Here’s the cartoon in question… And read this link explaining what the blood libel myth is, if you don’t know already.

Trish Wilson provides a link to The Independent’s response page: it includes three defenses of the cartoon, one written by the cartoonist himself. They also publish a critique by Ned Temko which makes the primary criticism clear:

But it is not the cartoon’s skewed picture of the conflict that is at issue. It is its use of one of the oldest images of European anti-Semitism, the fuel for pogroms and ultimately for the Holocaust ‘ the classic “blood libel”, of Jews murdering gentile children for their blood.

But despite Temko’s editorial, none of the three defenses even address the “blood libel” issue. Cartoonist Dave Brown, understandably, takes the route of explaining his intentions; but (as I argued in the post below this one), even if we take his word that his intentions were benign, that doesn’t make the cartoon itself non-anti-Semitic. Philip Hensher explains the Goya connection, and argues:

What is apparent to me is that the accusation made by the cartoon, though severe, is one that ought to be within the means of graphic satire. Similar pictures were produced of Mrs Thatcher in her prime. Critics of the image should ask themselves, above all, not whether they agree with it, but how this accusation would be made, with the same legitimate force, by a cartoonist with no anti-Semitic prejudices; because, surely, everyone must concede that criticism of a specific policy of a specific Israeli government need not proceed from racial prejudice. I think the answer is that it would look very much as the cartoon actually does.

For Hensher’s argument to make sense, we’d have to believe that political cartoonists are unfairly constrained from criticising Israeli governments (or from implying that Palestinians are symbolically Israel’s children) if they have to refrain from drawing prominent Jews eating gentile children or drinking blood. Calling this argument “ridiculous” is a terrible understatement; there’s an entire universe of strong images available to cartoonists which don’t recall the blood libel.

Furthermore, because this cartoon recalls traditional anti-Semitic imagery so strongly, it shouldn’t even be claimed that this cartoon successfully criticizes “a specific policy of a specific Israeli government”; the cartoonist’s intent (accepting, for the sake of argument, Hensher’s interpretation) has not been communicated clearly, but is drowned in his insensitivity and ham-handed use of traditional anti-Semitic imagery. As ‘Journalista! puts it:

I suppose it’s a fine defense in theory, but given the “blood libel” myths flung at Jews past and present, you have to wonder just how naive Brown was being in not anticipating accusations of anti-Semitism. Aren’t cartoons supposed to communicate their ideas a little more clearly than that?

The cartoon’s defenders bring up the deplorable habit of some Israel-advocates of labeling any strong criticism of Israel anti-Semitic. In general, this is a fair point (and one I’ve made before). But it’s not true in this specific instance. I’m a left-wing political cartoonist who loathes Sharon and the Israeli government - hell, I’ve even been accused of anti-Semitism myself, for cartoons like these (1 2 3 4) - and yet even I think Brown’s cartoon is grotesquely anti-Semitic. Yes, some of the criticisms of anti-Semitism are baseless; but that doesn’t mean that every criticism of anti-Semitism should be dismissed.

That not one of The Independent’s defenders even addresses the issue - which is not criticism of Israeli policy, but the use of a traditional and vicious anti-Semitic image - is disappointing.

Update: Musings provides a cartoon from an Arabic newspaper for comparison.

Letters from Gotham points out a grossly anti-Semitic cartoon from The Independent which draws on the old “Jews eat gentile children” blood libel. She also provides an email address for The Independent’s news editor, in case folks would like to share their thoughts.

Needless to say, I do think cartoonists have the right to criticize Israel as harshly as they want - even cartoons like this one, which cross the line into anti-Semitism. But we readers have the corresponding right to tell newspapers what we think; and newspaper editors have the right to choose not to publish anti-Semitic dribble if they don’t want to.

