative filer cluttering up your ballot. He or she may be an opportunist schmuck like Oregon's Sizemore. Or perhaps a persistent fundie values organization similar to the Oregon Citizens Alliance, responsible for several homophobic ballot initiatives, most of which failed until 2004 when they succeeded in denying same-sex couple equal access to marriage rights. Or maybe you have a Law and Order twit like Kevin Mannix, an Oregonian who usually fails to attain public office, but that has not inhibited him for announcing a future run for U.S. Congress or from putting four stinky initiatives on our ballot.

Here's the deal with these people. As noted, they mostly fail. And they keep coming back. But it's not just tenacity, or gumption, or a combination of crack cocaine and Red Bull that keeps them going. It's how much money and energy it costs labor unions, teachers, social justice groups, environmental organizations and ethnic and sexual minorities as they fight to defeat these reactionary initiatives that threaten the right to organize, to get a decent education, to protect the land and water from over-exploitation and pollution, or to simply function as a full human being with dignity and self-respect. They are the anti-ACORN in every sense of the term.

Bill Sizemore and his ilk make a handsome living by making everyone else crazy, lowering public discourse and scapegoating the vulnerable. And they don't have to succeed every time. They only need to score once. Then suddenly there is less money for education or programs for the needy; suddenly our prisons are overflowing with petty criminals. Suddenly you don't have the right to get married. And these guys press on. Not all of them will succumb to their internal corruptions like the OCA. Not even getting found guilty of racketeering and a million dollar fine has stopped Sizemore.

So if at all possible, don't tune out after Tuesday.

Freedom From the Press

2008-10-31T15:30:00.001-07:00

Responding to Sarah Palin's expressed fear that media criticism of her public comments amounts to suppressing her First Amendment rights, Glenn Greenwald gives a short lesson on freedom of expression as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution:

The First Amendment is actually not that complicated. It can be read from start to finish in about 10 seconds. It bars the Government from abridging free speech rights. It doesn't have anything to do with whether you're free to say things without being criticized, or whether you can comment on blogs without being edited, or whether people can bar you from their private planes because they don't like what you've said.

If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.

So, yeah, she may have more "executive experience" than Barack Obama, but I think we can see why a constitutional scholar would be more prefereable. That is, if the last eight years of domestic espionage, secret detentions and torture were not enough.

In Contempt (10/20/2008): Zombie Purge

2008-10-29T22:12:00.001-07:00

Click the image to make it much bigger and more readable. Legible. Whatever.

In Contempt (10/23/2008): Kissed a Girl

2008-10-22T22:30:00.001-07:00

Click the image to read it at full size.

In Contempt (10/21/2008): Casualties of Language

2008-10-21T08:13:00.001-07:00

Click the image to read at full size.

Attack Dog Meme

2008-10-19T12:01:00.001-07:00

With Tuesday's cartoon I managed to beat one of my political cartooning heroes, Ben Sargent to the attack dog meme by one day. That said, he draws way better than I do.

Meanwhile, speaking of memes, here are a few more Halloween cartoons.

Mike Luckovich. A 401K costume.

John Branch. Another 401K costume.

Nate Beeler. Financial adviser costume.

Tom Toles. This one isn't bad. I like the use of a Halloween display as a chamber of horrors for the next president. It's better than his predictable 401K gag. (At least he was first out of the gate on that one.)

And a Joe the Plumber toon I actually like, courtesy of Auth.

Meanwhile, how many different ways is this Gordon Campbell cartoon utterly racist!? Come on, Gordo, isn't it possible that Colin Powell endorsed Obama because they share similar foreign policy views? You would know that if you had paid attention to Powell's comments on foreign policy for the last, oh, four years since he left the BushAdmin.

Matt Bors Mocks Halloween Cliché; Hack Cartoonists Everywhere Pout

2008-10-17T21:19:00.001-07:00

A couple days ago I railed with righteous fury 'gainst the dull-witted jack-a-napes who demean the grand art of political cartooning with their anodyne usage of the Halloween trick-or-treat meme.

No one really cared.

BUT my good friend Matt Bors just happened to be drawing a cartoon mocking that very cliché. He posted it today, so, yo, check it. Forthwith, post-hate, with the seven winds against your back.

And, uh, what the hell is a "jack-a-nape"?

Smart, But Crazy

2008-10-16T19:05:00.001-07:00

Two headlines from ArsTechnica.Com:

Internet searches may strengthen the aging brain

And:

Add Internet addiction to psychiatric disorders, says doctor

So in 50 years we'll see a lot of smart, neurotic people plodding around. Sounds like home.

In Contempt (10/16/2008): Deadly Silence

2008-10-15T22:09:00.001-07:00

Click the image to read the whole thing.

Fraud and Suppression

2008-10-10T08:53:00.001-07:00

Jack Tapper at ABCNews wrote the blog post that I was planning on doing on the ACORN controversy and the NY Times report of voter suppression tactics by various states, and he has done a better job than I would have done. So I'll just link to it.

Ben Smith at Politico also does a nice job of differentiating voter fraud and voter registration fraud:

The key distinction here is between voter fraud and voter registration fraud, one of which is truly dangerous, the other a petty crime.
The former would be, say, voting the cemeteries or stuffing the ballot boxes. This has happened occasionally in American history, though I can think of recent instances only in rare local races. Practically speaking, this can most easily be done by whoever is actually administering the election, which is why partisan observers carefully oversee the vote-counting process.

The latter is putting the names of fake voters on the rolls, something that happens primarily when organizations, like Acorn, pay contractors for new voter registrations. That can be a crime, and it messes up the voter files, but there's virtually no evidence these imaginary people then vote in November. The current stories about Acorn don't even allege a plan to affect the November vote.

The distinction is important because conservative McCain supporters are already alleging that the Obama campaign is trying to steal the election. The Obama-ACORN connection has been a favorite meme at FOXNews. If Obama wins, expect the Right to cling to this rationalization to the extent that the Left has nurtured its belief that Bush stole at least one if not both of the last two presidential elections — without, of course, anywhere near the justification

If Obama wins, he will do so despite voter suppression, not because of it.

In Contempt (10/9/2008)

2008-10-08T23:37:00.001-07:00

Click that thing to make it feel bigger.

Random thought: John Lennon would be 68 today. And probably high.

Wanderlost Search Party Page 13

2008-10-02T12:24:00.001-07:00

Click the image above to read the whole thing.

In Contempt (10/1/2008): Criminal Mind

2008-10-01T09:25:00.001-07:00

Click the image to see the cartoon at full size.

Sorry for the lateness of the cartoon. I blame Chris Baldwin.

John Is Right

2008-09-27T14:04:00.001-07:00

Republicans are trying to make something out of Obama's gentlemanly acknowledgment that McCain made reasonable points in last night's debate.

Which may have inspired this site. Or not. But it's pretty fitting, nonetheless. Especially the erratic way the text moves about the page. I imagine that's how thoughts behave inside McCain's mind.

Obama-McCain Debate: My Favorite Moment

2008-09-26T22:37:00.001-07:00

Pre-empted by my son's millionth viewing of Prisoner of Azkeban, I am just now catching up on the Obama-McCain debate being rerun on PBS. I think my favorite moment so far is McCain making an asshole out of himself insisting that a high-level talk between the President and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad legitimizes the Iranian President's antisemitic statements against Israel. McCain not only kept beating that horse long after it was dead, he started improvising the possible dialog in an attempt to mock Obama. The look Obama shot him registered somewhere between "give me a break" and "dick."

So what about their bone of contention, the opinion of McCain adviser Henry Kissinger on the matter of negotiating with Iran without preconditions. ABCNews has a "fact check" straight from the horse's mouth. Kissinger does indeed favor negotiations without preconditions "at a very high level," but clarifies that that means the secretary of state level, not the presidential level. So Obama is only half right on the specifics, but right on the spirit; McCain has the other half, but is otherwise a total douche.

And Kissinger is still a fucking war criminal.

Bailout Bite Back

2008-09-26T09:26:00.001-07:00

Is McCain smarter than we think?

That "we" being me and my fellow leftoids who have watched McCain's antics with disbelief as he "suspends" his campaign, "rushes" back to Washington (well, with several stops along the way), provokes the wrathful mockery of David Letterman, and disrupts negotiations over the Wall Street bailout proposal by putting forward a Republican alternative.

So far, he seems pretty laughable. Obama got the high ground yesterday when he gently chided the "injection of presidential politics" into the negotiations without mentioning his rival by name. Tonight he will score more points no matter what. If McCain shows up for the debate he wanted to postpone, he looks like a fool; if he doesn't, Obama gets an hour and a half of free media to hold a town hall confab with the audience, answering questions about the very crisis McCain feels is so dire. In the battle to "look Presidential", McCain appears to be losing.

