Cartoonists With Attitude

Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Barbie…ew

Fortunately, ldragoon has a proper cartoonist response:

If you draw a Barbie, ship it to Diana, and she’s got a gallery set up to place it in! You can do whatever you want - your dream Barbie, your nightmare Barbie, or even both! Have fun with it!

Indeed, that could be fun.

Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Barbie…ew

Fortunately, ldragoon has a proper cartoonist response:

If you draw a Barbie, ship it to Diana, and she’s got a gallery set up to place it in! You can do whatever you want - your dream Barbie, your nightmare Barbie, or even both! Have fun with it!

Indeed, that could be fun.

Articles for this week’s ‘toon:

• The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued their report last week, which spelled out the situation in stark and unambiguous terms. The team of scientific experts on the subject calls the evidence of global warming “unequivocal” and the need for action “urgent.” The panel’s head is quoted as saying that this is our “defining moment” and that “if there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late.” Meanwhile, experts have reportedly been “stunned” at the loss of Arctic ice recently, to the extent that they predict the summertime Arctic could be completely ice-free by 2030.

  The IPCC spells out our options pretty clearly: either we take action NOW and take a small hit to the world’s economic growth (which is offset by short-term benefits like improved health due to reduced pollution), or we roll the dice and risk what the world’s top minds predict will be catastrophic consequences.

• All of this can only leave one wondering how those who oppose any action on climate change are afforded any credibility whatsoever in this debate. What possible counter-argument is there? All that’s left is a childish, responsibility-shirking retort along the lines of “but I don’t wanna!” And yet, there they are, in the Washington Post’s story on the IPCC report, which dutifully warns the reader that “some” people disagree with the findings.

  Which people, exactly? Well, the people who write op-eds like this one in Investor’s Business Daily, which counter the science community’s conclusions on global warming with a string of ad hominems and baseless accusations about the scientists’ sinister hidden agendas (of course, there’s no mention of the corporate community’s possible agenda). Or the people who cherry-pick or misrepresent facts to argue that “carbon dioxide is actually good!” (except, y’know, where there’s too much of it) or that global warming is actually due to “solar brightness.”

• While Bush has finally admitted that global warming is real, it appears that not much has changed in the administration’s approach to the problem. While yet another story recently came out linking a top Bush contributor to excessive carbon emissions, Darth Cheney is again angling for more control over the administration’s global warming policy.
• Check out a fascinating review by Gary Kamiya of Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us.”

From the Pope:

The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world’s suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts—will cease to dominate the world.

He goes on. It’s interesting, worth reading and worth bookmarking for that much longer blog post in response to this wrong-headed conception of atheism that I might write one day when I’m not calling for the execution of school teachers whose teddy bears insult my faith.

Warning: if you do follow the link, the Vatican’s web design will hit you in the eyes with suck.

From the Pope:

The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world’s suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts—will cease to dominate the world.

He goes on. It’s interesting, worth reading and worth bookmarking for that much longer blog post in response to this wrong-headed conception of atheism that I might write one day when I’m not calling for the execution of school teachers whose teddy bears insult my faith.

Warning: if you do follow the link, the Vatican’s web design will hit you in the eyes with suck.

Here is a cartoon by nationally syndicated political cartoonist Mike Lester:

Here is what Pacman Jones looks like:

The real solution to this discrepancy is that Lester needs to learn (or to remember) how to draw people period. Then he needs to remember that caricature exaggerates recognizable features of the subject. For example, Hillary Clinton has apple cheeks and heavy lidded eyes, so most caricatures of her focus on those features. Barak Obama has a long neck and big ears. Pacman Jones has dreds. He does NOT have big lips. Unless the only people Lester knows are tight-lipped WASPs, he should realize the Jones’ lips are about average for a human being, regardless of race, ethnicity or sex. They are clearly not his most recognizable feature. At best I would focus more on set of his mouth, a kind of ironic smirk that befits his bad boy image. It would still not take up half his head.

Do political cartoonists have seminars on this stuff?

Here is a cartoon by nationally syndicated political cartoonist Mike Lester:

Here is what Pacman Jones looks like:

The real solution to this discrepancy is that Lester needs to learn (or to remember) how to draw people period. Then he needs to remember that caricature exaggerates recognizable features of the subject. For example, Hillary Clinton has apple cheeks and heavy lidded eyes, so most caricatures of her focus on those features. Barak Obama has a long neck and big ears. Pacman Jones has dreds. He does NOT have big lips. Unless the only people Lester knows are tight-lipped WASPs, he should realize the Jones’ lips are about average for a human being, regardless of race, ethnicity or sex. They are clearly not his most recognizable feature. At best I would focus more on set of his mouth, a kind of ironic smirk that befits his bad boy image. It would still not take up half his head.

Do political cartoonists have seminars on this stuff?

In Friday’s cartoon, Kranti deals with her frightening gift. 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!

In Friday’s cartoon, Kranti deals with her frightening gift. 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!