Update: As Kip pointed out in the comments - and as I should have spotted myself - the cartoon is a riff on a famous Goya painting of Saturn eating his children, which suggests that the cartoonist may have had something more, or something other, in mind than just blood libel. (For those of you who don’t know, the blood libel is a centuries-old anti-Semitic myth that Jews eat gentile children. It’s a good deal better-known in Europe than it is in the US).

So does that change anything? Well, it brings up the possibility that this may have been accidental anti-Semitism; perhaps the cartoonist was just tasteless, insensitive, ignorant. But I never said that the cartoonist himself (herself?) is an anti-Semite. I don’t know or care what was in the cartoonists’ heart; all I know is what was drawn in the cartoon. And what was drawn was one of the most pernicious and vicious anti-Semitic myths in history; a slander that is still current in parts of the Arab world.

(It’s on a par with an American newspaper editor printing a cartoon showing Colin Powell raping white women. It’s not just tasteless; it’s drawing on a specific, deeply-felt cultural image of bigotry. And it draws on that racist imagery regardless of intent.).

Look, somebody could, in theory, grow up miraculously ignorant and not know the word “kike,” or think the word is just a fancy, non offensive word for “Jew.” They could then write a perfectly reasonable petition calling for Jewish settlers to lay off of Palestinian olive groves, all without a trace of anti-Semitism in their heart. But if the petition they wrote used the wording “the kike settlers should lay off,” then I’d call that an anti-Semitic petition. That there is a theoretical possibility that the writer is not an anti-Semite is just a distraction; it doesn’t call the anti-Semitism of the petition’s wording into question.

In this case, the cartoon was drawn by the cartoonist and approved by an editor. If it was by some miracle an innocent mistake, then it is still a mistake that shows a staggering tastelessness, ignorance and insensitivity. And regardless of motive, the result was the printing of an anti-Semitic cartoon; at the very least, The Independent’s editors owe all their Jewish readers an apology and an explanation.

Also in my comments, Jake writes:

I dunno. I mean it’s disgusting, and it’s certainly anti-Sharon, but I think that’s all it is. I didn’t interpret it as anti-semitic. And I know Amp’s often the first to point out that anti-Sharon != anti-semitic, so I’m wondering why you feel this is.

Consider again my hypothetical example of a racist cartoon about Colin Powell. Does it cease to be racist because it is using racist imagery against one particular black person, rather than against black people as a whole?

Look, I hate Sharon; I think he’s a war criminal, a bigot, and an enemy of peace. I’ll gladly call him terrible names and draw him doing horrible things. But I will never draw him eating babies; because that’s a traditional way anti-Semites attack Jews. It’s fair game to criticize Sharon for being a warmonger or even a murderer; but bringing in “blood libel” imagery turns the cartoon into a criticism of him for being a Jewish warmonger, and that’s anti-Semitic. There’s a big difference between criticism of Sharon and anti-Semitic criticism of Sharon.

In the comments of my previous post on wealth and race, Tom Maguire asked if I could find “means and medians for income and wealth further sorted by age.” Well, I tried, but I was able to find only incomplete answers to his question.

This graph, from a year-old Russel Sage study (pdf file here - the data is in 1998 dollars), answers Tom’s question for net worth but not income. Don’t let that high top line distract you; what really matters, in my opinion, is how huge the disparity between the purple (median net worth for blacks and Hispanics) and the orange (median net worth for whites) lines are. Whatever you think of the possible solutions, the fact is we are nowhere close to real racial equality in this country.

There’s also this table, containing data from Oliver & Shapiro’s book Black Wealth, White Wealth; however, the data has limitations (no Hispanic category, from 1988, medians are given only for net financial assets), plus due to differing definitions and source it’s not directly comparable to the other data I’ve presented. Still, what the heck, it’s only a blog.