But no one likes this bailout. I saw it Wednesday at the reference desk as patrons voiced their unsolicited complaints to me, one of whom requested contact information for her Congress critters. "I'm going to give them a piece of my mind!" she said. It was a supreme test of my duty as a reference librarian to maintain an objective demeanor.

The Republican "revolt" is driven not only by free market ideology - their objections to increased government intervention in the finance and banking industries - but also by voter anger that tax payer money will be spent on crappy mortgage assets. Voter rejection of the bailout may not be universal, but it has crossed ideological boundaries, uniting Left and Right in angry rejection of saving the asses of irresponsible and fraudulent practices by a group of elites who have already benefited by tax cuts, deregulation, and previous government bailouts. Congressional Republicans - and not a few Democrats - will face unemployment this November should voter anger find expression at the ballot box.

What then do Democrats really gain from being so cosily "bipartisan" in their negotiations with BushAdmin, tweaking a Paulson plan that voters fundamentally reject? Chris Dodd and crew deserve credit for forcing serious concessions on executive pay and for insisting on an equity stake that could recoup taxpayer money spent on asset purchases when they are resold (reportedly, this worked well for Sweden in the early 90s.) Yet voters will see this is as a dollop of sugar in a bitter pill that few are convinced they should be forced to swallow.

What good then if Obama gains points for his cool demeanor when voters perceive his party has had a hand in dealing them a bag of shit? McCain's disruptions may come to look like a principled stand for taxpayers, playing into that "maverick" image he is so fond of.

Hey! Guess Who Smelled the Coffee!

2008-09-22T13:26:00.001-07:00

Headline: McCain says economy in crisis.

Next: McCain finds ass with both hands.

Okay, snark over. I find it interesting that after so many years opposing regulation of the investment and financial communities, he is now calling for oversight of the bailout program. In fact, I think he makes a good point. But, really, where has he been? How the hell does he think we are going to afford this mess? More foreign debt? Lower taxes? Selling off lousy mortgage assets at pennies on the dollar? We have a $3 trillion war, a $5 trillion government take over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and now another $700 billion (Paulson calls it a maximum, but I wouldn't be surprised he is low-balling) to save the asses of the clowns who created the house of cards / shell game / Ponzi scheme / smoke and mirrors clusterfoofaraw we have been blindly calling an economy for the last mmmmmmmm 7 years? How about longer? Our government has been de-regulating everything for nearly 30 years now. Any chance we might finally recognize the folly of letting foxes guard the hen house?

(You can tell I'm upset when I start throwing metaphors around like spittle from a rabid dog. Frothy spittle.)

I am not holding my breath. Should Mr. Changey-Hopey Guy from Illinois actually overcome the white flight of Palinophiles and win this election, I doubt his answers will be much better. There is potential in his plans for an environmental technology overhaul, but how do you get that off the ground under the weight of such massive debt? When do we get the bill?

I say we're already paying for it in the poor state of manufacturing, health care, and our social infrastructure - you know, the "hidden costs." Yet the symbiotic relationship between American and Chinese manufacturing and lending has all the tenuousness of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction: so long as no one is kah-razy enough to press the button, that doctrine held, we're safe. Now we have Mutually Assured Globalization. So long as no one goes broke, we'll keep buying and the Chinese (and other countries) will keep selling and lending. Which do you have more faith in - our instincts for self-preservation that keeps us from nuking each other; or the American capacity for consumerism? How long before the Chinese and others are forced by their own economic crises to come collecting?

In Contempt (9/18/2008): The Fundamentals

2008-09-17T22:21:00.001-07:00

Click to read the cartoon.

Wanderlost "Search Party" Page 12

2008-09-17T07:33:00.001-07:00

Click the image to read it a full size.

Well, That Didn't Take Long....

2008-09-16T09:12:00.001-07:00

As Howard Kurtz remarks, "The production of this spot in less than 24 hours underscores how modern technology has quickened the pace of campaigning and how the ad wars are increasingly driven by daily developments."

Nervous Democrats and independent Obama supporters worried that the Obama campaign will let the McCain campaign "swift-boat" it have seen new evidence to the contrary this week. This ad is the first evidence I've seen that the Obama campaign is going on the offensive. Well, okay, I guess I could count the "McCain's too old to understand the InterTubez" ad, but that was lame. This one actually addresses a real problem Americans (and thanks to globalization of financial markets, the world) faces now, one with practical consequences for anyone who owns a home, took out a student loan, or needs a job.

The next question is "What're ya gonna do about it, Barry?" (Cuz certain yobs out there insist on calling Obama "Barry.") The Obama campaign shouldn't expect anyone to visit their website to read its glorious list of plans. No one but political nerds like me do that. Despite a long-stated aversion to "negative ads", voters get most of their information about candidates from 30-second spots, the debates, and whatever folks like Wolf Blitzer yammer on about (if they have time.) A few "positive ads" promoting Obama's plans to address voter's real life economic concerns should follow.

He could make an ad solely out of this endorsement of his health care plan in, of all things, The Wall Street Journal.

In Contempt (9/16/2008): "Faithful Friends"

2008-09-15T23:05:00.001-07:00

Click to enlarge the image and read it!

Fundamentals Dept: American Cities in Financial Crisis

2008-09-15T18:22:00.001-07:00

You may have been distracted by the 500+ point Dow Jones drop on Wall Street, or the bankruptcy of Lehmann Bros., or Bank of America's absorption of Merrill Lynch, or Senator John McCain's insistence that American economic fundamentals are strong. But the National League of Cities issued a report today on the bleak financial situation common to American cities that seems quite at home amidst the general malaise.

The report found that the decline in property tax revenues (3.6 percent from the prior year, in inflation-adjusted terms) is having an impact on the fiscal health of local governments. Unlike the previous economic downturn in 2001, when property tax revenues were able to buffer the effects of declining income and sales tax receipts, the weak housing market is likely to affect city budgets until 2010.

Moreover, the report found that other sources of revenue are headed downward as well, with sales tax receipts declining by 4.2 percent and income tax revenues expected to decline by 3.3 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2008 compared to 2007.

As a result, 64 percent of city finance officers surveyed expect cities to have a harder time meeting fiscal needs in 2008, and 79 percent forecast even bigger problems ahead in 2009.

“Even if economic conditions improved immediately, the nation’s cities are likely to be realizing the effects of the current downturn through 2010,” said Michael A. Pagano, co-author of the report and dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “The sharp decline in property tax receipts erodes a critical buffer that has helped cities through economic downturns for the last three decades.”

On the spending side, increases of 3.0 percent in 2007 were met with flat or declining revenues, according to the report. Taken together, city finance officers project a budget gap of 2.8 percent in 2008, with revenues declining by 4.3 percent and spending declining by 1.5 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars over 2007.

The areas affecting city budgets most heavily include prices and inflation (including energy prices), which were identified by 98 percent of respondents. Increases in infrastructure (85 percent) and public safety spending (83 percent), and employee-related costs for wages (95 percent), health care (86 percent), and pensions (79 percent) were also cited as budget-busters.

Fear not, people. I am sure we can pray our way outta this mess.

In Contempt (9/11/2008): 9-11 Truthiness

2008-09-11T08:05:00.001-07:00

Click here to read the whole thing.

Wanderlost: "Search Party" Page 11

2008-09-10T08:37:00.001-07:00

Page 11 of "Search Party" is up and in full color.

I like how it turned out. The best part: I didn't need to use the dialog I had written.

Let's Try That Again

2008-09-10T08:21:00.001-07:00

Ten years ago the medical journal Lancet published a study (subsequently referred to as the "Wakefield article" after its principal author) reporting a link between MMR vaccines and autism, launching a controversy based on bad science that, in turn, continues to discourage fearful parents from having their children properly vaccinated and to contribute to a rise in cases of measles.

Lancet has published a new study seeking to replicate the original article's findings. Result? No dice.

This study provides strong evidence against association of autism with persistent MV RNA in the GI tract or MMR exposure. Autism with GI disturbances is associated with elevated rates of regression in language or other skills and may represent an endophenotype distinct from other ASD.

I'm with the The NY Times editorial board on this one:

The new study adds weight to a growing body of epidemiological studies and reviews that have debunked the notion that childhood vaccines cause autism. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization have found no evidence of a causal link between vaccines and autism.
Meanwhile, the original paper’s publisher — The Lancet — complained in 2004 that the lead author had concealed a conflict of interest. Ten of his co-authors retracted the paper’s implication that the vaccine might be linked to autism. Three of the authors are now defending themselves before a fitness-to-practice panel in London on charges related to their autism research.
Sadly, even after all of this, many parents of autistic children still blame the vaccine. The big losers in this debate are the children who are not being vaccinated because of parental fears and are at risk of contracting serious — sometimes fatal — diseases.

