Cartoonists With Attitude

Resegregation Nation: Next up, the Supreme Court Rules That Integrated Water Fountains Violate the Constitution
Posted by Mikhaela Reid

All you closet Klansmen out there, you would-be Bull O’Connors and George Wallaces, listen up: it is officially time to party! Get out your balloons and confetti, and iron your best white robes, because the Bush Supreme Court has officially declared that racial integration and diversity DON’T MATTER AT ALL. The Bush court says that not only is segregation totally cool (as long as it’s the “natural” result of segregated housing areas), it’s actively RACIST to oppose segregation. Why? Because racial diversity is AGAINST the spirit of Brown vs. Board of Education.

Yes, that’s right–it’s against the spirit of the decision that made it possible for children of all colors to go to school together to encourage children of all colors to go to school together. The only way to avoid racism is to DENY it and ignore it and NOT DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT. That’s what being “colorblind” is all about!

As the NAACP’s Theodore Shaw put it on The Newshour With Jim Lehrer tonight, it doesn’t get much more Orwellian than this. This is Civil Rights Lite to the extreme. Hence the vigorous dissent:

[Souter] said the chief justice’s invocation of Brown vs. Board of Education was “a cruel irony” when the opinion in fact “rewrites the history of one of this court’s most important decisions” by ignoring the context in which it was issued and the Supreme Court’s subsequent understanding of it to permit voluntary programs of the sort that were now invalidated.

I was particularly horrified by the anti-integration argument that many parents “don’t want this” (”this”, presumably, being the horror of their children going to school with black kids). For example, here’s Roger Clegg, president of the deceptively named “Center for Equal Opportunity” (his group filed an amicus brief in the case) celebrating the anti-integration decision on the NewsHour:

I think that school boards are also going to be sensitive to the fact that most parents don’t like it when they are told that where they can send their children to school depends on what color they are.

And…

I think the question is whether anyone believes that a politically correct racial and ethnic mix, that kind of diversity, is worth the price of racial discrimination. And I think that most Americans would say that, no, it is not.

Sure, lots of Americans–bigoted and ignorant ones–protested school integration back in the day because they didn’t want it, either. That didn’t make them RIGHT. That was the whole POINT of Brown vs. Board! As the NAACP’s Shaw put it:

This [integration] is not about school districts telling people that they can’t go to school on the basis of their skin color. This is about school districts trying to continue to fulfill the promise of Brown and to avoid segregation. In no way is this comparable to the kind of regime of segregation and discrimination that existed under Jim Crow.

Exactly.

Finally, while we’re on the topic of Brown vs. Board of Education, this is particularly bad timing, because I just did a dystopian cartoon for Lambda Legal wondering “What would life be like without integrated schools?”:

Prepare to find out. And God Bless Our Colorblind America, where the playing field is level, everyone has an equal chance, and white kids can just learn about colored folks on their Tee-Vees!

Next up: The Supreme Court rules that allowing black people and white people to drink from the same water fountains is racist.

P.S. I would have called this cartoon “Separate But Equal: The Sequel”, but I already drew a cartoon with that title. Oh well.

P.P.S. Just so it’s clear–in the cartoon, the kids of color are locked up in a “Jim Crow Max Security Educational Facility” not because they’re troublemakers or deserve to be there, but because they live under racist segregation.

Cross-posted at Boiling Point Blog.

click for comic

Many thanks to Masheka for suggesting something in the “half-man” vein. If he didn’t, that panel would’ve been “Miss Stinky: The woman who smells like cabbage no matter how hard she scrubs,” which was just a forced excuse to draw stink lines.

I can’t write much else. I’m busy getting two more comics done so I can go to the AAEC convention without shirking my cartooning duties. Speaking of which, there are two events related to the convention you should check out if you’re in the DC area next week:

Cartoonapalooza - Tuesday, July 3rd 6:30pm - $25 - Ted Rall, Tom Toles, Mike Luckovich, Mike Peters, Rob Rogers, Jack Ohman, Ruben Bolling, Ann Telnaes, Keith Knight, and Mark Fiore will all dazzle you with brilliance and punch you in the chuckle-gut with hilarity.

