Cartoonists With Attitude

Added to my drawing blog:
- a boat
- riot cops
- a horsie
- a handgun

The NY times did a piece of quotes from comic books… most of them are ‘flame on’ or ‘who watches the watchmen?’… they asked for submissions so I sent mine.

That which doesn’t kill you makes you bitter and cynical.
Patience comes to those who wait.
Our past waxes while our future wanes.
Life is short… and getting shorter by the minute.
Why does each day go by so slow yet life goes by so fast?
If you can’t be happy naturally, be happy unnaturally.
If one cup of makes me feel good, then two cups will make me feel better.
I’m wasting time worrying about wasting time.
Somewhere between anticipation and nostalgia we should have been happy.
Speech is free. Talk is cheap.
It’s better to have loved and lost than to have loved and caught something.
Unrequited love is like hitting you head against a wall that isn’t there.
I like funerals. You dress up, eat good food, and there is no pressure to enjoy yourself.
Life is a balance of self-indulgence and self-preservation.

On another note… new cartoon up. You can read the whole story at www.tmcm.com

and my friend said that Karate Kid 2 is better than Million Dollar Baby… having seen neither I couldn’t argue. Sounds like it’s time for a swanky double feature.

I did some caricatures for a website - they’re up online.

In a letter published in The New York Review of Books, David Kaiser of Just Detention International argues that we could significantly reduce prison rape, if we genuinely wanted to.

“Since 1980 the murder rate inside prisons has fallen more than 90 percent, which should give pause to those inclined to think that prisons are impossible to reform.” We could similarly reduce the incidence of rape in prison.

We know how. To some extent, stopping prisoner rape is simply an issue of better prison management. In facilities where the chief official cares about it, and ensures that his or her subordinates take it seriously, rates of sexual abuse go down dramatically. This is accomplished by, for example, providing vulnerable inmates with nonpunitive protective housing at their request, and establishing confidential complaint systems that encourage inmates to report sexual violence without increasing their risk of future assault or retaliation, from any party.

Perhaps the most important thing detention facilities can do is employ classification systems that effectively separate likely rape victims from likely sexual predators. This requires maintaining basic data about inmates; it also requires training staff to accurately assess incoming prisoners’ various levels of threat and vulnerability. Prisoners placed in protective custody must be segregated by security level. A maximum-security gang member and a sixteen-year-old first-time offender placed in an adult facility may both require extra protection; that does not mean they should be put in the same cell. Recent innovations in facility design are helpful, particularly the use of pod-shaped configurations of cells rather than the traditional rows. But no matter what the architecture, effective surveillance of inmates is essential, and meaningful rehabilitative programs such as GED courses—leading to the equivalent of a high school diploma—which used to be much more common in American prisons than they are now, have been shown to reduce all sorts of violence. [...]

Some policies that could reduce prisoner rape need funding. Legislators can help in other ways as well. Overcrowding makes it much more difficult for staff to meet their responsibilities, particularly of supervision. But overcrowding is close to inevitable if we lock people up at present rates. Offering treatment instead of incarceration to nonviolent drug offenders would by itself reduce prisoner rape enormously. In any case, we need laws that increase the independent oversight of detention facilities, and therefore their accountability. And Congress should repeal or at least substantially amend the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996, which as DeParle writes “has cut in half the number of inmates filing civil rights complaints,” and which makes it especially difficult for inmates to seek redress for sexual abuse.

This is an open thread; use it to post what you like, for as long as you like, with whomever you like. Self-linking is healthy and normal.

I ran across Pageofbats’ drawing on Flickr, and was very much taken with a series of beautiful black-and-white sketchbook drawings he’s posted. This one is called “In Heaven You Get All Your Old Dogs Back.”

Click to enlarge

This is a little poke at the columns and articles and such that have been praising our crappy economy for making Americans rethink their consumerism and remember “what really matters”, etc. Not that I’m not all for an anti-consumerist wakeup call, but… is that really what’s happening?

This cartoon was particularly inspired by a ridiculous piece in The New York Times that speculated that some New Yorkers decided to travel to the Hamptons instead of the Caribbean as a way of “cutting back” for Christmas. (actual quote “Somehow, the Long Island chill would have to be made as alluring a holiday destination as the isles of the Caribbean.”)

Yes, maybe some middle-class and upper-middle-class people who still have jobs will learn to cut back and stop blowing through credit like crazy… Maybe these lucky folks will spend less than they earn, spend more time with their families. Maybe they’ll “make do” with a mere luxury weekend in the freaking Hamptons…

Meanwhile, people on the margins will be making do with a weekend at the homeless shelter.

In the New York Times, Charles Blow discusses a survey which found that most Christians in the US believe that even non-Christians can be saved:

So in August, Pew asked the question again. (They released the results last week.) Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them.