Parents of autistic children have reason to begrudge Lancet for publishing the originally misleading study. But that should not absolve us from resisting the paranoia it contributed to, especially now that the original findings have been refuted.

In Contempt (9/9/2008): Hunting With Palin

2008-09-09T07:29:00.001-07:00

Click the image for love, laughter, and little lessons on life.

So, yeah, another cartoon on Sarah Palin. I couldn't resist. She's like Bush and Cheney rolled into one, then squeezed into the archetype of the crazy PTA lady. With a gun.

Thursday I'll tackle more serious issues. Like, say, the truth behind 9-11. (Cue dramatic music: bom-bom-BAAAA!)

Maturing Minors and Reproductive Choice

2008-09-08T08:30:00.001-07:00

William Saletan writes in Slate on the coercive power Sarah Palin, as mother and as governor, has had over her daughter in the area of reproductive choice. Following his review of Palin's efforts to require parental consent for abortion — her tenacity in this alone earns her love and admiration from the religious conservatives, and horror and anger from just about anyone else — Saletan frames the issue within the second class citizenship of maturing minors (i.e., young people approaching the age of maturity — these days, age 18):

Palin and McCain will hardly suffer politically for asserting such dominion. Parental consent laws are wildly popular. In a press release touting Palin's selection, Americans United for Life points out that "polling consistently shows that 70% of [the] American public supports these common sense laws." Why does every poll show broad support for vetoing minors' decisions? Because minors don't get polled. They can't vote.
That's the way it used to be with blacks and women: You can't protect yourself when you don't have the franchise. Look at today's restrictions on personal freedom. Who's being banned from tanning salons? Minors. Who's being blocked from buying junk food? Minors. Who's being ordered off city streets by 10 p.m.? Minors. They take the hit because they can't fight back.

Saletan notes that such paternalism has already crept into the lives of poor people and the reproductive choices of adult women, offering a warning to any adults who might be tempted to shrug the issue off as "just a kid's problem." He does not go so far as to suggest lowering the voting age (nor do I), but echoes the argument made by the Supreme Court of Alaska when it rejected Palin's written consent requirements. The life-changing impact of pregnancy are too profound for the individual woman to reside under the control of parental whim.

I will take it farther. There are times when parental control is not appropriate at all, especially when the child's health is endangered or poses a threat to others. Yes, I'm talking about the religious objections to life-saving surgery in favor of "the healing power of prayer" and the pseudo-scientific opposition to vaccinating children. In the former case, saving the life of the child overrides the ideological prescripts of parties whose lives are not endangered. In the latter, the herd immunity of other children at school (and the community at large) overrides specious correlations between autism and vaccination. Fortunately most American parents are reportedly not giving into the autism paranoia.

And, yeah, if ya couldn't tell, those particular issues have been bugaboos for yours truly. It enrages me that parents have been allowed to let their children die because of religious freedom rights (hey, I thought "the First Amendment isn't a suicide pact" — but apparently it allows homicide.) As for the autism-vaccination correlation, the bad logic and bad science behind it has not deterred some of my comrades on the left from embracing it as certitude of the medical industry's perfidy. Then again, these tend to be the same folks who have ascribed to any number of "9-11 truth" conspiracy theories. So why be surprised?

Victory?

2008-09-04T08:30:00.001-07:00

Let's start by saying nice things.

I like the caricatures. No need to label Chris Matthews or David Whatsisname fron MSNBC. They're recognizable and funny.

The main criticism is valid: indeed, the mainstream media has paid too much attention to the personal life of a 17-year-old girl and a political figure. To be more accurate, through MSNBC Varvel is targeting the "liberal media," but we'll let that slide by. I'm feeling generous.

So, really what's the problem? Let's see...what could it be?....hmmmmm... Oh, yes!

"U.S. has won a major victory in Iraq."

We did?! Really? Perhaps Varvel means the recent developments in the Anbar province. The Wall Street Journal is certainly agog with plaudits.

And on Monday, U.S. forces formally handed control of a now largely peaceful Anbar to the Iraqi military. "We are in the last 10 yards of this terrible fight. The goal is very near," said Major-General John Kelly, commander of U.S. forces in Anbar, in a ceremony with U.S., Iraqi and tribal officials. Very few in the American media even noticed this remarkable victory.

And this from the Christian Broadcast Network:

Time, Tenacity and Toughness -- that's what it took to win the "unwinnable" province of Anbar in Iraq. In a ceremony on September 2 that victory was consummated by handing the reigns back to the people of that province.

Think about that -- the United States doesn't conquer, it liberates. We kick down the rotten door, clean house and then remodel the place -- and pay with our national treasure and the blood of our young men. Then, when the house is completely rebuilt and the thieves and thugs thrown out, we hand the keys back to the people who own the property.

See? That's what the invasion of Iraq was all about. Geopolitical remodelling!

The meme that the U.S. media highlights only the bad news from Iraq when it isn't obsessed with celebrity/political scandal (babies out of wedlock! cheating! bathroom hijinks!) works powerfully through the conservative mindset. Yet there is some truth to the cliché - after all, look at this past week. I would have preferred a deeper analysis of the events in Anbar Province. Go back to the NY Times article:

Indeed it was. Anbar Province, a flat, Wyoming-size desert split by the Euphrates River, became the most intractable region following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. More than 1,000 American marines and soldiers have died in Anbar Province — a quarter of the American death toll in the country.

Anbar’s second city, Falluja, was the site of the biggest battle of the war, an invasion by 6,000 marines and soldiers, most of them on foot, to wrest the city from insurgent control. In that battle, nearly 100 Americans died and more than 500 were wounded; the American military estimated that it had killed more than 1,000 insurgents. Bordering on three countries — Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria — Anbar was also the primary transit point for foreigners coming to Iraq to join the insurgency.

The fighting devastated much of Anbar. Falluja was razed; whole neighborhoods in Ramadi were likewise flattened. The city and provincial governments, and the local police forces, ceased to function — and in many cases ceased to exist. By the summer of 2006, Anbar’s governor, Mamoon Sami Rashid, had survived 29 attempts on his life. Others were not so lucky: Mr. Rashid’s immediate predecessor, Raja Nawaf, was kidnapped and killed; his deputy, Talib al-Dulaimi, was shot to death; the chairman of the Anbar Provincial Council was also killed; and Mr. Rashid’s personal secretary was beheaded. By then, most of his ministers were in hiding.

In other words, the invasion destabilized border security, let Al Qaeda in as the American occupation alienated the Iraqi people by shooting at demonstrators, raiding their homes, indiscriminately bombing them, appropriating national resources and selling them off to American companies, the whole "de-Baathification" thing, etc. Petraeus' main job has been to clean up after a tremendous screw up by the BushAdmin; so far, his counter-insurgency tactics seem to have improved security in Iraq. Of course, we're not accounting for the absence of Muqtada Al-Sadr, currently in Iran preparing to be an ayatollah, and for the disgust with Al-Qaeda's tactics, which have been more extreme than the occupying forces in alienating the Sunnis and Shias enough to overcome their rivalries.

McCain et al. will crow about Anbar Province as evidence that "the surge is working" and "victory is possible." Yet they will leave unanswered questions of Original Sin: why were we there in the first place? How were we misled into this war? Who profited most from the destruction and bloodshed? What was the real point of sacrificing so many lives, American and Iraqi, to this fiasco? Moreover, they will ignore the fact that Petraeus and "the surge" are by-and-large damage control. There will be no discussion of what "victory" looks like, what it really means, and whether it's really the point in the first place when your government has thrown so many bodies, so much money and squandered so much time and good will in pursuit of such an ill-considered distraction.

The Community Organizer

2008-09-04T06:44:00.001-07:00

Last night Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin derided Barack Obama's role as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago. So I was wondering how long it would take for the Obama campaign to respond. Turns out not long at all. Here's David Plouffe from an e-mail sent out to Obama supporters:

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.

Let's clarify something for them right now.

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

And it's no surprise that, after eight years of George Bush, millions of people have found that by coming together in their local communities they can change the course of history. That promise is what our campaign has been about from the beginning.

Throughout our history, ordinary people have made good on America's promise by organizing for change from the bottom up. Community organizing is the foundation of the civil rights movement, the women's suffrage movement, labor rights, and the 40-hour workweek. And it's happening today in church basements and community centers and living rooms across America.

And it goes on (strangely for an Internet communications director, Plouffe's e-mails are rarely ever brief.) I think this is a good argument. The campaign should ramp it up through ads attacking McCain's cluelessness about economy, featuring Obama with steel workers juxtaposed with Phil Gramm belittling our "mental recession."

I also like Plouffe's outraged passion here. The Obama campaign needs more of this kind, and a lot less of the messianic crap.