Diana made a similar request, commenting that “When you have a lot of kids, there’s lot of spending and little earning going on!” Well, part of the point of looking at wealth is to notice that wealth is not determined just by earnings (more on that in my previous post). Still, Diana’s question is a fair one. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any data handy for race and wealth by number of children. I did find something pretty close in Black Wealth/White Wealth, however, which is household wealth by number of earners:

Oh, and I should define what the heck “net financial assets” means. From Oliver and Shapiro:

Net financial assets, by contrast, are those financial assets normally available for present or future conversion into ready cash. The specific difference between net worth and net financial assets is that equity in vehicles and homes is excluded from the latter, although debts are subtracted from NFA. In contrast to net worth, net financial assets consists fo more readily liquid sources of income and wealth that can be used for a family’s immediate well-being. Because the distinction between net worth and net financial assets is somewhat controversial and still open to debate, we usually present both measures. Generally, in our view, however, net financial assets seem to be the best indicator of the current generation’s command over future resources, while net worth provides a more accurate estimate of the wealthy likely to be inherited by the next generation.

Anyhow, that’s what I found, Tom and Diana… Never let it be said that I don’t listen to reader requests.

Diane E. isn’t amused by my anti-feminist light bulb jokes. That’s okay; conservatives who send lefties “fuck you fuck you fuck you” emails aren’t my target audience. It’s a sad fact of life: generally righties don’t find lefty political humor funny (and vice-versa). So long as folks like Tina Faye, Jon Stewart, David Wain, Margaret Cho and Janeane Garofalo are on the left, I don’t worry about a humor deficit on this side of the political spectrum.

Anyhow, the reason I’m blogging this is that Diane uses my thudding unfunniness as a lead-in to a zany shtick about calling a man who opened a stuck door for her a “sexist bastard.” Her punchline:

In a former world (gone with the wind!), the sexist bastard would have been called a gentleman. Oh well.

How many feminists does it take to shove a stuck door open?

Golly, I open doors for people all the time, and I’ve never had anyone object - not even when I was a Women’s Studies major and opened doors for many hard-core radical feminists. (The kernel of truth buried in Diane’s comment: Feminists - decades ago, when this was an issue - objected to men always opening doors for women and never vice-versa; it’s silly, if a woman has empty arms and a man has an teetering armload of heavy packages, for him to be the designated door-opener.)

Diane E., like many conservatives, is stuck in the past (or “in a former world”). The “feminists get offended by door-opening” bit was tired twenty years ago, and has virtually no truth to it today, but to her (and her audience) it probably seems like a fresh and on-point insight. Which is pretty much what’s wrong with anti-feminist thought in general.

On the other hand, if you visit Diane’s blog, make sure to read her summary of the State of the Union, which I thought was funny and accurate.

I enjoy reading about how artists produce their work, even if I don’t understand the explanation in the least. So I really enjoyed reading “The Evolution of Origami Ungulates” by Joseph Wu.

There’s actually a lot of stunning origami out there, once I thought to look. This piece, by Eric Joisel, I think is stunning, and much more meaty-looking than origami usually manages to be.

This one isn’t as technically complex as many others I looked at, but I think it’s admirably graceful.

Ted Barlow and Rob Lyman have been reminding folks of the importance of looking at race/wealth disparities, as well as the better-known income disparities. People are often surprised at just how huge the wealth gap is compared to the income gap.

Wanna see what I mean? In the following table, “net worth” refers to is the product of total assets minus total liabilities (I’ll provide a more detailed definition in the comments). As you can see, white households have about twice the income of non-white households, but eight times the wealth of black families and twenty-five times the wealth of Hispanic families

It’s also worth noticing that there are even big wealth gaps within the same income class; a poor (measured by income) white household is likely to have much more wealth than a poor black household. There has been a lot of talk about the emergence of a black middle class in the last few decades; important as that is, we should bear in mind that the black middle class is incredibly tiny if we measure class by wealth instead of income.

Importantly, wealth more than income is what determines our ability to help our kids out - for instance, by helping them buy a first home. Wealth - or lack of wealth - tends to be passed down from generation to generation.

(There’s also a follow-up post, with data on wealth by race and age.)

I’m too late for Ted Barlow’s amazing light bulb joke theme week, but I thought I’d post some anyhow.

