More on Racist Caricatures...

I just got done telling someone that I wasn't going to jump on the bandwagon of criticizing the work of other cartoonists, which is a major topic of discussion in editorial cartooning circles these days. This means, of course, that I'm going to do the exact opposite right now and criticize someone else's work (although it is a criticism of substance, not form)...

One of my main influences for this week's 'toon was a recent editorial cartoon by Jake Fuller:

(click here to view)

Jake Fuller Artizans Jun 13, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

To be fair, Fuller is surely not the only one to have drawn a caricature like this... I counted at least half a dozen other similar depictions in the last week alone. Also, to my knowledge I have never met Fuller, so it's not a personal beef.

However, cartoons like this still seem to me to be a clear abuse of editorial and artistic license. There is no argument being made... it's nothing more than a crass exploitation of social fears and preconceptions. As has often been noted, there is a staggering ignorance in cartoons like this of the historical similarities with WWII-era racist depictions of Japanese people. I think it's safe to say that caricatures of that nature have now been universally discredited. What's next, Obama in blackface? (Well, maybe that's not out of the realm of possibility...)

Perhaps the most objectionable thing about caricatures like this is how misleading they are, especially considering how many of the Guantanamo detainees have apparently been children who don't have the ability to grow scary-looking beards. Contrast Fuller's vision of what a detainee looks like with this image. It takes a small amount of reading to find out who these people really are, to make sure your cartoon has a basis in solid journalism.

I suppose it's too much to hope for cartoons like this to just go away, but neither should the offending artists hope to avoid criticism when they draw them.

Tidbits:

• Vincent Rossmeier predicts that Michelle Obama will become a focus of attention for the GOP attack machine, if she hasn't already. Quoting a conservative writer on the alleged videotape where she denounces "whitey":
  

  "No tape exists ... This is the '08 version of a really weird conservative urban legend that pops up every four years. The names change, but the basics remain the same: 1) It always involves the wife of the Democratic presidential candidate; 2) it always portrays the wife -- not the candidate -- committing some anti-American, unpatriotic act."

  
  
• The third square of the 'toon was a reference to a recent AP article by Nedra Pickler, which gave an essentially unopposed platform for "fringe Republican operatives" to question Obama's patriotism. It also generated a significant protest from readers:
  

  That kind of media shortcoming has become predictable; reporters love to quote partisan Republicans about how deficient Democrats are. And in the past it would have likely produced angry denunciations online within the liberal blogosphere -- a blog swarm, perhaps...
  But nearly 15,000 letters sent in just a matter of days in response to a single news wire article? That's something else entirely and could mark the dawn of a new era in progressive media activism. The phenomenon has received very little mainstream media attention (journalists probably don't want to encourage this sort of thing), but make no mistake: It was a very big deal.
  

  
  

Fighting Words: 6/16/08 Cartoon...

"Remaining Election Calendar"...


There seems to be a little confusion about what I was trying to say with this one. I'm just trying to satirize the ridiculous caricatures of Barack and Michelle Obama that I'm predicting will emerge by October, as fueled by the Republican attack machine and repeated by our moronic media. And, I was trying to portray the disgust that we should all feel by that point if we've watched the news at all...

Probably just a sucky 'toon... sorry...

More on foreign policy for grown-ups...

I think Obama's response so far to Bush's "appeaser" comment has been right on. He's used a few keywords that I've been dying to hear from the so-called "opposition party" the past few years, blasting such comments as "dishonest" and pointing out that the Bushies turn to fallacies like this because "they can't win a debate on the merits." This stands in contrast to rhetoric used by your Pelosis and Reids and Kerrys and Clintons, which feigns indignation but adopts the other side's terms of the debate (e.g. "I love freedom and hate terror almost as much as you, but I have to disagree on a few points..."). Obama has done a little bit of this, but not to such objectionable levels...

Bush's comments show explicitly just how much disdain he holds for intellectual argumentation. He believes that power and deference are birthrights for someone like him, and that they should be simply handed over (or, on a geopolitical stage, taken by force). Perhaps, if we were simply a bunch of monkeys fighting over a banana, he would be right... the monkey who can look the biggest or screech the loudest will win. But fully-evolved human beings know that in a grown-up world today, and particularly in a nuclear world, argument is everything.

Obama has said that comments like this are the reason why he's running... which I also love to hear, because it's also why I do what I do.