All that said, I'm still waiting for Plouffe to respond to Giuliani's criticism of Obama's vote for the telecomm bill. The same bill McCain voted for, but hey, at least we know where that fascist stands. Perhaps Plouffe might mention McCain's reversal on torture. Flip flop wars!

In Contempt (9/4/2008): "We Care!"

2008-09-03T22:11:00.001-07:00

Click to explode with anger. Or make the image readable.

Watching the RNC tonight reconfirmed my belief that the base of the party is comprised of selfish, heartless ignorant shitheads. Most people affiliated with either party are half-way committed to their party loyalty, which could switch the moment the base reveals itself in all its blinkered glory. For Democrats, at worst it means naive, but well-intentioned folks who get a little carried away in the moment. For Republicans, it's like the ancient Romans at the Colloseum cheering on the lions. Only the prey are poor people, people of color, and "the gayz."

Wanderlost: "Search Party" Page 10

2008-09-02T21:34:00.001-07:00

Click to read the image at full scale.

In Contempt (9/2/2008): Life Under Palin

2008-09-02T07:26:00.001-07:00

Click here to read, and shudder with horror.

For Worse

2008-08-31T10:43:00.001-07:00

The best final installment of a popular comic strip appeared in January, 1996. Calvin and Hobbes hopped on their toboggan to discuss life's possibilities and headed down the slope into a blank canvass of snow. Eloquent, understated, and poetic. Clearly Bill Watterson had other projects waiting for him on his easel, but he ended his ground-breaking strip with the dignity and respect it deserved.

Charles Schulz wrote a simple thank you to Peanuts fans that appeared the day after he died. The timing was accidental, yet fitting for a man who had devoted 50 years to the strip and his entire life to comics. Sadly, the syndicate continues to run the strip like a zombie cow from which it squeezes undead milk.

Berkely Breathed ended Bloom County on a sad, bitter note. Familiar locations such as Milo's Meadow showed none of the strip's popular characters, only a cold wind blowing through. In the final panel, toting a suitcase and donning his flower hat, Opus walked off into the sunset. Of course, Opus came back — not only once, but twice. Breathed has revived a few old faces, most notably Bill the Cat and Steve Dallas. Some characters stay with their creators, demanding new life and speaking with their unique voices on the world as it carries on. Sometimes a creator discovers new reasons to return to beloved characters.

That said, I don't know what to make of this Sunday's installment of For Better or For Worse. While I patiently await Josh Fruhlinger's acerbic assessment, I'll do my best. It's a mess. A giant, unattractive, wordy mess. As anyone who has been following the strip in the papers (or through Josh's curmudgeonly lense), the wedding scene is no surprise. If I had been reading Lynn Johnston's website, with it's long-winded character profiles and even blogs from the characters themselves (sure, Achewood does it, but then Achewood is a creature of the InterNetz), maybe I would have been better prepared for panel after panel of "future lives" for each one of Johnston's increasingly tedious characters.

There was a time — a long time ago — when I enjoyed FOOB. The kids were funny, the humor was grounded in real life, at least insofar as suburbanites experience it. Gentle, yet realistic, Johnston's humor was grounded in human folly. And as she allowed her characters to age — a bold move, even after Gasoline Alley — they grew more complex and her humor more nuanced. There was plenty of cornball slapstick and schmaltz, but even these were informed by real life. Johnston's most controversial story line, the coming out of Lawrence, was daring, respectful, and truthful in its depiction of the conflicting emotions families and friends go through when forced to confront their own homophobia.

Somewhere down the line, the strip jumped a shark. I don't know if it started with the creepy relationship between Liz and Anthony, but I remember the strip slipped into melodrama around the time Johnston killed off the family dog, then replaced it with a nearly identical model. Then Liz got too old to be the cute little one anymore, so Johnston brought in April. It was as if Johnston retreated to the cute kid antics for a breath of saccharine "reality" while the soap opera lives of her adult characters spun into the absurd. Better minds than mine have dissected the self-loathing and misogyny of Johnston's later writing. I'll only add that for all of Johnston's overworked puns, the strip stopped being amusing just as it stopped being realistic.

Well, it's dead. But, wait, no it's not! "Please join me on Monday as the story begins again," Johnston invites. "Looking back looks wonderful!" So it's the worst of both worlds: a zombie strip — like Peanuts — that it's creator won't stop tinkering with — like Breathed, only lacking the nostalgia of the former nor the creativity and relevance of the latter. Switching media, it's more like George Lucas adding unnecessary scenes and background clutter to Star Wars. Yet even he managed to move on and create new characters and new stories; crappy characters and stories, true, but still new!

Johnston requires a therapist. The comics require new talent, but not until someone finally and completely slays the undead roaming the funny pages.

New Orleans Will Be (Has Already Been) Politicized

2008-08-31T08:27:00.001-07:00

Straight from the floor of the GOP convention in St. Paul CNN is breathlessly reporting (do they know any other mode?) the evacuation of New Orleans as Hurricane Gustav. Could Republican strategists be any happier?

Sure, you may think that Republicans would not want to remind American voters of the BushAdmin's oblivious response to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, the incompetence of FEMA, the cronyism that put Michael Brown as head of the organization, and the continued failure of the federal government to save a major urban touchstone of American culture.

But look at this image.

(Hat tip to Brad Delong.)

Taken as Katrina surged over the levy walls and thousands suffered in the Superdome, this picture documents a happy celebration of President Bush's birthday. Dig in, boys!

This is the image that John McCain must counteract with new images: John McCain monitoring preparations in Mississippi; John McCain comforting evacuees; John McCain touring areas devastated by Gustav; John McCain delivering boxes of food and medicine for hurricane victims. If by the end of the week there is not a widely circulated photo of McCain handing a water bottle to a child in a hurricane shelter, then I have overestimated the semiotic talents of his campaign.

"But," the naive will say, "that politicizing a tragedy!" Of course it is. Why do you think John Edwards launched (and closed) his campaign from New Orleans? It is an inherently political situation. The federal government (not to mention state and local governments) has consistently failed to protect, to care for and to revive the city. Instead the free-marketeers have been turned loose, privatizing the hospitals and the schools and whatever else is lying around. Blackwater mercenaries roam the streets. Most Americans view this tragedy as a colossal failure. Combined with the string of lies and fuckups in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina is the main reason Bush is the most hated President since Nixon — even more than Nixon some days.

The Democrats has a remarkably successful convention. Barack Obama's acceptance speech drew a stadium packed with 80,000 people and a TV audience of 38 million viewers. McCain followed up with the worst pick for Vice President since Dan Quayle.

None of that may matter should McCain demonstrate through "presidential" actions of engagement and compassion that in moments of national security or disaster he is no callously indifferent bumbler like George Bush. Or, as Wolf "Conventional Wisdom (sic)" Blitzer has just put it, "Have they learned the lessons of Katrina?" The GOP will be arguing the affirmative.

Random Impressions: Obama Speech, DNC, Sarah Palin

2008-08-29T09:02:00.001-07:00

Firstly, I thought Obama's speech was just dandy. John Dickerson sums it up nicely, while his Slate buddy Mickey Kaus seems to have watched a different speech than I did. Obama would have been criticized for not offering the "laundry list" of plans had he stayed on the "soaring rhetoric" plane; if anything, had he done as Kaus expected, the venue — a stadium packed with Obama-worshippers tearing up and even proposing to each other — would have underscored the criticism that Obama makes great speeches but offers no substance. Within the constraints of political speech-making, Obama countered that charge with a hefty serving of "meat and potatoes." I still don't see how a "line-by-line" scrutiny of the federal budget to eliminate waste will pay for all the things Obama said he wants to do, but I imagine it might be a tad more fiscally responsible than, say, waging unnecessary wars. Just sayin'.

Other than oblique references from Gov. Bill Richardson and Sen. Joe Biden to "upholding the Constitution — and actually doing it!", I agree with Glenn Greenwald:

First, there is almost no mention of, let alone focus on, the sheer radicalism and extremism of the last eight years. During that time, our Government has systematically tortured people using sadistic techniques ordered by the White House; illegally and secretly spied on its own citizens; broken more laws than can be counted based on the twisted theory that the President has that power; asserted the authority to arrest and detain even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and hold them for years without charges; abolished habeas corpus; created secret prisons in Eastern Europe and a black hole of lawlessness in Guantanamo; and explicitly abandoned and destroyed virtually every political value the U.S. has long claimed to embrace.

Other than a fleeting reference to such matters by John Kerry in a (surprisingly effective) speech which most networks did not broadcast, one would not know, listening to the Democratic Convention, that any of those things have happened. Even our unprovoked and indescribably destructive attack on Iraq, based on purely false pretenses, has received little attention. Those things simply don't exist, even as part of the itemized laundry list of Democratic grievances about the Bush administration. The overriding impression one has is that the only things really wrong during the last eight years in this country are that gas prices are high and not everyone has health insurance. Those are obviously very significant problems, but they are garden-variety political issues which don't begin to capture the extremism that has predominated in this country under GOP rule, and don't remotely approach conveying the crises on numerous fronts the country faces.