Q: How many anti-feminists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: 51. One to change the light bulb, and fifty to bitch that if it wasn’t for those damned feminazis, it wouldn’t be dark in the first place.

* * *

Q: How many anti-feminist men does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Why is it always men who have to change the light bulb? Why are men always women’s slaves? This is just another example of the anti-male attitudes pervading society!

* * *

Q: How many anti-feminist men does it take to change a light bulb?

A: One antifeminist man to do it, and three other antifeminists to stand around and discuss how this just shows men are better equipped for light-bulb changing.

* * *

Q: How many anti-feminist men does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Just one. He holds on to the bulb and waits for the world to revolve around his needs.

Jennifer Manley Lee tells us that one of my favorite architects, Gaudi, has submitted his design to replace the World Trade Center towers - 77 years after his death. “It has been said that the plans may well have been intended for the original site of the World Trade Center, although this cannot be verified “

It’s probably too much to hope this will actually be built, but it’s a lovely fantasy - by far my favorite proposal for the site I’ve seen so far. You can view images of the design here, and photographs of real-life Gaudi buildings here and here.

You all saw the final episode of Seinfeld, right? (I liked it better than most people did). You remember: Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer are in small-town Massachusetts, and they spot an exceptionally fat man being carjacked.

[Cut to shot of fat man being carjacked in front of the group.]

Robber: Alright fatso, out of the car.

[Cut to shot of group. Kramer aims his videocamera.]

Kramer: I want to capture this.

Robber: Come on! Gimme your wallet.

Victim: Don’t shoot.

Jerry: Well, there goes the money for the lipo.

Elaine: See, the great thing about robbing a fat guy is it’s an easy getaway. You know? They can’t really chase ya!

George: He’s actually doing him a favor. It’s less money for him to buy food.

That scene may have been the most unusual series of fat jokes in movies and TV in the last decade. Why? Because jokes were being made at exceptionally fat character’s expense, and an honest-to-god fat actor appeared on camera, playing the fat person. This goes against the usual fat-comedy strategies.

What are the strategies? Let’s categorize the Absent Fatsos:

The Invisible Fatso. Think of Karen’s husband on Will and Grace, or “Ugly Naked Guy” on Friends - both fat characters who return episode after episode to be the butt of fat jokes, without ever appearing on camera. (Ugly Naked Guy did appear on camera - from the back - once. Tellingly, that was the character’s final appearance on the show.)

For some reason, those same shows also use the Ex-Fatso; the character that was fat years before the show’s narrative began, but is now thin. Will on Will and Grace and Monica on Friends are both ex-fatsos, whose friends make fat jokes at their expense (Jack to Will: “Men don’t make passes at men with fat asses”).

Then there’s the Animated Fatso, of whom there are too many examples to recount; but surely the king of them all is Homer Simpson. I don’t think any TV show has ever told as many fat jokes as The Simpsons:

Doctor Hibbert: Homer, this is a new body fat analysis test. What we’re going to do is jiggle the fat and measure how long it takes to stop.
[long pause]
Homer: Woo hoo! Look at that blubber fly!!
Doctor Hibbert: [activating intercom] Nurse, cancel my one o’clock.

(Oddly enough, what most offends me about how the Simpsons portrays Homer is that they think he only weighs 240-260 pounds. In one Simpsons episode, the writers suggested - with no detectible irony - that at 300 pounds, Homer would be so crippled by fat he’d qualify for a disability program.)

And then there’s the most famous Absent Fatso strategy of all - the Fat Suit. This device has been used on Friends, in the “fat Monica” flashbacks and alternate-realities, and also in movies like the Austin Powers series and Shallow Hal.