Some snippets for this week's 'toon:

• Juan Cole (my new Facebook buddy):
  

  Senator John McCain, who seeks endorsements from haters of Roman Catholics, is alleging that Hamas has "endorsed" Barack Obama. He darkly suggests that this means something. It is a despicable, dirty campaign trick. Who do you think the Ku Klux Klan will be endorsing? And if the Grand Dragons plump for McCain, does that tell us anything about McCain except that he is pasty faced? You can't logically read off anything at all from an unsolicited endorsement.

  
  
• Jonathan Schell, on the new nuclear world:
  

  That's part of the universalization that was written into the bomb's genetic code. Once a terrorist group has such a weapon, deterrence -- a relic of the Cold War -- is no longer operable. So this supposed solution, which seemed to work, after a fashion, for more than four decades, is now essentially out the window and we're in the market for another solution, which must be geared to this matured form of danger in which the weaponry can pop up anywhere.
  
  ...
  
  What follows, of course, is that a growing list of countries -- at present probably around 50 -- are able to have nuclear weapons if they so decide. What, in turn, follows is that, if those countries are not going to have the bomb, it will only be because they have made a political decision not to have it.
  And what follows no less surely is that this global issue cannot be solved by any means but the political. More specifically, it can't be solved by military force.
  
  ...
  
  I would say that the surefire way of ensuring that Iran will go for the bomb is to attack them. If, the day before, they were ready to stop short of having the bomb, the day after, they'll go for it and they'll get it, too. So, just as people say, there are no good options -- but that's only within the framework of the Bush Doctrine.

  
  
• Scott Ritter on Israel's bombing of Syria last September:
  

  ...the Israeli decision to bomb Syria not only allowed the Syrian effort to be defined as weapons-related (an unproven and unlikely allegation), but by extension reinforced the Israeli (and American) contention that the nuclear activity in Iran was weapons-related as well.
  The international debate that has taken place about the Syrian facility shows how successful the Israeli gambit, in fact, was, since there is virtually no discussion about the fact that Israel violated international law in attacking, without provocation, a sovereign state whose status as a member of the United Nations ostensibly affords it protection from such assault. The American embrace of the Israeli action, and the decision to produce intelligence information about the nature of the bombed facility at this late stage in the game, only reinforces the reality that the United States has turned its back on international law in the form of arms control and non-proliferation agreements.

• Excellent post by Chris Floyd:
  

  As with Iraq, the reality doesn't matter. The truth doesn't matter. The horrifying, murderous consequences don't matter. What matters is the militarist, elitist agenda of global domination -- in a word, empire -- that has driven America's "bipartisan foreign policy establishment" for decades. Iraq was not an aberration; it was an embodiment of this agenda. And the attack on Iran will be the same.

  
  
  
  

Fighting Words: 5/19/08 Cartoon...

"McCain & Bush's: How to Play Chess!"...

More on Pakistan and "Spreadin' Democracy"...

This week's 'toon is drawn from my initial reaction to the actions taken recently by Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan: really, they're not too damn different than some of the stuff Bush has been doing here for the past seven years. It's just a bit more conspicuous, and bit less of a manipulative, covert scheme to maximize his control. Of course, that doesn't make what Musharraf is doing right, it's just an interesting parallel.

• If you've missed it, Musharraf has suspended Pakistan's constitution, arrested thousands of his political opponents (mostly lawyers, judges, and human rights activists), disbanded the Supreme Court (which was about to rule that he was ineligible to serve another 5 years as president), and shut down the country's independent news media. Of course, he's blamed the whole thing on the danger of terrorism, but privately admitted that his real aim was self-preservation. His main political rival, Benazir Bhutto, is not exactly universally loved.
  
  The funniest part about all of this is that, despite all that he's done, the Bush administration can't really decide if they think Musharraf is a friend or foe of democracy. Of course, "democracy" has nothing to do with it... the real question is whether Pakistan will continue to obediently kowtow to the administration's agenda in the "war on terror." Some reports have the U.S. "looking past" Musharraf in case he falls, and acknowledging him as "part of the problem." Publicly, though, Musharraf is still an "indispensible" friend (according to Negroponte), who has simply made a "bad decision" or two (Condi). Then there's Dubya, who yesterday said that Musharraf "truly is somebody who believes in democracy" and that he "hasn't crossed the line." Of course not... he's just doing what Bush does.