Perhaps it is because too many Democrats have been complicit and carrying the water for this administration. Again...just sayin'.

As for Gov. Sarah Palin? I'm with August.

Some Minor Music Criticism of the DNC

2008-08-28T18:58:00.001-07:00

The kids are watching Spongebob, which significantly more edifying that the live feed from the CNN website of the Democratic National Convention that my addiction to politics compels me to watch.

Admittedly I was moved by the comments from the Midwestern factory worker who lost his job and watched as the Republican-led national government gave him the finger. So he returned the favor and signed upwith Obama.

But the sight of the huge crowds of delegates and lay folk thronging Mile High Stadium as they wave American flags to the beat of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." is, well, disturbing. It was weird when Reagan did it, but then I doubt the old fucker ever listend to the lyrics. I guess I assumed that Democrats were more familiar with Springsteen's protest against social indifference to Viet Nam War vets. Seeing the crowd shake their hips as Springsteen sings "Sent me off to a foreign land/ To go and kill the yellow man" — looks like I guessed wrong.

They've moved on to John Lennon's "Power to the People." Bit more "on message" I suppose. What, not "John Sinclair" or "Woman is the N----r of the World"? Yeeeahh...probably not.

Where Are the Damn Cartoons?

2008-08-28T07:26:00.001-07:00

You may be wondering. After all, it's Thursday, and so far we're 0 for 3. No Wanderlost update, no new In Contempt strips. I mean, what did I do, fall down a well? Break my hand? Get another bout of back pain or carpal tunnel syndrome? Go on a bender and wrap my car around a tree?

Nope.

It's late August. That's what. Something happens to me in the last couple weeks of August. I get lethargic, listless, feckless, aimless and lots of other lesses. A brief burnout. It's not lack of material. I have the scripts all written. I have Wanderlost written to the end, and I think it's pretty good. The In Contempt strips for this week were your usual jaundiced appraisal of politics — perhaps even more so, as the Democratic conventions tend to depress me more than lift me up. I have reactions to all that. Just haven't drawn them.

So it's a funk. Maybe this is why people go on vacations in August.

I'll be better next week. Don't fear. I'll post my cartoon responses to the DNC on Tuesday, and go after the RNC on Thursday. Word has it that McCain has made his Veep pick and will announce it the moment Obama stops talking. I really hope it's Romney. Not cuz I like the shit-eater; I love drawing him, mocking him, and watching him try to out-do everyone else on stage. "I'll double Guantanamo! I'll hunt every day! I'll waterboard my children! I'll show those Muslim theocracies — America will be the most Christian nation ever!"

The Clinton Speech

2008-08-26T20:45:00.001-07:00

I am not really sure what more Hillary Clinton could possibly say or do beyond tonight's speech to convince her supporters to rally around Barack Obama's candidacy for President. It was such a powerful speech, in fact, it could have —with a little tweaking for context— served her well as an acceptance speech for the nomination. It had to be powerful, of course, but both Obama and Joe Biden have their work cut out for them to maintain the momentum — or, optimally, surpass it.

Naturally, shortly afterwards the John McCain campaign ran its ad quoting Clinton's criticisms of Obama. This raises the headache-inducing possibility that the Obama and McCain campaigns could run dueling ads featuring Clinton praising and criticizing Obama. I hope not.

Yet CNN has managed to find Democratic delegates still unmoved, still unconvinced by Clinton's argument to support her former rival. I just saw one woman weep as she considered the possibility that she might not vote at all.

All of which makes me feel like an atheist observing a Methodist and a Baptist argue over issues of doctrine. Which, well, I am ... er ... when the issue comes up. It's not that I don't see the differences, but compared to the similarities they seem quite minimal. The challenge for Democrats comes during the general election to convince undecided and independent voters — not to mention recalcitrant Clinton supporters — that the differences between Obama and McCain are more cavernous than might be evident as the two candidates compete for the Sacred Middle.

Hometown Signs of DNC Lovefest

2008-08-25T07:55:00.001-07:00

If you are looking for some indication that the Democratic National Convention will be a giant healing ceremony for a party riven by the primary contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, my hometown newspaper The Buffalo News throws you a bone. Watch CNN or FOXNews and you will get the impression that Clintonistas are so disgruntled and petulant (a stereotype the John McCain campaign is counting on) that Obama has no chance of winning them over. By contrast, The News reports differently:

The Obama forces have gone out of the way to make Clinton delegates feel welcome, said Erie County Clerk Kathleen C. Hochul.

“I’ve gotten a lot of calls from the Obama people, wanting to make sure that I’m comfortable and have what I need and inviting me to go to some events,” Hochul said. “We’re clearly coming together.”

There certainly are plenty of events to attend. In addition to the traditional New York delegation breakfasts, there will be a plethora of parties each day, and a who’s who of New York politics will be here to witness it all.

Mind that "coming together" phrase. They use it a lot.

I find this significant for a few reasons. As Senator, Clinton has impressed Western New Yorkers by consistently sending their way federal funding and programming aimed at relieving the economic stagnation that has afflicted the area since the late 70's. As the article notes, local politicos from the entrenched Democratic Party machinery expected that a second President Clinton would be an intimate ear and share the largess. Also, WNY is chock full of those blue collar white people whom Obama has reportedly had trouble recruiting — the Reagan Democrats and Clinton supporters that might vote for McCain and against their self interests (economic, reproductive, etc.)

Mind you, it's not overwhelmingly significant. Voters might buck the machines of party and labor unions. And the various resentments of white workers against both affirmative action and the rise of the black middle class continue to obscure the mutual interests workers of all colors share. Code words like "unqualified" and "arrogant" persist, especially connected to the argument that Clinton was "more experienced" or "deserving." And the News article focuses only on local area leaders, party members with a personal stake in working with whatever Democratic administration might come to bear upon their political futures. Far be it from Jerry Zremski, the reporter to point that out or raise the question or exhibit any of the skepticism one might expect of a journalist, a Washington Bureau Chief.

FWIW, the News article is evidence that the Obama campaign has spent most of the Summer trying to make nice-nice with Clinton delegates. Hopefully the convention will get that over with so it can focus on winning the election.

Literacy INCLUDES Knitting

2008-08-24T10:47:00.001-07:00

A youth group of knitters, ages 6-10 years old, were kicked out of an eastern Ontario library. Here's the rationale:

Pamela Haley, manager of library services for the united counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, said the ban on crafts was put on place because the municipality is revamping its 18 library branches in an effort to attract more people and needs to be more literacy-focused to achieve that end.
She said the library's new fall lineup includes teen book clubs and Scrabble nights. The library will also be holding some events not focused on literacy, such as video game nights, to attract a younger crowd.

But under the new plan, there will no longer be a space for Kingston Currie and the other girls, aged six to 10, who used to sit around a table teasing yarn into organized patterns and items with crochet hooks and pairs of needles.

Yes, it's not like there are any books on knitting that young people could read to improve their skills and learn new patterns. It's not like knitting is some huge fad that has attracted people from all ages. Its not like knitting groups put these folks together to share new techniques in a strong example of cross-generational communication and learning. It's not like such a ban might alienate older patrons and thus provoke a backlash against the library and providing services to young people.

Snark over. Hat-tip from my wife who knits and reads ravelry.com — an international social networking community of knitters!

Argh. Gnash. Head-slap.

In Contempt (8/21/2008): Up the Wrong Tree

2008-08-20T23:42:00.001-07:00

Enlarge to become enraged!

Is "Douchebag" Sexist?

2008-08-20T08:45:00.001-07:00

From Ann at Feministing:

It's pretty easy to see why this evolved as an insult. Douchebag is funny because it's anachronistic. It was a device once promoted for health reasons, but as science has marched on, douching is generally just thought of as an embarrassing (and definitely not-talked-about) product for women who are paranoid about good old-fashioned vagina smells. If we're honest, we also laugh at it because it grosses us out. (Call it the bro-ish side of some feminists, myself included.) Like Dodai at Jezebel, I'm not calling for a ban on the word. Just asking feminists to think about it a bit more before saying it. To consider whether using "douchebag" as an insult is just another way of saying "everything associated with vaginas is icky!"

No, it's saying that some things associated with vaginas are icky. Some things associated with just about every part of the human body in general and male or female bodies in particular are icky. Smegma, anyone? Spooge? I don't think there is anything misogynist in acknowledging that some of the fluids emitted from the female body can be a little gross. Genuinely gross. And as such they form a legitimate basis for insulting someone.