It appears that in comedy, fat people can be made fun of in any way at all - as long as there aren’t any fat actors in the room. The reason is pretty obvious: mocking real fat actors would make audiences feel uncomfortable. Audiences want to laugh at fat people, without the discomfort of wondering if a real person’s feelings might be hurt. As Marisa Meltzer, in a brilliant Bitch Magazine article comparing fat suits to blackface, wrote:

With a real fat woman in the lead, the movie wouldn’t be funny - it would just be uncomfortable. Watching actual fat on the big screen would be so authentically painful - because fat hatred is still deeply entrenched in American culture - that audiences would be unable to laugh. It’s not just the exaggerated dimply thighs and man-boobs that keep us buying tickets; the crux of the joke is not the latex suit’s physical fakeness but the ephemeral nature of the thin actor posing as fat. We all know that Julia, Goldie, and Gwyneth (and Martin, Mike, and Eddie) will return to their slender glory for the next part, and that’s comforting - because otherwise we would have to confront the mean-spiritedness behind the giggles.

This, of course, is why the final episode of Sienfeld showed a real fat actor pretending to be mugged: the writer wanted to make the audience uncomfortable with the cruelty of the main characters’ jokes. Hence, for once, a real fat person.

Digression number one: The exceptions to the rule.

Pop culture is huge, and any generalization made about pop culture has its exceptions. Married with Children, for example, regularly included many fat actresses, whose generous curves were straight lines for Al Bundy’s jokes. This approach fit into the show’s “we’re delighted with our own crassness” shtick. Even so, the writers were careful to make sure the fat women scored some victory over Al at the end of the episode. The message seemed to be that Al might be mean-spirited towards fat women, but the writers and producers weren’t.

Another exception is the Drew Carey Show. This show relies on the “Jews are allowed to tell Jewish jokes” strategy; the fat jokes are mostly told by fat characters Drew and Mimi, at each other’s expense.

And of course, the show Ally McBeal was infamous for its pathological obsession with thinness and contempt for fat people; at least twice a season, a fat actor would be dragged onto the show for an episode of appearing pathetic and/or comedic. (Ally creator David Kelly was infamous for his unresolved issues about fatness and thinness).

Digression number two: The even more absent fatso

There’s an even more popular strategy for sparing audiences the sight of fat actors, show no fat characters, ever. In seven years of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there have been virtually no speaking fat characters. One of the few exceptions was was a demon who embodied every fat-hating stereotype imaginable before he was electrocuted by the main character (the demon was, of course, played by a thin man in a fat suit).

In the absence of fat people (as with all appearance issues), Buffy is deeply conventional. Although we keep hearing about how fat Americans have become, you’d never know it by watching American dramas and sitcoms. Especially when it comes to fat women, most American TV shows pretend that fat women don’t exist (although there are a few honorable exceptions). According to a Michigan State University study (found via Big Fat Blog), 1 in 4 real-life American women are fat, compared to 1 in 33 television women. Also, “larger body types were more likely found among characters who were guests on the shows rather than recurring characters.” And, “larger characters were less likely to be [presented as] attractive.” And, “larger females were almost twice as often the object of humor.”.

Conclusion: Why does any of this matter? Because pop culture is a major way all of us - but especially kids - learn our cultural norms. And what pop culture teaches about fat people is that they are objects of contempt. The MSU study press release mentions that “Obese children and teens are more often excluded from peer groups, are discriminated against by adults, report psychological stress, and have a poor body image and low self esteem.” As the underlinked blog Fatshadow said in another context, “the fat kids of the world pay the price for our unwillingness to excise fat hatred.”

The Absent Fatso reflects a desire to avoid cruelty - the fat character who is there without really being there exists because mocking real people would seem too mean. But in fact, the cruelty is still there, and so are the real-life fat people; they’re just in the audience, rather than on screen. The Absent Fatso strategy doesn’t avoid cruelty so much as it makes it palatable. Watching “Ugly Naked Guy” cause revulsion on Friends, Homer tip the scales on Simpsons, or Mike Myers cavorting in a fat suit, the same message is delivered. “Get your yummy fat-hatred without having to think of fat people as real people!”