And they didn’t stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven — dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt — and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go.

I found that op-ed (pointed out in comments by Richard — thanks, Richard!) enormously cheering. A doctrine that says that God is good and just and intends to damn everyone who doesn’t come to the correct church is, frankly, ugly. The news that lots of the Christian majority is refusing to buy that doctrine is nothing but good.

I’ve never bought the idea that people — at least in a relatively free country — are helpless to resist accepting what their religion teaches them.¹ By and large, if you believe that Jews or Muslims or Hindu or atheists or queers aren’t equal — and “will be sent to Hell by a just God” is a form of considering people less than equal — then that means you’re bigoted against them. You may not be hateful, you may personally be a swell person who genuinely loves your sister and her Jewish wife, but the fact that you’re willing to accept such a doctrine as true, means that it’s acceptable to you.

So, I was very happy to read Blow’s op-ed. Plus, as a Jewish atheist, I’m morbidly curious to know who thinks that Jews and atheists can (and can’t) go to Heaven.

Unfortunately, once I looked at the numbers, I think Blow was wrong to say “nearly half thought atheists could go to heaven.” Blow may have been looking at the table on this page, which says 41%, which is “nearly half.” But that table is only considering the 70% of U.S. Christians who agreed that multiple religions “can lead to eternal life.” So the actual number of U.S. Christians who “thought that atheists could go to heaven” was 41% of 70% — or 29%.² Not even close to half.

I don’t blame Mr. Blow for his error; Pew presented the data so unclearly, I suspect they were trying to make Americans appear more tolerant than we really are.

Pew provided data on this matter for four groups: white evangelical, white mainline, black protestant, and white Catholic. In general, the White evangelicals believe in the most closed-off and exclusive Heaven, and Black protestants are nearly as exclusive in their beliefs. Catholics were the most liberal about who could go to Heaven, although mainline protestants weren’t far behind.³

All four groups agreed that atheists are the least likely group to get into Heaven, followed closely by Hindus and Muslims. Jews are seen as much more likely than other non-Christians to get into Heaven — but still not as likely as Christians.

So let’s look at the numbers.

JEWS
* 36% of white evangelicals think Jews can go to Heaven.
* 61% of white mainline protestants think Jews can go to Heaven.
* 37% of protestants at historically Black churches, think Jews can go to Heaven.
* 61% of white Catholics⁴ think Jews can go to Heaven.

ATHEISTS⁵
* 15% of white evangelicals think atheists can go to Heaven.
* 38% of white mainline protestants think atheists can go to Heaven.
* 39% of white Catholics⁴ think atheists can go to Heaven.

MUSLIMS
* 20% of white evangelicals think Muslims can go to Heaven.
* 46% of white mainline protestants think Muslims can go to Heaven.
* 34% of protestants at historically Black churches, think Muslims can go to Heaven.
* 49% of white Catholics⁴ think Muslims can go to Heaven.

CATHOLICS
* 43% of white evangelicals think Catholics can go to Heaven.
* 64% of white mainline protestants think Catholics can go to Heaven.
* 41% of protestants at historically Black churches, think Catholics can go to Heaven.

PROTESTANTS
* 66% of white Catholics⁴ think Protestants can go to Heaven.

The good news is that in every group — even among evangelicals — there are many believers in a universal heaven. Still, some of the findings — such as that among white evangelicals, only 20% say that a good Muslim can go to heaven — are distressing.

In comments, RonF wrote:

I belong to the Episcopal Church, which is about as “liberal�? as it gets in Christianity. And even they make it real clear that it is faith, not works, that one’s salvation is dependent on. If people call themselves Christians and yet don’t understand that I’d have to say that either they’re not going to church much or they’re not listening while they’re there.

I have an alternative interpretation: Maybe some listen, and understand, but don’t agree. That’s what I hope.

1. There are exceptions, of course — minor children, for example, may not be free to disagree with their parents. And there are any number of abusive situations in which the person being abused lacks agency.
2. Following Mr. Blow’s usage, I’m going to use “eternal life” and “Heaven” as interchangeable terms, because it’s a pain to type “eternal life” over and over and over and over.
3. My spell-checker wants “Catholics” capitalized, but not “protestants.” I’m not sure why.
4. Does not include Hispanic whites.
5. Pew didn’t list data on atheism for Black protestants.

Richard Chappell writes:

Many are complaining that by reaching out to Rick Warren, Obama is offering a slap in the face to progressives. This is silly. Yes, Warren has badly screwed up views on social issues. Most Americans do. That doesn’t mean they must be shunned or demonized; it means that we need to do more to engage with them and bring them to their senses.

No matter the strength of our first-order disagreements, we should be able to ‘detach’ from these and treat each other with respect.