"Douchebag" is funny not only because it's icky, but because it sounds funny. Take care of the sound, the sound will take care of the sense, as Lewis Carroll once said. Not always true, but in cases like this, it works. How about "ass-hat"? Does anyone really know what that means? No! But it sounds funny. Dickhead, butthead, shithead, and my son's favorite, poopyhead — a lot more sound is at work than sense.

Does the word's relationship to female anatomy or to anachronistic female hygiene put it off limits*? Ann provides a thoughtful discussion of the history of the douching practice and how social attitudes varied depending on the marital status of the woman performing it. Shorter version: it's okay if you're married, but single women who do it are sluts. Pretty reprehensible stuff — but, sadly, just about anything a single woman did was viewed as having slut potential. "Naughty" nurses and secretaries, especially; teachers and librarians, not as often, but they pop up even now as part of sexual fantasy. Personally, I deplore the slut-shaming as much as the sexist assumptions regarding single women. But I don't think "douchebag" inherently connotes either of these stupid ideas. Moreover, I feel there is a risk made in the opposite direction: by putting female bodies or anything associated with them completely out of bounds as the basis of ridicule, would we not be putting them on a pedestal, idealizing them beyond their human qualities.

Human beings are funny. Their bodies are funny. And gross. And weird. And awkward. Zits, farts, dangly bits, hairs, snot, phlegm — as biological beings, we contend with these strange, uncomfortable aspects of our bodies. We have developed lotions, cleansers, trimmers, and other methods to manage them, if not completely eliminate or hide them (and in the process making some people very rich.) The same holds true for those things unique to female and male bodies: pricks, tits, twats, balls and all the wonderful fluids they bring forth. They all serve important functions, but they can be quite embarrassing. And embarrassment, discomfort, inconvenience, grossness — these are the basis of humor. Not the most sophisticated variety, to be sure, but unless you are a total snob (and thus likely trying to distance yourself from your body and all its problems), you should recognize the value of humor derived from our most intimate experiences. Nothing especially "bro-ish" about that.

* Yes, Ann states that she is not trying to ban the word. And the discussion is certainly worth having — hence, my engaging in it. But for some folks it's a short step from raising the question to calling for a ban, so I feel it's necessary to address that possibility. Back to whence ye came

Wanderlost "Search Party" Page 9

2008-08-20T07:10:00.001-07:00

Expand the size and expand your mind, maaaaan!

In Contempt (8/19/2008): Purposeless Drivel

2008-08-19T15:07:00.001-07:00

Click that thing! Click it like your mama showed ya!

In Contempt (8/14/2008): Shrinking Emprie, Part 3

2008-08-14T00:08:00.001-07:00

Click to read at full size.

I had considered doing something on the John Edwards scandal, but after a moment's reflection, I realized I really didn't give a shit. I hadn't done a strip on Larry Craig or Rush Limbaugh or Bill Bennett or even Bill O'Reilly, whose falafel/loofah confusion was tempting. I did do something on Eliot Spitzer, but that was really a response to the sexist apologist notion that prostitution is a "victimless crime." There are more important issues to do a cartoon about.

Blogging is a different story. Were Edwards the prospective nominee, I would feel more outrage, that he had basically handed the election to McCain (unless those allegations of the Maverick being literally in bed with a lobbyist turned out to be true, at which point the infidelity scandals cancel each other out.) Instead we learned that yet again another politician has lied about cheating on his wife. Shocked, shocked.

This morning I heard the editor from the National Enquirer on NPR justify investigating the story by recalling Edwards' condemnation of Bill Clinton's infidelity and his bringing his family out on the campaign trail. But ... all politicians drag their family out on the stump, just as all of them will deny extra-marital affairs, at least those who are having them. They do so because our culture expects them to be good Family Men (and, we should note, Family Women are expected to be model mothers), even as the system is rigged to reward the sleaziest bastard going. Hypocrisy is built into game. It would be nice if our public servants could keep it in their pants for the sake of their families, but really, I'd be happy if they just did what they were elected to do —in that most pollyannish sense— serve the public. And not, say, the corporations or the military industrial complex.

If John Edwards could have seriously resolved issues of class in the United States (admittedly, another pollyannish dream), would we really care about his private dalliances? Maybe that's why Elizabeth Edwards agreed to keep mum and fought so hard to get him elected. I don't know. No one knows. That's why private issues should stay private; it's not only beyond our ken and none of our biznezz, but we should be focused on far more pressing public issues. When we reach the promised land, then we can call out the morality police — at which point, of course, utopia vanishes in a puff of smoke.

Wanderlost "Search Party" Page 8

2008-08-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

Click here to read the whole thing in glorious black and white.

NOTE: Next week I start updating Wanderlost on Wednesdays.

Damn It

2008-08-08T20:06:00.001-07:00

John Edwards has confirmed that he cheated on Elizabeth Edwards, his cancer-struggling wife.

Barry and I were just musing on this topic this afternoon, before the press conference was held. We remained skeptical. Only the right wing press took the National Enquirer story seriously, because they hate his populist $400 haircut, or whatever, and they will believe anything about liberal politicians, so long as it's negative. The mainstream press had only noted the National Enquirer story, but had not taken it seriously and didn't investigate it.

A number of news organizations with resources far greater than The Enquirer’s, like The New York Times, say they looked into the Edwards matter and found nothing solid enough to report, while others did not look at all.
Some of their comments point to a lack of interest in a story about the private conduct of an also-ran presidential candidate, and a distaste for following the lead of a publication they hold in low esteem. Only in Mr. Edwards’s home state, North Carolina, did newspapers aggressively chase the story in the last few weeks.
...snip...
The New York Times looked into the Enquirer reports last fall, though none too aggressively, editors said.
Bill Keller, the executive editor, said in an e-mail message that Mr. Edwards’s dark-horse status and the “added hold-your-nose quality about The Enquirer” contributed to the lack of interest by The Times and the mainstream media generally.

Well, fuck the press. I'm more interested in Elizabeth Edwards.

In a statement provided to The Associated Press, Elizabeth Edwards confirmed that her husband had confessed the extramarital affair to her in 2006 but that after a "long and painful process" she was now standing by him.

...snip...

In her statement Friday, Elizabeth Edwards said it wasn't easy to find out about the extramarital affair in 2006. She called the affair a "terrible mistake" but said the healing process was "oddly made somewhat easier" after her diagnosis of breast cancer in March 2007.
"This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well," she said. "Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private."
Mrs. Edwards said her family has been through a lot and pleaded for privacy.
"I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame," she said. "I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John's conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time."

She has her reasons for sticking by him, perhaps because she feels the cause of the poor that he has championed over the past few years is more important than his personal failings. And, really, who the hell wants reporters camped on the lawn, going through the garbage and asking painful questions?

Oh, and: Lee Stranahan needs to grow up.

In Contempt (8/7/2008): Cards and Whistles

2008-08-06T22:46:00.001-07:00

Click the image to explode it to a massive size.

It's Never Too Early To Save Christmas!

2008-08-06T07:44:00.001-07:00

Did you know that the War to Save Christmas from Secular Progressives (SPs!) has not yet reached its highest level of absurdity? Sure, it's August, you're already puzzled by Back to School sales. But really, the Ever Diligent Defenders of our precious Religious Freedoms (remember, "freedom requires religion," quothe the Handsome Mormon; as for "freedom from religion" — well, you hate America) never rest. So writes Dan Solomon at MightyGodKing:

An American Carol is basically a Scary Movie-style spoof of American liberal politics, starring every famous conservative entertainer. Which is pretty much just, um, Kelsey Grammar, Jon Voight, James Woods, and Dennis Hopper. Oh, and Kevin Sorbo. Clint Eastwood, apparently, still wanted to be able to look himself in the mirror afterwards. The cast is rounded out with conservative commentators and country music stars like Bill O’Reilly and Trace Adkins. And basically they seem to have just made a movie where they all run around saying liberals are stupid! for an hour and a half. We’ll see how that turns out for them.
The movie stars Chris Farley’s little brother (Larry the Cable Guy was busy, seriously, not a joke) as "Michael Malone", a hefty anti-American documentary filmmaker out to ban the pledge of allegiance, with the help of the dastardly movealong.org. He gets visited by the ghosts of George Washington (Jon Voight), John F Kennedy (some soap star named Chriss Anglin), and General Patton (totally Kelsey Grammar, I’m not even kidding), and they show him the error of his ways. Hence the "Carol" part of the title, I guess. Michael Moore is Scrooge.

Read the rest of the post, because it only gets stooopider. Emphasis on "der."

In Contempt (8/5/08): Shrinking Empire, Part Two

2008-08-05T11:59:00.001-07:00

Click the image to see the thing at full size.

In Contempt (7/31/2008): Shrinking Empire

2008-07-31T12:06:00.000-07:00

Give it a click and consume the hilarity.