CWA Slideshow & Signing - Saturday, Jul 7th 2pm - Free! - See the giants of alt-weekly cartooning and the dirtbag who draws “Big Fat Whale.”

Next Week: Campaigning with the Stars*

All you closet Klansmen out there, you would-be Bull O’Connors and George Wallaces, listen up: it is officially time to party! Get out your balloons and confetti, and iron your best white robes, because the Bush Supreme Court has officially declared that racial integration and diversity DON’T MATTER AT ALL. The Bush court says that not only is segregation totally cool (as long as it’s the “natural” result of segregated housing areas), it’s actively RACIST to oppose segregation. Why? Because racial diversity is AGAINST the spirit of Brown vs. Board of Education.

Yes, that’s right–it’s against the spirit of the decision that made it possible for children of all colors to go to school together to encourage children of all colors to go to school together. The only way to avoid racism is to DENY it and ignore it and NOT DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT. That’s what being “colorblind” is all about!

As the NAACP’s Theodore Shaw put it on The Newshour With Jim Lehrer tonight, it doesn’t get much more Orwellian than this. This is Civil Rights Lite to the extreme. Hence the vigorous dissent:

[Souter] said the chief justice’s invocation of Brown vs. Board of Education was “a cruel irony” when the opinion in fact “rewrites the history of one of this court’s most important decisions” by ignoring the context in which it was issued and the Supreme Court’s subsequent understanding of it to permit voluntary programs of the sort that were now invalidated.

I was particularly horrified by the anti-integration argument that many parents “don’t want this” (”this”, presumably, being the horror of their children going to school with black kids). For example, here’s Roger Clegg, president of the deceptively named “Center for Equal Opportunity” (his group filed an amicus brief in the case) celebrating the anti-integration decision on the NewsHour:

I think that school boards are also going to be sensitive to the fact that most parents don’t like it when they are told that where they can send their children to school depends on what color they are.

And…

I think the question is whether anyone believes that a politically correct racial and ethnic mix, that kind of diversity, is worth the price of racial discrimination. And I think that most Americans would say that, no, it is not.

Sure, lots of Americans–bigoted and ignorant ones–protested school integration back in the day because they didn’t want it, either. That didn’t make them RIGHT. That was the whole POINT of Brown vs. Board! As the NAACP’s Shaw put it:

This [integration] is not about school districts telling people that they can’t go to school on the basis of their skin color. This is about school districts trying to continue to fulfill the promise of Brown and to avoid segregation. In no way is this comparable to the kind of regime of segregation and discrimination that existed under Jim Crow.

Exactly.

Finally, while we’re on the topic of Brown vs. Board of Education, this is particularly bad timing, because I just did a dystopian cartoon for Lambda Legal wondering “What would life be like without integrated schools?”:

Prepare to find out. And God Bless Our Colorblind America, where the playing field is level, everyone has an equal chance, and white kids can just learn about colored folks on their Tee-Vees!

Next up: in a landmark victory for Americans who don’t like sharing water fountains, the Supreme Court rules that allowing black people and white people to drink from the same water fountains violates the Constitution.

P.S. I would have called this cartoon “Separate But Equal: The Sequel”, but I already drew a cartoon with that title. Oh well.

P.P.S. Just so it’s clear–in the cartoon, the kids of color are locked up in a “Jim Crow Max Security Educational Facility” not because they’re troublemakers or deserve to be there, but because they live under racist segregation.

For more on this horrible decision, see BrownFemiPower and Amanda at Pandagon and Samhita at Feministing.

click to enlarge

Rudy Giuliani is trying to milk 9/11 sympathy and fear even more than Bush. He may even make a worse President, what with his penchant for police crackdowns and anti-art authoritarianism. In my view, censoring art in an unforgivable offense on par with War Crimes. I’d like to see an international tribunal established to try, and possibly execute, offenders.

