Cartoonists With Attitude

A (slightly modified for formatting purposes) email from ColorofChange.org:

A new report in The Nation, “Katrina’s Hidden Race War,” documents what many have claimed for years — for some Black New Orleanians the threat of being killed by White vigilantes in Katrina’s aftermath became a bigger threat than the storm itself.

After the storm, White vigilantes roamed Algiers Point shooting and, according to their own accounts, killing Black men at will– with no threat of a police response. For the last three years, the shootings and the police force’s role in them have been an open secret to many New Orleanians. To date, no one has been charged with a crime and law enforcement officials have refused to investigate.

The facts are finally seeing the light of day. Now we must demand action. Given Louisiana’s horrible record when it comes to criminal justice and Black folks, it’s the only path to justice.

You can help. Join us in calling on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, and the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct a full investigation of these crimes and any police cover-up. It takes only a moment to add your voice and to invite your friends and family to do the same:

Sign the petition.

In the two weeks after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, the media created a climate of fear with trumped-up stories of Black lawlessness. Meanwhile, an armed group of White vigilantes took over the Algiers Point neighborhood in New Orleans and mercilessly hunted down Black people. “It was great!” said one vigilante. “It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it.”

The Nation’s article tells the story of Donnell Herrington, Marcel Alexander, and Chris Collins — a group of friends who were attacked by shotgun-wielding White men as they entered Algiers Point on September 1, 2005. As they tried to escape, Herrington recalls, their attackers shouted, “Get him! Get that nigger!” He managed to get away. Alexander and Collins were told that they would be allowed to live on the condition that they told other Black folks not to come to Algiers Point. Herrington, shot in the neck, barely survived.

And there’s the story of Henry Glover, who didn’t survive after being shot by an unknown assailant. (“Body of Evidence,” The Nation, 12-18-2008.) Glover’s brother flagged down a stranger for help, and the two men brought Glover to a police station. But instead of receiving aid, they were beaten by officers while Henry Glover bled to death in the back seat of the stranger’s car. A police officer drove off in the car soon afterward. Both Glover’s body and the car were found burnt to cinders a week later. It took DNA analysis to identify the body.

Then there’s the story of White militiamen who tried to drive their Black neighbors from their homes. Reggie Bell, who lived just two blocks down the street from the vigilantes’ ringleader, was told at gunpoint, “We don’t want you around here. You loot, we shoot.” Later, another group of armed White men confronted him at his home, asking, “Whatcha still doing around here? We don’t want you around here. You gotta go.”

These are only a few of the stories of Black folks who were accosted in Algiers Point, and you can read more in The Nation. But unless you speak out, we may never learn the full extent of the violence. Journalists have encountered a wall of silence on the part of the authorities. The coroner had to be sued to turn over autopsy records. When he finally complied, the records were incomplete, with files on several suspicious deaths suddenly empty. The New Orleans police and the District Attorney repeatedly refused to talk to journalists about Algiers Point. And according to journalist A.C. Thompson, “the city has in nearly every case refused to investigate or prosecute people for assaults and murders committed in the wake of the storm.”

The Nation’s article is important, but it’s just a start. For more than three years now, these racist criminals have by their own admission gotten away with murder, while officials in New Orleans have systematically evaded any kind of accountability. We have to demand it.

Please join us in calling on state and federal officials to investigate these brutal attacks and the conduct of Orleans Parish law enforcement agencies, and please ask your friends and family to do the same.

Sign the petition.

I stayed away from the news for a week and missed the outbreak of war–er, military operations, or whatever. I’ll never do this again!

Oh, and a new year is rapidly approaching. Let’s all draw an old man handing a baby an egg timer!

Mine would be Old Man Israel (OMI) handing Young Baby Israel (YBI) an hourglass that was labeled “Roadmap To Peace.” Naturally both would be wearing sashes that corresponded with their years (2008 and 2009 for those who don’t follow the years closely). Then YBI would say to OMI, “Can we put more sand in it?”

Brilliant, I know. I’m not sure how I come up with them–I just do.