In Contempt (7/29/2008): Messing With Romney, Part Two

2008-07-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

Click the image to read in full-fledged form.

Wanderlost "Search Party" Page 7

2008-07-28T08:12:00.001-07:00

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You Had Me at "Zap!"

2008-07-26T09:37:00.001-07:00

Charlie Jane Anders has posted a personal list of favorite first sentences from science fiction, provoking a lively discussion in the comments as people debate their merits and make their own suggestions. I tend to agree with AlfaCharger that the first line from Slaughter-House 5 is my favorite:

"Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time."

I love the word "unstuck" for the sound it suggests, as if pulling a suction cup dart from a wall, that slow "phhhh-pop!" as Billy Pilgrim gradually succumbs to trauma, memory, and alienation from his middle-aged suburban life.

Anyone got any faves? From any work of fiction, regardless of genre.

(Hat tip to Blake at LISNews.)

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McCain Wants Us To Lose

2008-07-25T18:28:00.001-07:00

According to the guiding logic of the BushAdmin and McCainCampaign, setting timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq is tantamount to setting the stage for losing the war. Admittedly, I am still unclear about what "winning" looks like, but McCain repeatedly accuses the ObamaCampaign of proposing a losing strategy. Now, apparently, McCain thinks either that a) a timetable for withdrawal is not "losing" or b) he wants to lose. From the Caucus Blog:

“He said it’s a pretty good timetable based on conditions on the ground,’’ Mr. McCain said. “I think it’s a pretty good timetable, as we should — or horizons for withdrawal. But they have to be based on conditions on the ground. This success is very fragile. It’s incredibly impressive, but very fragile. So we know, those of us who have been involved in it for many years, know that if we reverse this, by setting a date for withdrawal, all of the hard-won victory can be reversed.’’

I think... I think he's dithering, don't you? Like he doesn't want to contradict the leader of a country whose sovereignty our occupying military is supposed to respect (ah-ah! no laughing, now), but he doesn't want to seem like he's totally endorsing the Obama position on scheduled withdrawal — because then what's point in voting for or against either of these buffoons? We're going back to Afghanistan, anyway. Need a couple brigades for that. Anyone new enlisting lately? ... chirp, chirp... Yeah, that's what I thought.

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War is a Feminist Issue

2008-07-24T11:23:00.001-07:00

Quin at Punk-Ass Blog must have been in the midst of some migraine-inducing flame wars recently, because why else would one need to spell out for people that "Anti-War IS Feminist"?

Being anti-war and being feminist are not mutually exclusive. After all, it’s impossible to support gender equality for women who you’re killing, or even for whom you’re just creating a constantly life-threatening environment. War zones, even once they’re ex-war zones, are where rights for women go to die.

By all means, go read the rest of the post. By turns funny, outraged and pertinent. Plus some heartbreaking photos to bring the point home.

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In Contempt (7/24/2008): Obama in Iraq

2008-07-23T22:09:00.000-07:00

Click the image to read it at maximum capacity.

Funniest Comment I Have Read Today

2008-07-23T12:42:00.001-07:00

Dan Solomon commenting on MightyGodKing getting creeped out by a Time Magazine article on so-called "purity balls":

You know, if you wanted further proof that these people live in a world very different from our own, you could really just look at the fact that nobody involved thought twice about making everybody say the words “purity balls” over and over every time they wanted to reference these things.

At some point I want to do a cartoon on this phenomenon (do-doo-de-dodo!), cuz wow is it completely fucking weird. Even furries could look askance at it.

But it IS Stupid

2008-07-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

Ezra Caraeff addresses the question, "Is this ad homophobic?" I agree with his negative assessment:

Now if the campaign focused on any of the other hundreds of outlandishly gay moments in sports (a quarterback's hands delicately placed beneath the ass of his bent over center while awaiting a snap, baseball's dugout buttslaps of approval, or this joyous celebration between two teammates) and declared them to be "ain't right," then we'd have a real problem. But this ad's copy is based on the fact that the player in the image just got dunked on. Dunked on so badly that his opponent's balls are now at chin level. Gay or straight, I assume no one wants an uninvited sweaty pair in their grill--now if it's invited, well, that's another story...

In other words, it's a matter of consent. One thing that homophobes don't get is that sexual relations between two people of the same sex have no impact whatsoever on the lives and sexual practices of straight people. Homophobes fear (strangely) that a queer person, sex crazed for the genetalia of the same sex, will be unable to control themselves and start doing something "gay" at them (like, say, "OMG! That gay dude's gonna cornhole me! ONOZ!"), and thereby undermine their precious heterosexual identity. For reasons most likely rooted in Ye Ole Patriarchy, homophobes forget that mutual consent is at work in homosexual relationships just as much as in heterosexual relationships -- or, really, it should.

So does this ad have a potential homophobic reading? Well, sure, who knows what stupid homophobes are going to read into this. But how about intent? Or reasonable doubt? Or an alternative explanation? I think Ezra has it right. Put it another way, just cuz I'm straight, doesn't mean I want some random vagina in my face.

Wanderlost "Search Party" - Page 6

2008-07-21T01:00:00.001-07:00

One click and all shall be revealed, yea, verily.

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In Contempt (7/17/2008): Surge-o-riffic!

2008-07-16T22:07:00.001-07:00

Click the image to read the cartoon at maximum capacity.

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The New Yorker Cover — Because Nothing More Important is Going On!

2008-07-14T20:58:00.001-07:00

Matt is ranting, Barry is patiently explaining a joke, Ruben is making a fair criticism (though I disagree), and me? I'm with Gary Kamiya:

After 9/11, some pious nitwits, suffering from an America-centrism akin to the medieval belief that the Earth was the center of the universe, intoned that "irony was dead." Seven years later, they've been proven right -- but not in the way they intended. Irony may have been killed, but not by sincerity -- it's been killed by cynicism. Vast swaths of the left have apparently been so traumatized by the Big Lie techniques employed by the Bush administration, its media lickspittles like Fox News, and the right-wing attack machine, that they have come to regard all images or texts that contain negative stereotypes as too politically dangerous to run. If you satirically depict Obama as an Islamist terrorist, in this view, you are only reinforcing and giving broader currency to right-wing smears.

Since the essence of satire is exaggerating negative stereotypes, this means that satire itself is off limits. Or, at least, all satire except that which the cowering -- but oh so semiotically sophisticated -- left-wing commentariat deems to be sufficiently broad-brush and polemical to pass its funny test. There's no arguing taste in humor, of course, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that those who find Barry Blitt's drawing completely unfunny have traded their appreciation of subtlety and nuance for an instrumental, ends-obsessed, political-unto-death worldview.

I'm pissed that my copy of the New Yorker bearing the provocative Blitt cover hasn't showed up in my mailbox yet.

I'm also a bit taken aback by the notion being swung around in some blog comments that only people of color are capable of correctly measuring offensiveness. Certainly white assholes too easily dismiss black folks' claims of racism when they deserve to be heard. But let's not overcompensate by granting some magical offensiveness divining power to people from historically oppressed groups. It is possible that a person of color, by virtue of being first and foremost a person —fallible, limited, subjective, feet of clay, etc.— could be wrong. Or that person of color (or not of color, whatever that really means) who are not offended could reasonably disagree.

For the record, irony ain't dead. It's been thriving well enough, and this latest sandbox kerfuffle is but a small instance of its vitality.

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My Brain Lately

2008-07-12T13:09:00.000-07:00

From Neha Tiwari.

Xanthony Xuxx

2008-07-10T20:06:00.001-07:00

On a whim I picked up a copy of A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony about a month ago. I read it. I ... liked it? Well, sure, if you set aside the adolescent misogyny and the utterly pretentious prose and the too convenient magic.

So I guess the answer is no. I hesitate an affirmative because there were certain elements I liked. The natural selectivity of a world suffused with magic was a wonderful pseudo-intellectual conceit, the kind of head game that makes good escapist fiction enjoyable (and, no, just because I call it "escapist" doesn't mean I'm snobbing it out; I draw a cartoon about a pig, for fuck's sake.) It had the promise of interesting rules and thaumaturgic properties.

More interesting was the character of Chameleon herself — certainly more so than the milquetoast protagonist, Bink. Chameleon has personality, wit, resourcefulness, and a serious existential problem (well, for a magical creature.) Without spoiling anything for the random person who hasn't read the book yet reads my blog (most of my friends are better SF/Fantasy readers than I am), I'll say that her condition would have been really interesting to explore from her point-of-view as she undergoes her month-long changes.

Does Anthony explore this in any depth? No. He makes Chameleon a trophy for Bink, a woman who won't challenge him for too long, keep him entertained and laid without complicating his life too much with a will of her own. In the second novel in the series, Chameleon's condition, which had already had strong associations with the menstrual cycle, becomes an all-out bitch-on-the-rag impetus to drive Bink out on the road in search of more adventure. I put down the second novel (whose title I didn't bother to remember) after 20 pages. I was done.