After 9/11, he was declared “America’s Mayor,” for his alleged leadership that day. This is another issue I’m planning on taking up soon in a cartoon.

Don’t forget! You can purchase collections of my strips in the store.

Once again, a large round of thanks to all those serious, “ex-liberal” bloggers out there, and their bold chastizing of us stupid, stupid leftists about how civil rights and personal liberties just weren’t as important as keeping George Bush in office so he could win the war in Iraq and end terrorism all across the world.

America continues its path to freedom. Truly, another small victory.

My friends at BEAST magazine infiltrated the recent opening of a creationist “museum” in Kentucky. (One of my recent comics was inspired by the opening of this craptastic place). These people think Dinosaurs not only lived with man, but survived on the ark and have only recently gone extinct.

Clearly these people are lacking all their mental faculties. What could they do to test their ability to believe anything? They created a fake website to obtain press passes ,www.thespecialtimes.com, “A Christian lifestyle journal for and by the developmentally disabled,” then sent “Dougie,” who suffers from “Asperger’s Syndrome by Proxy” in to interview the famous christian apologist Ken Ham, who makes a nice living lying to children. There’s an article, but even better is a YouTube video of the interview. Watching it, it’s hard to tell who’s acting more retarded.

Please welcome my former CAP co-worker Dana Goldstein to the blogtarwebs.

Mikhaela did it so I don’t have to. She also managed to photograph my rare psychological condition that causes me to make weird faces at cameras.

I will add that this year’s MoCCA finally convinced me to get my ass in gear and put another book together that you assholes won’t buy. (I make joke!)

Why Wall Street Journal Reporters didn’t show up for work today
Posted by Mikhaela Reid

Were I still an employee of the Wall Street Journal, I might not have shown up for work this morning, thanks to Rupert Murdoch’s insane quest to dominate the world with right-wing wingnut faux news crap.

Even long-time readers might be surprised to hear that I worked full-time for three years (through the end of 2006) as an information graphics journalist at the Wall Street Journal, initially for the Money & Investing section and more recently for the Economy page. I made 2-5 daily charts and graphics, mostly tracking economic indicators and analyzing trends in the stock and bond markets. I also did the occasional medical or technical illustration, including a graphic about abdominal aortic aneurysms that accompanied a Pulitzer-Prize-winning front page series. (Read old blog post here…)

I was also part of the union, and participated in several union actions regarding benefit cuts, pay cuts and large-scale layoffs (I’ll spare you the slogans, but it was pretty damn cool to see financial reporters carrying signs and chanting old-school labor song-type lyrics).

The Wall Street Journal is a top-notch paper with reporters and editors of the highest caliber and in-depth investigative reporting and features you can’t find anywhere else. Aside from the New York Times, it’s the only paper I read almost cover-to-cover every day (with the notable exception of the editorial page, which I take in very small doses on a strong stomach).

So as you can imagine, I’ve been following the news about Rupert Murdoch’s attempts to add Dow Jones to his stable of faux news outlets with growing horror and disbelief. Does anyone REALLY think he would allow the WSJ to preserve its editorial integrity? For example, via CNN I read that even the “editorial integrity protection” deal would give Murdoch sole discretion to pick top editors. I can picture Bill O’Reilly leading the Politics & Economy team now!

Via Romanesko, I just heard that many of my former colleagues chose to stay home today in protest. From the union’s release:

Wall Street Journal reporters across the country chose not to show up to work this morning.

We did so for two reasons.

First, The Wall Street Journal’s long tradition of independence, which has been the hallmark of our news coverage for decades, is threatened today. We, along with hundreds of other Dow Jones employees represented by the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, want to demonstrate our conviction that the Journal’s editorial integrity depends on an owner committed to journalistic independence.