I’ve complained that studies of weight loss diets have extremely forgiving definitions of “success.” Fatfu, in a terrific post that I only just now read (although it’s almost a year old), has a similar complaint. But she also whips out her calculator and tries to deduce one of Weight Watcher’s best-kept secrets — how many Weight Watchers clients lose weight over the long term?

38,000 people who reached goal weight per year sounds like a lot. But actually it turns out to be a really small number. I found a business article from back then that stated that Weight Watchers had 600,000 attendees in the U.S. in 1993. Divide 38,000 lifetime members per year into 600,000 and my calculator says that each year only about 6% of Weight Watchers members (give or take) reached their goal weight (presumably 94% failed).

Now before you get all impressed with Weight Watcher’s 6% success rate, let’s step back. For one thing, the successful 6% weren’t so fat in the first place. The 2001 study says that most were between a BMI of 25-30 (i.e. “overweight�? but not “obese�? – to use definitions I find silly). The 2007 abstract says the average starting BMI for that study was 27 – which is well below the average Weight Watchers participant. So in order to achieve goal weight the average lifetime member probably had to lose less than 10 lbs and would have to include a lot of people who had even less to lose. [...]

And what about the number we’re really looking for – how many people actually become “normal�? weight long-term using Weight Watchers? It turns out only 3.9% of the golden 6% were still at or below goal weight after 5 years. By my calculations that means 3.9%*6.3% = 0.24% or about two out of a thousand Weight Watchers participants who reached goal weight stayed there for more than five years.

More recent numbers from Weight Watchers indicate that the rate might even be as high as 1 in a hundred. But that’s only after five years — and virtually all research on weight loss shows that “success” rates drop year after year. Just how low would the numbers be after seven years, or ten years? As Traci Mann wrote in an excellent American Psychologist article (pdf link) reviewing the evidence on dieting (hat tip to Fatfu):

Second, these losses are not maintained. As noted in one review, “It is only the rate of weight regain, not the fact of weight regain, that appears open to debate�? (Garner & Wooley, 1991, p. 740). The more time that elapses between the end of a diet and the follow-up, the more weight is regained. [...]

Even in the studies with the longest follow-up times (of four or five years postdiet), the weight regain trajectories did not typically appear to level off (e.g., Hensrud, Weinsier, Darnell, & Hunter, 1994; Kramer, Jeffery, Forster, & Snell, 1989), suggesting that if participants were followed for even longer, their weight would continue to increase. It is important for policymakers to remember that weight regain does not necessarily end when researchers stop following study participants.

Dieting, for 99% or more of the people who try it, does not lead to long-term weight loss. Even the 1% who do lose weight, don’t typically lose enough weight to turn a fat person, into a person of average weight. So why is weight-loss dieting the advice given nearly all fat patients by their doctors?

Here’s something doctors don’t tell their patients: 41% of people who go on diets weigh more a few years after the diet, then they did before they began dieting.¹ Since I’m a blogger, not a scientist, I’ll go ahead and make the irresponsible comparison: Dieting is significantly more likely to cause long-term weight gain than weight loss. That’s a Surgeon General’s warning that should appear on every diet program and product on the market.

1. See page 224 of this article (pdf file). “Eight of the studies reported (or made it possible to compute) the percentage of participants who weighed more at follow-up than before they went on the diet. These rates averaged 41% and ranged from 29%… to 64%…” A few pages later: “From one third to two thirds of participants in diets will weigh more four to five years after the diet ends than they did before the diet began. This conclusion comes from studies that are biased toward showing successful weight loss… The true number may well be significantly higher.”

My brother and I were talking about improving our drawing skills, and we each felt bad that we didn’t practice enough. So we’re going to draw every day for the next year. Even if just for a few minutes. At least something. Not including comics (for me) or class assignments (for him).

We both waste tons of time, like on planes or sitting in waiting rooms or on buses… instead of working on anything, we tend to sink into mystery novels… glancing longingly at those working away on projects and beating ourselves up for being lazy.