• Check out Juan Cole's comparison of George W. Bush to Napoleon Bonaparte, both of whom "employed the same basic political vocabulary and rhetorical flimflammery, invoking the spirit of liberty, security, and democracy while largely ignoring the substance of these concepts." Bush's use of grandiose rhetoric, such as:
  

  "Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. Everywhere that freedom arrives, humanity rejoices; and everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear."

  
  ...is contrasted by examples like this:
  

  The American deployment of terror against the Iraqi population has, of course, dwarfed anything the French accomplished in Egypt by orders of magnitude. After four mercenaries, one a South African, were killed in Falluja in March of 2004 and their bodies desecrated, President Bush is alleged to have said "heads must roll" in retribution.
  ...When the assault, involving air power and artillery, came, it was devastating, damaging two-thirds of the city's buildings and turning much of its population into refugees. (As a result, thousands of Fallujans still live in the desert in tent villages with no access to clean water.)

  
  
  See also Alain Gresh on the administration's democracy spreadin' policy of "constructive instability," all part of their greater plan to turn the Middle East into America's "backyard."

Fighting Words: 11/19/07 Cartoon...

"Spreadin' Democracy"...

More on Terror Rhetoric...

Articles for this week's 'toon:

• So, as you're likely aware, Osama sent a new tape last week (two of them, actually). What cracks me up is how the media is reacting... not in a sober tone reflecting the significance of such an event in terms of national security and world affairs, but more like, "OhmyGod, did you see what Osama was WEARING?" or "that bad dye job on his beard is so passe." I guess there are some intelligence-related inferences that can be made from minute details like that... but this is a little ridiculous, don't you think?
  
  Of course, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh turned the tapes into an opportunity to call liberals and Democrats traitors.
  
  And then there's the White House response, which brought us right down to Osama's level and made the whole thing akin to a playground spitting contest between 8 year-olds.
  
  
• The goal of this cartoon was to offer a comparison of Osama's "propaganda" with some of the recent gems from the experts in the genre: Cheney, Bush, and the rest of their team of scholars and gentlemen. First, Cheney gave a speech a few months ago (using language that would scare the crap out of John Rambo) in which he suggested that those who are in favor of withdrawal are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Then, while on his trip to Australia last week, Commander Cretin was overheard exclaiming that "WE'RE KICKIN' ASS!" in Iraq. He then challenged the Australian Prime Minister to a game of beer pong, with the loser having to run naked through the quad and around the girls' dorm.
  
  And then there's David Addington. A former White House lawyer by the name of Jack Goldsmith has a new book out called "The Terror Presidency," which portrays Addington as a deranged lunatic who says things like, "We're one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court." So you see, according to the Vice President's Chief of Staff, another terror attack would be a good thing! (By the way, my caricature is obviously not how Addington really looks... I wanted to give him a bit of a Charles Manson look.)
  
  
• Check out Zbigniew Brzezinski on how the administration has created a "culture of fear" in America, a great commencement address by Mark Danner on the administration's use of wartime rhetoric, and Glenn Greenwald on the very real fear of many right-wingers that Islamists are coming to take over the country and impose sharia law.
  

Fighting Words: 9/10/07 Cartoon...

"Republican Scholar Roundtable, #4"...

In honor of St. Patrick's Day...

So the news broke this week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed to being the mastermind behind "everything ever," a story that most media outlets seem to have accepted as absolute fact. I suppose it's possibly true, but considering the fact that the confession came from a Pentagon transcript taken during a secret hearing at Guantanamo (which means, of course, there is "no way to confirm the testimony as the Bush administration has banned reporters and lawyers from proceedings"), in a manner that conveniently takes some of the attention off of Alberto's U.S. attorney scandal and implicitly justifies his stances on torture and secret military tribunals, my immediate reaction is (to quote one of my favorite movies):

(in Irish accent) "I'll believe that one when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet!"

It's not like the Defense Department has used up it's credibility on stuff like this, right?

More on Terrorism, Hegemony...

Sources and inspirations for this week's 'toon:

• My main inspiration was a quote from Alastair Crooke, who says that "what Muslims hate is the West's monopoly on the socio-economic implementation of values such as justice, freedom, good governance, which all Muslims share. Muslims don't believe simply that the West is the only model of the implementation of these values..."
  