My better read SF/Fantasy friends tell me Anthony's misogyny only gets worse as the series progresses. I don't get it. Certainly womanhood, femininity and other aspects of the sex are worthy of exploring in fictional allegories of the human condition; indeed, worthy of satire, too, as part of the general human folly. But that's not what Anthony does. He's just a sexist dick. Some woman somewhere in his past pissed him off (wittingly or not) and so every woman character and reader afterwards must suffer the collective punishment meted our by his sniveling, sniggering stereotypes.

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In Contempt (7/8/2008): The Fate of Jesse Helms' Soul

2008-07-07T22:26:00.000-07:00

Click to engorge the cartoon. I mean, "enlarge".

Wanderlost Search Party Page 4

2008-07-07T01:20:00.000-07:00

Click the image to read the full cartoon in all of its colorful cartoony goodness. With a thick nougat center.

What the hell happened to me?

2008-07-04T16:08:00.001-07:00

Slow blogging this week, obviously. And no damn toons, nuther.

I got back from the ALA Conference in Anaheim on Tuesday and have been pretty busy since then catching up with my normal life.

Then - WHAM! - it's the 4th of July. Drop everything! Eat greasy food! Dodge fireworks! Ride a big blue train with a face on it! Get a sunburn! Roll the American flag into a giant wad and shove it up your ass! Love your country or die, commie terrorist blasphemer! Drink too much beer! Imagine Jesus all buff and oily, massaging your toes! Just cuz! Don't question anything! Take off your shoes before boarding a plane! Wear mouse ears with pride! Go to the mall! There's a sale! Fuck the planet!

All shall resume as normal next week. There will be cartoons. And thoughts on what I done learned from librarians more experienced than I.

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Bad Choice of Words

2008-06-25T09:02:00.001-07:00

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Ralph Nader criticized Senator Barack Obama for being a typical centrist Democrat, but put his criticism in racially coded terms.

"There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American," Nader said. "Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards."
[... snip ... ]
Asked to clarify whether he thought Obama does try to "talk white," Nader said: "Of course.

"I mean, first of all, the number one thing that a black American politician aspiring to the presidency should be is to candidly describe the plight of the poor, especially in the inner cities and the rural areas, and have a very detailed platform about how the poor is going to be defended by the law, is going to be protected by the law, and is going to be liberated by the law," Nader said. "Haven't heard a thing."

The gist of Nader's criticism is not off the mark. Like most his fellow Democrats running for the Presidency, Obama has appealled to "middle class" concerns, leaving issues that directly affect the poor out of his speeches. Indeed, for me, my initial preference for John Edwards was based upon his consistent and impassioned discussion of poverty issues. Should Obama win the Presidency, I would like to see him make a cabinet position for Edwards —a "poverty czar" if you will— to implement the reforms necessary to bring Americans out of poverty.

The problem with Nader's criticism of Obama is in the wording. Does Ralph even know what "talking white" means? Does he not realize that it implies that Obama is merely imitating white speech, and not, say, speaking and writing as the accomplished academic, wordsmith and politician that he actually is?

There are, in fact, two ways one can go with the "talking white" description. The first occurs most often within the urban African American community as an accusation that questions the authenticity of an individual's blackness, typically in response to either a person's academic achievement or "biracial" identity. Last year in my daughter's third grade class a troubled young African American girl who had a tendency to disparage her classmates in racial and ethnic terms accused my "biracial" daughter of "talking white" and "acting white." This bothered Katie immensely, of course; as a "biracial" kid raised by "whites" she already feels insecure about her identity.*

The second application of "talking white" derives from racist propaganda against the end of slavery and the political participation of African Americans. Basically, racists accuse accomplished African Americans of being "trained monkeys" who have learned how to "imitate" the speech and mannerisms of educated, civilized "whites."

I have a feeling that Nader was trying to imply the former, but being "white" himself (really, he's partly of Lebanese origin), he comes off sounding like the latter. Like a surburban "white" boy saying "fo shizzle, my nizzle" Nader sloppily, irresponsibly employs phrases from a culture to which he does not belong and that he really doesn't understand, and thereby unconsciously reaffirms the racist character of our culture.

Which is unfortunate, because Nader has legitimate criticisms of Obama. But no one is going to listen if he sounds like a clown.

UPDATE: My wife raised another annoying aspect of Nader's comments that I didn't grasp right away. Why should Obama's African American identity automatically require him to address poverty issues? True, poverty and its attendant problems disproportionately affect people of color. But as plenty of conservative African American pundits prove, there is nothing genetic about class issues. As a former community organizer in Chicago's hard hit working class neighborhoods, Obama could do much more to speak out on issues affecting them. That's where Obama's obligations lay.

* If you're wondering why I am putting terms like "whites" and "biracial" in quotes, it is because I do not accept the premise underlying such concepts. They have no basis in biology, in reality. There is only one race, the human race. "Whites" and "blacks" can breed fertile offspring, for crying out loud. Whitness and blackness are socially constructed cultural norms created to reinforce institutional racism, whereby the ruling class maintains exploitation of the working classes through legal, structural and cultural divisions.

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In Contempt (11/25/2008): So Long, George

2008-06-24T22:05:00.001-07:00

Click to read the cartoon at full size.

As Abell Smith points out, there have been a lot of crappy Carlin at the pearly gates cartoons. If you wanted to find a way to spit on a man's corpse metaphorically, that is certainly one way to do it. I hope my humble effort makes up for it.

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You Mean, Like Gwen Ifill?

2008-06-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

FoxNews commentator (I think it's Cal Thomas sans mustache) includes Maxine Waters, Cynthia McKinney and news anchors among a list of "angry black women." Not that I think such a description applies to any of these women (nor, for that matter, Michelle Obama, the subject Thomas discusses), but at least they would have had opportunities to express anger or outrage in a political forum. That's what politicians do, after all. But when the hell do any news anchors express anger?

Oh, here we go!

Thomas video found via TerrenceDC at Pam's House Blend, who has some smart observations on this "angry black woman" meme.

Anti-LGBT Violence in Schools

2008-06-18T07:58:00.001-07:00

Julie at Schooling Inequality posts recent news and some commentary on homophobic violence in schools, including the Alliance Defense Fund's "Day of Truth" response to GLSEN's Day of Silence to honor the memory of a 14-year-old lesbian murdered by her classmates; and the beating of an outspoken lesbian advocate by three girls, one of whom videotaped the incident. It's a very informative post, so go read the whole thing.

But, wow, does it make a feller see red. The so-called "Day of Truth" violates even the basic respect we afford the dead, which apparently the ADF does not feel extends to queer folk.

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In Contempt (6/17/08): Barthroom Police

2008-06-17T23:42:00.001-07:00

Using your mouse, hover the cursor arrow over the image until it turns into a hand, then depress the left button. This will take you to a larger, more legible image, allowing you to enjoy the cartoon without squinting.

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Wanderlost Search Party Page 2

2008-06-17T00:15:00.000-07:00

Click here to see the page in all its glory.

Sock Obama Monkey

2008-06-13T14:28:00.001-07:00

Now we have an answer to the Hillary Nutcracker -- except that, as MonkeyGodKing puts it, this is the "most incredibly stupid boosterism ever."

Do I have to explain why this is racist? Do I really?

No. No, I don't. Because if you have to ask ....

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Tim Russert, Buffalonian

2008-06-13T13:59:00.001-07:00

Before Tim Russert, who died earlier today, the most famous Buffalonian was probably Rick James. Here's what Tom Brokaw had to say about Russert's Buffalo-ness, according to the Caucus Blog:

Mr. Brokaw said Mr. Russert was a true child of Buffalo and always stayed in touch with his blue collar roots and “the ethos of that community.”

He said Mr. Russert had just moved his father, who is in his late 80s, from one facility to another in Buffalo. He said he loved his family, his Catholic faith, his country, politics, the Buffalo Bills, the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals.

Fifty-eight is too young to die. That's a damn shame. However, I won't be drawing any obituary tributes, because that shit is tacky. The best people to give him a tribute are his colleagues in the mainstream news media, who are already releasing testimonials to the man's hard work and dedication to covering American politics.

I was not always thrilled with how Russert would give voice to conventional wisdom or to parrot Republican talking points; but I did always appreciate his tenacity in forcing guests to answer his questions directly.

I wonder what Darryl Hammond has to say?

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In Contempt (6/12/08): All Dried Up

2008-06-11T22:47:00.001-07:00

Click the above image to get a bigger, more legible image.

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Wanderlost: "Search Party" Page 1

2008-06-11T22:19:00.001-07:00

Click to see the page at full size.

And when you do, you'll see the new website.

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