So this might be inspiration for us to be more disciplined. We plan to monitor one another’s progress on a blog. We won’t be able to post them every day, but at least weekly, I hope. For each day that we don’t draw something, we’ll owe the the other one a dollar.

We started on 12/21. So far I’ve posted mine (except today’s) — a dozen or so. Nick has drawn most of the days since 12/21, but hasn’t had time to post them yet. He might do that tomorrow.

Here it is: http://nickandstephdraw.blogspot.com/

This week, Minimum Security presents the conclusion of Bunnista’s annual War on Christmas.

In the comic from 12/22, Bunnista continues to be naughty, not nice:

In the comic from 12/23, the Solstice Sun Goddess brings Santa down (please notice Bunnista’s mom’s slippers, which I’m particularly proud of):

On 12/24, the victors turn on one another:

On 12/25, Santa leaves an offering of holiday cheer:

The cartoon for 12/26, larger forces were at work:

* * *

You can see a new Minimum Security comic strip every weekday at comics.com, and also daily but one day later at minimumsecurity.net.

Glenn Greenwald lists Politico’s “Top 10 political scoops of 2008“:

(1) Katie Couric’s interview of Sarah Palin (CBS)

(2) McCain can’t say how many homes he owns (Politico)

(3) Obama’s “bitter” comment (Huffington Post)

(4) Sarah Palin’s shopping spree (Politico)

(5) Turmoil in the Clinton camp (Washington Post and Atlantic — “The behind-the-scenes tension was captured by the reporters in one memorable exchange: ‘[Expletive] you!’ Ickes shouted. ‘[Expletive] you!’ Penn replied. ‘[Expletive] you!’ Ickes shouted again.”)

(6) Jeremiah Wright tapes (ABC News)

(7) The Pentagon’s military analyst program (NY Times)

(8) Bickering in the McCain camp (NY Times Magazine)

(9) John Edwards’ affair (National Enquirer)

(10) Powell endorses Obama (Meet the Press)

Number seven is certainly an important story (and one that got virtually no coverage on TV), but the rest is… Well, as Glenn says,

In fairness to Calderone and his comrades in the political press, our media currently covers a country that has very few substantial problems and an administration that is renowned around the world for being competent, honest, conventional and quite uncontroversial. In general, countries which enjoy great tranquility, prosperity, and stability — such as the U.S. today — can afford the luxury of fixating on the types of fun and trivial stories which comprise the list of top “scoops” heralded by Politico.

It’s not that all of these stories were meaningless and not worth reporting. Palin’s difficultly answering simple questions — and what it implied about her readiness to step into the Presidency — was relevant knowledge for voters to have, for instance. And a lot of these stories are irresistibly fun. But it shouldn’t be on anyone’s “top ten scoops” list. It wasn’t a “scoop” that they deserve credit and praise for — Katie Couric didn’t work to ferret that story out. Someone just turned a camera on.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot of in-depth reporting about the election that didn’t happen — or that happened, but didn’t get picked up on in any consistent fashion. After all the debating talks about Afghanistan, how many Americans could find it on a map? How many Americans, after all this time, could even guess at if Iran’s government is Sunni or Shiite? How many know, even in broad outlines, the differences between McCain’s and Obama’s proposed health care plans are? There may also have been some torture going on somewhere, and maybe some war crimes covered up, and possibly a tiny twinge in our economic health, but you’d never know it from Politico’s top ten.

But of course, reporting like that won’t sell papers, or pull in eyeballs, the way simple and fun narratives will. I’m not sure that good reporting is possible, except in erratic sparks, in a profit-driven news model.

So you may have noticed that the little animated additions to my weekly cartoons have disappeared. They’ve been a casualty of an increase in my side freelance work… (Money is good. I like money.)

Not sure how much excitement there was for those little animations anyway, since they were sort of crude. However, some of the other stuff I’m working on involves that damn Flash computer program, so my skills with this should be getting more gooder…

In other words, when I get back to doing regular animations, maybe I’ll be able do something worth looking at!

Amazon’s Top Ten “Most Polarizing Books of 2008” has a puzzling entry. Here’s the top three: