Cartoonists With Attitude

There’s nothing funnier-slash-scarier than the collision of two right-wing conspiracy theories that are completely incompatible with each other colliding like runaway trucks on a freeway. The big one this week has been the NY and L.A. Times’ coverage of an anti-abortion movement restoring a classic twist on banning women’s rights- claiming that it’s a secret plot to ethnically cleanse the black population of the United States.

Responses keep coming in to a New York Times article, originally published Friday, in which writer Shaila Dewan details a multi-pronged effort by anti-abortion advocates to convince black women that the “abortion industry” is racist, based on the fact that black women have a disproportionately high rate of abortion. Georgia Right to Life has partnered with the Radiance Foundation for a billboard campaign and accompanying website claiming that “Black children are an endangered species.” A documentary called Maafa 21, made by a white anti-choice activist, purports to draw parallels between abortion, eugenics, and slavery.

Now, as you all know from any blog or family member who listens to Glenn Beck, the entire fundraising operation of the Democrat [sic] Party is based on maintaining a complete reliance of black people on the federal government and special handouts thus guaranteeing their total support of the pro-government Mommy State party and… okay, I’m breaking into my own sarcasm for a moment to just make sure that everyone understands I’m sarcastically mocking this nonsense, right? Yes, of course this is all racist, insane bullshit. I’m just addressing the practical lack of logic in it, which is a lot, because there’s typically a lack of logic in the rhetoric of crazy people. We good? We good. Alright.

So I don’t get it. Liberals and their ilk want nothing more than a solid block of reliable, subservient votes from black people… and at the same time want to secretly euthanize all of them? This is an even more condensed version of a classic anti-choice claim, in that Democrats are somehow aborting their own voting bloc. Man, we totally fucked up that one, what with the 30-something generation born after the legalization of infanticide voting for a Democrat and a black guy for president. Better luck next time, everyone!

Alright, so here’s where it gets funny: the massive conspiracy to abort the minority population away? Yeah, that’s failing miserably.

Minorities make up nearly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which minorities are expected to become the U.S. majority over the next 40 years.

In fact, demographers say this year could be the “tipping point” when the number of babies born to minorities outnumbers that of babies born to whites.

The numbers are growing because immigration to the U.S. has boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years. Minorities made up 48 percent of U.S. children born in 2008, the latest census estimates available, compared to 37 percent in 1990.

You know what I’m going to take a wee bit of a gamble on and guess isn’t following this story? Right-wingers happy about this.

Now, while there isn’t super-specific data the article clearly addresses that this rise in the “minority” population is more related to Hispanics than African-Americans, and I guess from a “what type of racist are you?” perspective, that… I dunno… matters? But this is a bizarre matter of unstoppable racist bullshit meeting immovable racist bullshit.

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It’s really weird- I used to be really big on the Oscars and this year I just didn’t care at all. I was happy Christoph Waltz won because he had the greatest performance I’ve ever seen in my life but that was pretty much it. I think Up was the best film of 2009 but know that there was no way it was getting the credit it deserved.

But I think I’ve also reached the point where I’m just sick of stupid Oscar hype. This year was so painfully predictable because of the clear campaigning and media angles that already established what was going to happen. At the risk of sounding insulting to him, we might as well just dub this the Heath Ledger effect: six months of “asking” if someone’s going to win probably means yes, they’re going to. I’m really sick of hearing about James Cameron’s previous marriages, what award would be a milestone for what race or gender, and of course how great a movie about how white people can fix everything is. Just hand out the awards with a press release and save the time. Also, get off my lawn.

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This pretty much sums up in one example why politics is at a standstill right now. Judd Gregg- the man who, mind you, was almost Commerce Secretary- is just making shit up. This has nothing to do with disagreeing with his politics. That would actually be a political argument. But this isn’t about issues. It’s about him being full of shit. He supported reconciliation before. Now he doesn’t. When he pretends this wasn’t the case, he’s full of shit.

Everyone know this. The news organizations pretending otherwise are full of shit. I understand this is far from the most intelligent and insightful analysis of current events I’ve made here but I really don’t know where to go with this.

Wow.

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People got angry at the Canadian Women’s Hockey Team for celebrating their gold medal with cigars and booze. That is apparently undignified in a sport usually priding itself on such honorable ceremonies as chugging beer out of the Stanley Cup after a season of punching each other’s teeth out. Because that’s how it works with women, the players were forced to apologize, since as you all know, the only time a woman has permission to express emotion about something important in her life is during a marriage proposal. In all other circumstances, please make sure to stay proper, ladies.

I would very much like a Starcraft 2 beta key. Can anyone help me with that?

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Republicans shocked to discover that things cost money.

My favorite part is Inhofe’s down-home folksy “I’m gonna call in my chits” to stop Bunning from filibustering a funding bill. “Calling in your chits?” It’s called (gasp!) voting with Democrats for cloture. Is that really hard to say? Answer: yes.

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While it’s heartening to hear rumblings about finally using reconciliation to pass health care reform, that it’s taken this long, and massive drops in approval ratings, to realize that does not bode well for Democratic enthusiasm to actually go through with it. I’ve been curious lately over how far Democrats will go to avoid being open about the few, and obvious, options they actually have to get anything done, and how silly they’ll look suggesting ways to avoid it.

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Ahhhhh ha ha ha hahahahahahaha.

The saddest part of the entire “ACORN Pimp” story is how the media is content with being made to look like fools over it:

It’s one thing to be suckered in by Breitbart and O’Keefe’s pimp costume tale, it’s another for the Times to now defend its erroneous reporting. And even worse is the Times’ implication that it’s O’Keefe who gets to decide which version of the pimp story is true, despite all the contrary evidence.

Last December, former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, commissioned by ACORN to independently review the facts surrounding the scandal, released his findings. Highly critical of ACORN and its employees, Harshbarger nonetheless concluded the undercover sting did not catch any employees breaking the law.

Harshbarger also shed light on the controversial videos, noting that portions had been “substantially” edited, including some voice overdubbing. And because O’Keefe and Breitbart refuse to let any outside observers — including journalists — view the full collection of unedited tapes, it’s impossible to tell just how significantly the tapes were manipulated prior to their release.

And yet, you just saw that in a blog post on Media Matters. You won’t see it anywhere else. NBC, CBS, CNN, et. al. aren’t going to come back to this story. Why? It’s boring to them. But more importantly, it’s the bigger story about all this: a fradulent, albeit cleverly edited, prank duped the entire multi-billion-dollar American news industry into pushing a false story. It’s no better or worse than the lunatic father and his Balloon Boy kid, except he’s going to jail and James O’Keefe is joking on Fox News about how he tried to illegally break into a senator’s office.

While O’Keefe is a whackjob and should be in jail, the greater absurdity here is how the media pushed and then defended this story, which anyone who has shame now has to accept was a carefully-edited YouTube propaganda piece reported by every single network as “investigative journalism.” They were, at some time I once heard, perhaps in my childhood, supposed to be the responsible ones here.

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A lot of editorial cartoonists are losing their jobs. Ironically, the kneejerk response from many people- webcartoonists, bloggers, or just garden-variety assholes, is that “well of course they are- editorial cartoons suck!” So here’s the irony: they’re losing their jobs because the newspaper industry is in shambles. It has nothing to do with them sucking. They’ve been making millions sucking for decades now.

There are a lot of great political cartoonists out there. I’m not going to pretend there aren’t ten times as many who are god-awful, and by the nature of statistics make that precious decimal look bad. No greater recent example can be found than in the last few weeks of cartoons about global warming, where the entire collective consciousness of hackery decided to all tell slight variations of the same stupid comment. That it’s not even smart- nay, actually makes the teller look like an idiot- isn’t the point. It’s that they are pretending this is funny. As if it not being funny is your fault, not theirs.

Don’t believe me? In less than a few hours’ worth of time, someone created a website compiling all of these shitty cartoons about global warming. There’s so many to choose from here but I think special attention needs to be given to Wayne Stayskal- syndicated- that means he is paid for this- cartoonist for Tribune Media Services, for managing to actually draw three separate versions of the exact same goddamned terrible one-liner. And keep in mind, he has four other cartoons on that web page.

Not to sound too pretentious here, but in the ten years I’ve been drawing cartoons, including the years that were so terrible I don’t even keep them online, I’ve stuck by a major principle- actually believe what you say, and actually be proud of your own goddamn work. If these global warming cartoon hacks want to see some real skepticism, they should tell me to my face they believe that of their own turds here.

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