I don’t think anyone has suggested that Obama should not be civil and respectful of Warren. However, civility and respect don’t require honoring Warren in such a prominent way.

For those culture warriors who are shocked, just shocked, that Obama can bear to associate with evangelical conservatives, or who see such expressions of respect as somehow undermining his first-order commitment to liberalism, I can only ask: weren’t you paying attention? This is exactly what we want: a president who will advance solidly liberal policies, without demonizing or alienating conservative-leaning people. If we can leave off the tribalistic hating for just a moment, maybe some of ‘Them’ can even be brought around to our side.

It’s ironic that Richard calls for respectful discourse while condescendingly dismissing the concerns of tens of thousands of queers (and queer allies) as “tribalistic hating.”¹

In his comments, Richard writes:

In the meantime, let’s focus on the respect question: why, exactly, is civically honouring Warren an insult to those who disagree with him on policy matters?

But that’s not the question, because no one has claimed that honoring Warren is a fishslap in the face to everyone who has ever disagreed with Warren on a policy question. Rather, the insult has been most prominently taken by queer activists. (Feminists have also taken insult, but much less loudly — more on this below.) Richard himself singles out this quote, from the HRC’s open letter to Obama, as representing the “silly” and “purely emotional” argument he objects to:

“By inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.”

1) Imagine that Rick Warren had been hitting me on the head with a hammer, and then Obama says “here, Rick, let me honor you symbolically with this gift of a slightly bigger hammer.” In this context, it makes perfect sense for me to be angry at Obama.

Warren hurts people — not progressives in general, but particular groups, most recently queer people in California. (Richard’s post obscures this important reality by talking about “a slap in the face to progressives”). By adding to Warren’s reputation as a moderate, central figure, Obama helps Warren hurt queer people. As Ezra Klein writes:

…calling the Warren issue “symbolic” is just a method of marginalizing minority discontent. Warren is not a symbolic figure. He’s a religious leader who mobilizes his flock and leverages his public influence in order to affect electoral outcomes. The most prominent example was the Proposition 8 ballot initiative — as opposed to, say, the Proposition 8 symbolic logo design contest — in California. Warren used his power and prestige instrumentally, not symbolically. And Obama is giving him more power, and more prestige, which he will, quite assuredly, deploy in an instrumental fashion.

2) I don’t like objections to “emotionalism.”

First of all, used to dismiss an argument in this way, the term come wrapped in a great deal of sexist/homophobic baggage.²

Secondly, the expectation that queers and queer allies “detach” and not react emotionally to Rick Warren, in the wake of the genuinely wrenching passage of Proposition 8,³ is unreasonable. Queer activists and allies have a right to be angry.⁴

3)

“Asymmetry of passion,” to use Nate Silver’s phrase, is a legitimate political tactic. I think the LGBT community fears that if they’re mild and concede ground easily, Obama will abandon his commitments to them.

This fear is not unreasonable. Whatever Obama feels in his heart — and I doubt he’s personally a homophobe — as a politician he’s never been a champion of gay rights. He’s just a Democrat who has taken the minimum, politically necessary pro-gay positions to be a viable national Democrat.

And when the politically necessary position is to be anti-gay — by opposing equal marriage rights — then Obama is anti-gay.

My point isn’t that Obama is a bad person. He’s a politician, who like a politician responds to political reality. The more motive we give Obama to be pro-queer, the more pro-queer Obama will be. And “asymmetry of passion” may be the best tool the queer community has for putting pressure on Obama.

It’s interesting that — although there is a great deal of anger in the feminist community over Obama’s selection of the sexist, anti-choice Warren for this honor — that anger seems less intense than the rage over Warren’s anti-gay history in the queer community.⁵

Partly, that’s because Warren’s most recent major campaign (his advocacy of prop was anti-queer rather than misogynistic.

But another reason is that feminists and pro-choicers are getting real policy substance from Obama, which mitigates the anger. Within the first month of an Obama administration — maybe the first week — the “global gag” rule will be history, and US funding for the UN Population Fund will be restored. Hillary Clinton will be secretary of state — which is a more than symbolic point, because Clinton has a long history of concern for women’s rights in foreign policy. There’s also widespread confidence that Obama’s eventual Supreme Court picks will be safely pro-choice.

In contrast, what are queer activists getting from Barack Obama? It doesn’t seem like the promised repeals of “don’t ask don’t tell” or DOMA are going to happen anytime soon. As far as I know, Obama hasn’t endorsed protections against anti-trans discrimination, and he certainly hasn’t signaled it being a legislative priority. And, of course, Obama is anti-equal-marriage.

I assume the outright discrimination against gays practiced by some in the Federal government under Bush, will not be as tolerated under Obama’s people. And I also trust that Obama, while formally anti-gay marriage, will refrain from pushing anti-gay “protection of marriage” laws and amendments. But the queer community wants more from Obama than just refraining from overt bigotry.

