Cartoonists With Attitude

“The sheep are revolting.”

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I don’t think I have to spend much time explaining the how silly the “if we leave, the terrorists will follow us home” argument is.

In Thursday’s cartoon, Bunnista and the Guinea Pig discuss their motives. Click on the fragment below for the full cartoon at comics.com:

The more you click on my cartoons at comics.com during 2007, the better the chances they’ll appear in daily city papers in 2008. If you like Minimum Security, please see a new cartoon each weekday!

Fellow Attitude 3-er and damn good political cartoonist Eric Millikin points to a review of the “new” Blondie, now penned by a cartoonist named John Marshall:

Marshall calls Blondie a bit of Americana whose lasting appeal stems from the fact that it takes a humorous look at everyday problems. Dagwood overeats and goes to work every day, facing a demanding boss. Blondie is the all-American wife and mother, although she joined the work force in 1991 as the proud owner of Blondie’s Catering.

…

Young agrees that the strip’s humor relates to the world going on around us and purposefully shies away from politics and controversy.

“My dad told me a long time ago, “we want to win friends, not make enemies.’ Our job is to make people laugh,” he says.

Eric’s dead-on reaction: “That’s right: Blondie relates to the world around us by purposefully shying away from politics and controversy.”

Personally, I just feel like a complete jackass. For the 3+ years I’ve been doing this, I had no idea that truly great satire about “the world around us” means just looking at the insular lives of white suburbanites who obey gender and class roles rooted in 1930’s “Americana.”

Boy do I have egg on my face.

Just to stave off the inquiries, yes. Oh yes, I am aware of the opening this weekend of the “Creationist Museum” in Kentucky. I didn’t really have anything to add because I think almost every rational article about it speaks for itself.

Someone on MetaFilter made a great point that if there’s only one thing this place proves, it’s that there should be a legal requirement for what can be classified as a museum. The building proposes, essentially, concepts last seen on The Flintstones. I have friends who are deeply religious, and if anything because of that I imagine they would be more embarrassed by this than I am. The only thing you can really do at this point is try not to think about how many children twenty-seven million dollars could have fed.

…as I did yesterday, the man just authored one doozy of a Supreme Court opinion on pay discrimination. In short, you’ll have 180 days from the set date of your salary to ferret out whether you’re being screwed and make any claim of discrimination. As usual, Ginsburg states what should be obvious to anyone sitting on the SCOTUS:

In a vigorous dissenting opinion that she read from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the majority opinion “overlooks common characteristics of pay discrimination.” She said that given the secrecy in most workplaces about salaries, many employees would have no idea within 180 days that they had received a lower raise than others.

An initial disparity, even if known to the employee, might be small, Justice Ginsburg said, leading an employee, particularly a woman or a member of a minority group “trying to succeed in a nontraditional environment” to avoid “making waves.” Justice Ginsburg noted that even a small differential “will expand exponentially over an employee’s working life if raises are set as a percentage of prior pay.”

I will state again that the Dems’ unwillingness to try to stop Alito from joining the highest court in the land was their worst crumble to date.

Ted’s in Central Asia…But New Guest Bloggers Are in Da House!

The siren call of the Stans is luring me back to the windswept steppes and soaring peaks of post-Soviet Central Asia and tumultuous South Asia too, but the Rallblog won’t be dormant while I’m traipsing through the Pamirs. Instead, say hi to my special new guest bloggers who’ll expound on anything and everything they deem interesting.

Enjoy and see you soon.

I was thinking Edwards was coming out as the best Presidential candidate. Not because of his policies but because he wins the who would you like to drink a beer with test (it’s the only criteria I use). But Obama’s recent caricatures of his Democratic colleagues (auctioned for charity) has me rethinking how I evaluate potential Presidents. Can any of these people draw funny pictures on bar napkins while having said beer? Can they come down to that uniquely human–uniquely American– level?

Obama can. Elect him President.

So now we know he can draw somewhat and has a background at an Islamic militant pre-school. What other secrets is he hiding?

I illustrated this week’s cover story for the Cleveland Free Times on Dennis Kucinich’s attempt to impeach Cheney. Not going to happen, but as the sub-head of the article says, “Who’s More Crazy? Dennis Kucinich, For Taking On The Most Powerful Men In Washington? Or His Fellow Democrats, For Not Supporting Him?”

Originally I was given only one instruction, “Draw Kucinich punishing Cheney” and was told to “go wild.” They run my comics on their letters page so I assumed they knew what they were asking for, granting me free reign on that kind of topic. These type of assignments happen only once in a blue moon; some cover stories have a very specific idea of what they want, some let your artistic juices work a bit, but none really provide the kind of potential that comes with the line “Draw Kucinich punishing Cheney.”

I decided to pull out all the stops and go for the gold.

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Making what was a disappointing, but sound editorial decision, they rejected that sketch and asked for something a bit more palatable to the passerby.

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In Wednesday’s cartoon, Kranti invites Nikko to do something weird. Click on the fragment below for the full cartoon at comics.com:

The more you click on my cartoons at comics.com during 2007, the better the chances they’ll appear in daily city papers in 2008. If you like Minimum Security, please see a new cartoon each weekday!