  See also an older Chomsky piece, "Terrorist in the Mirror," where he makes one of his calling-card arguments:
  

  The most elementary [moral principle] is a virtual truism: decent people apply to themselves the same standards that they apply to others, if not more stringent ones...
  
  I have been writing about terror for 25 years, ever since the Reagan administration declared its War on Terror. I've been using definitions that seem to be doubly appropriate: first, they make sense; and second, they are the official definitions of those waging the war. To take one of these official definitions, terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear," typically targeting civilians... These definitions yield an entirely unacceptable consequence: it follows that the US is a leading terrorist state, dramatically so during the Reaganite war on terror.
  
  ...Either the US is part of the civilized world, and must send the US air force to bomb Washington; or it declares itself to be outside the civilized world. The logic is impeccable, but fortunately, logic has been dispatched as deep into the memory hole as moral truisms.

  
  Later, he reminds us that there were a lot of us out there advocating a measured, intelligent response after 9/11... but, of course, that never happened:
  

  With regard to Islamic terror, there is a broad consensus among intelligence agencies and researchers. They identify two categories: the jihadis, who regard themselves as a vanguard, and their audience, which may reject terror but nevertheless regard their cause as just. A serious counter-terror campaign would therefore begin by considering the grievances , and where appropriate, addressing them, as should be done with or without the threat of terror. There is broad agreement among specialists that al-Qaeda-style terror "is today less a product of Islamic fundamentalism than of a simple strategic goal: to compel the United States and its Western allies to withdraw combat forces from the Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim countries"

  
  In this article, Chomsky cites research by Robert Pape, who argues that "suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism."
  
  Check out a blog post by Paul Street, who differentiates the "Iraq war definitions" of terms like "democracy" and "terrorism" from the actual, literal definitions. Lastly, Robert Parry argues that Bush's identified enemy in this war has mutated from "terrorists" into an even more amorphous foe: "radicals and extremists." It would take quite a stretch of the imagination not to label Bush himself a "radical" or "extremist," let alone a terrorist.


• Check out two reports by Syed Saleem Shahzad on the status of al-Qaeda, which note that American operations in the war on terror have only pushed young Muslims to gravitate towards groups like al Qaeda, and to consider Osama bin Laden a "hero."
  
  See also Juan Cole on the estimated 650,000 Iraqi civilians killed during the Iraq War.

Fighting Words: 3/5/07 Cartoon

"Hegemonopoly"...

More on Commemorating 9-11...

Check out the homepage for that cheesy commemorative coin you've no doubt seen on TV (from a company headed by none other than Barry Goldwater, Jr.!); and reviews of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center by Jac VerSteeg, David Walsh, Michael Phillips and Ruth Rosen, along with a rather jerky interview given by him here.

For some information on the broader context: check out some archived Frontline episodes here, here and here; also keep an eye out for the current issue of Mother Jones, which contains a comprehensive timeline of events leading up to the war (apparently not online yet)...

8/21/06 Cartoon

"Remember 9-11"...

Be Afraid... Be Very Afraid

The Bush administration wastes no time in getting their fear-monger on:

Terrorists were in the "final stages" of a plot to simultaneously blow up as many as 10 jets leaving Britain for the U.S., sending the planes and thousands of passengers into the Atlantic Ocean, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday.
...
The U.S. raised the terror threat level to "severe," or red, for all flights leaving Britain for the United States.
...
Chertoff said the plotters were "getting close to the execution phase."

"There were very concrete steps under way to execute all elements of the plan," he said.
...
The plot was "as sophisticated as any we have seen in recent years as far as terrorism is concerned," Chertoff said.

And this gem:

Hours after the news broke, Bush said it was "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation."

Thanks, assholes... I seem to remember a situation in late August of last year, a pending disaster (with several days reasonable notice, as I recall), and you worthless idiots were nowhere to be seen until 4 days after the disaster occurred.

However, as a number of satirical depictions have pointed out, it's much harder to make political hay out of hurricanes than terrorists:

(Will Forte as) George W. Bush: ...We all know, in the days after the hurricane, I said I wasn't warned about how bad the hurricane might be, and.. now there's a tape showing you that I was warned! ...So, who's got the last laugh now, huh? The main thing to remember here is: it's been six months, and there hasn't been another hurrircane! The hurricanes are on the run.