So when people say, in effect, “why make a big deal of this Rick Warren situation? It’s a purely symbolic gesture, and what we’re getting from Obama in policy is so much more substantive!,” they ignore that queer activists really aren’t getting much policy substance from Obama.

Queers have a history of being taken for granted, and sometimes betrayed, by Democrats (remember Bill Clinton’s radio ads boasting about having signed DOMA?). It’s not irrational for queers and queer allies to believe that noise and anger is the best chance we have of not being taken for granted, and betrayed, once again.

4) The case for reaching out to evangelicals isn’t as strong as Richard believes.

Richard writes:

There are a lot of well-meaning (if often misguided) evangelicals out there, and by reaching out to one of their most popular (and not hyper-partisan) pastors, Obama is creating the possibility that a lot of these folks might actually open their eyes, unblock their ears, and give him (and liberals more generally) a chance.

As Glenn Greenwald argues, Democrats have a long history of trying to reach out to evangelicals, including some notable cases of throwing queers under the bus, and the tactic has failed:

….Isn’t this exactly the same thing Democrats have been doing for the last two decades: namely, accommodating and compromising with the Right in the name of bipartisan harmony and a desire to avoid partisan and cultural conflicts? [...] I

Courting evangelicals was a particular priority of Bill Clinton from the start. [...] In 1996, Clinton signed into law the single most pernicious piece of anti-gay federal legislation ever passed — the Defense of Marriage Act — with overwhelming Democratic support in the Congress. Scorning the “Far Left,” especially on social issues, was a Clinton favorite. He is the inventor, after all, of the Sister Souljah technique. Bill Clinton was the ultimate non-ideological pragmatist. He was driven by the overriding desire to win over his opponents. [...]

Did any of that dilute the Right’s anger and resentments towards Democrats?

I understand the strategic argument in favor of honoring Rick Warren. But I think Obama, and Richard, overestimate the flexibility of the evangelical community. History suggests that evangelicals aren’t taken in by these tactics; they don’t want symbolic inclusion, they want policy victories. And if Obama doesn’t support evangelical policies, evangelicals won’t support Obama.

Elevating Warren, in the hope of buying some evangelical support, is taking a risk. But if the risk goes bad, the people hurt most won’t be mainstream, centrist Democrats like Obama; they will be queers and women.⁶ It therefore makes sense that mainstream, centrist Democrats are more eager to take this risk than queers activists and feminists are.

[Illustration of Rick Warren developed from "Rick Warren" by Kev/Null, used under a Creative Commons license.]

1. Is this negative use of “tribalistic” both racist and colonialist? It seems to me that it is, but I hesitated to bring it up because Richard might mistake it for me accusing him of racism. It’s racist in the same way that using the phrase “what a gyp” is racist; however, people of good will can thoughtlessly use these phrases without themselves being racist. The racism is in the society that normalizes these phrases, to the point that even anti-racist individuals use them without noticing.
2. I am not accusing Richard of himself being a misogynist or a gay-hater in his heart. I am criticizing his word choice, not his essential character.
3. There were several anti-gay ballot measures that passed in 2008, all of which sucked. But Prop 8 was more emotionally wrenching because we had a chance to win that fight.
4. I predict someone is going to “gotcha!” me by saying that by this logic, I shouldn’t ask for civility in “Alas” comments. But the comments section of a blog is something that people can choose not to participate in, at no cost to themselves. The same is not true of national politics.
5. I’m oversimplifying for the sake of clarity; there is enormous overlap between the feminist and queer activist communities, and of course individual reactions vary hugely within both communities. But although I’m oversimplifying, I think the tendencies I’m talking about are real.
6. To be sure, these three categories — female, queer, centrist democrat — often overlap.

“The American Dick-tionary“…

From the department of “duh,” and via Quirkybird’s twitter feed:

Study: Tolerance Can Lower Gay Kids’ Suicide Risk

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that the gay, lesbian and bisexual young adults and teens… [who] experienced high levels of rejection were nearly 8.5 times more likely to have attempted suicide. They were nearly six times more likely to report high levels of depression and almost 3.5 times more likely to use illegal drugs or engage in unprotected sex. That was compared with adolescents whose families may have felt uncomfortable with a gay kid, but were neutral or only mildly rejecting.

Because the level of rejection is hard to measure, Ryan looked at things like whether the parents tried to get their children to change their sexual orientation, or tried to stop them from being with other gay kids.

Nonetheless, this is important research — being able to tell parents that not accepting their children’s sexual orientation has been scientifically shown to be dangerous, may help encourage parents to change their behavior.

The article goes on to say that queer Latin@s, and especially boys, experience high levels of rejection for their sexual orientation.