Second, by our absence from newsrooms around the country, we are reminding Dow Jones management that the quality of its publications depends on a top-quality professional staff. Dow Jones currently is in contract negotiations with its primary union, seeking severe cutbacks in our health benefits and limits on our pay. It is beyond debate that the professionals who create The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications every day deserve a fair contract that rewards their achievements. At a time when Dow Jones is finding the resources to award golden parachutes to 135 top executives, it should not be seeking to eviscerate employees’ health benefits and impose salary adjustments that amount to a pay cut.

We put the reputation of The Wall Street Journal and the needs of its readers first. That’s why we will be back at our desks this afternoon, producing the day’s news reports. But we hope this demonstration will remind those entrusted with the future of Dow Jones that our publications’ integrity must be protected, and sustained, from top to bottom.

I hope it makes a difference. But my guess is, Dow Jones current owners just see dollar signs and will salve their consciences with lies about “preserving editorial independence” until its too late.

Were I still an employee of the Wall Street Journal, I might not have shown up for work this morning, thanks to Rupert Murdoch’s insane quest to dominate the world with right-wing wingnut faux news crap.

Even long-time readers might be surprised to hear that I worked full-time for three years (through the end of 2006) as an information graphics journalist at the Wall Street Journal, initially for the Money & Investing section and more recently for the Economy page. I made 2-5 daily charts and graphics, mostly tracking economic indicators and analyzing trends in the stock and bond markets. I also did the occasional medical or technical illustration, including a graphic about abdominal aortic aneurysms that accompanied a Pulitzer-Prize-winning front page series. (Read old blog post here…)

I was also part of the union, and participated in several union actions regarding benefit cuts, pay cuts and large-scale layoffs (I’ll spare you the slogans, but it was pretty damn cool to see financial reporters carrying signs and chanting old-school labor song-type lyrics).

The Wall Street Journal is a top-notch paper with reporters and editors of the highest caliber and in-depth investigative reporting and features you can’t find anywhere else. Aside from the New York Times, it’s the only paper I read almost cover-to-cover every day (with the notable exception of the editorial page, which I take in very small doses on a strong stomach).

So as you can imagine, I’ve been following the news about Rupert Murdoch’s attempts to add Dow Jones to his stable of faux news outlets with growing horror and disbelief. Does anyone REALLY think he would allow the WSJ to preserve its editorial integrity? For example, via CNN I read that even the “editorial integrity protection” deal would give Murdoch sole discretion to pick top editors. I can just see Bill O’Reilly leading the Politics & Economy team!

Via Romanesko, I just heard that many of my former colleagues chose to stay home today in protest. From the union’s release:

Wall Street Journal reporters across the country chose not to show up to work this morning.

We did so for two reasons.

First, The Wall Street Journal’s long tradition of independence, which has been the hallmark of our news coverage for decades, is threatened today. We, along with hundreds of other Dow Jones employees represented by the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, want to demonstrate our conviction that the Journal’s editorial integrity depends on an owner committed to journalistic independence.

Second, by our absence from newsrooms around the country, we are reminding Dow Jones management that the quality of its publications depends on a top-quality professional staff. Dow Jones currently is in contract negotiations with its primary union, seeking severe cutbacks in our health benefits and limits on our pay. It is beyond debate that the professionals who create The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications every day deserve a fair contract that rewards their achievements. At a time when Dow Jones is finding the resources to award golden parachutes to 135 top executives, it should not be seeking to eviscerate employees’ health benefits and impose salary adjustments that amount to a pay cut.

We put the reputation of The Wall Street Journal and the needs of its readers first. That’s why we will be back at our desks this afternoon, producing the day’s news reports. But we hope this demonstration will remind those entrusted with the future of Dow Jones that our publications’ integrity must be protected, and sustained, from top to bottom.

I hope it makes a difference. But my guess is, Dow Jones current owners just see dollar signs and will salve their consciences with lies about “preserving editorial independence” until its too late.