Sam Heldman says he favored the Supreme Court’s decision in Eldred because the movie Shrek’s “soundtrack included John Cale’s version of Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah”:

I think it’s great and even important that Leonard Cohen get a lot of money for writing such a song, whether it’s used in a movie 15 or 50 or even somewhat more years after he wrote it.

I’ve got a lot of respect for Sam Heldman, but I think he’s wrong on this one. I think the more important issue is: does Leonard Cohen get to choose whether his song will be used in Shrek (or to sell cars, or whatever) or not?

Probably Cohen does get to choose, because he’s one of the lucky successful ones. But tens of thousands of musicians and (to move to a subject near and dear to my heart) cartoonists don’t get to choose, because early in their careers, when their negotiating positions were weak, they sold those rights to major corporations. In fact, it’s the worse of all worlds - they don’t get to choose, they don’t get money for it, and they don’t even get to record their own songs or use their own characters in new work without the copyright owner’s permission. And thanks to the ridiculously extended copyright laws, they can count on dying of old age before they ever get the right to use their creations again.

The Sonny Bono Copyright Act wasn’t about making sure Leonard Cohen gets a fair cut of Shrek; it’s about making sure Michael Eisner, a non-artist who didn’t create Mickey, didn’t draw Mickey, and has never written a Mickey cartoon in his life, continues to get his unfair, unearned share of Mickey. As I wrote about Superman’s creators, back in August:

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster might have been better off had Superman never been copyrighted - at least they would have had the right to continue making Superman comics and selling Superman drawings into old age. (As it is, they ended up penniless, until bad publicity convinced Superman’s owner to give them pensions). The in-practice effect of copyright - and of the overwhelming imbalance of power between a young creator and a huge publisher - is protection of the publisher’s interests, not the creator’s.

It’s great that Cohen gets money for Shrek - but there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and I think what we lose by giving Cohen a never-ending copyright is more important than what we gain. For musicians less successful than Cohen, the result of copyright can easily mean keeping their life works out of print and out of circulation, making them less money than they could have made otherwise (decades-old work that might make enough money for an individual musician to keep in print and sell on a personal website, might not make enough money for a major label to bother keeping in print).

In short, it’s not at all clear, as Sam implies, that artists are - when all is accounted for - the overall beneficiaries of ridiculously extended copyright laws. Almost every artist I know who has an opinion disagreed with the Court in Eldred; either all the artists I know are self-destructive (a real possibility), or they can recognize that the current laws aren’t in their self-interest.

Update: Sam replies here, and makes a very good case that my objections could be fairly addressed without shortening copyright terms.

The Kitchen Cabinet’s Lily Malcolm links approvingly to an anti-feminist screed by Kay Hymowitz, “Why Feminism Is AWOL on Islam.” The article gives a broad overview of the horrifying conditions women live under in “Islamic fundamentalist” countries, and has a good sidebar on Islamic feminism.

I’m glad conservatives are finally paying attention to how women are abused under Sharia law - but the article’s critique of feminism is nonsense. Ms. Hymowitz’s critique consists mostly of the usual recycled antifeminist cliches (a dab of Who Stole Feminism, a riff on pomo academic feminists, etc). That fluff aside, Hymowitz does float a (relatively) new antifeminist claim: According to her, feminists haven’t said a word about how women in countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia suffer under Sharia law; feminists never mentioned the women sentenced to death in Nigeria, feminists have never objected to honor killings. Instead, we’ve all been worrying about if women can golf at Augusta.

Ms. Hymowitz’s thesis is ridiculous. Not only have feminists (including the academic feminists Ms. Hymowitz disdains) been speaking on these issues for decades, until recently feminists have been almost the only Westerners speaking. There have been literally thousands of feminist speaking (in books, websites, articles, fundraisers, letter-writing campaigns, conferences, etc) about women under Islam and Sharia law.

Let’s address one of Ms. Hymowitz’s specific claims:

[Feminists] have averted their eyes from the harsh, blatant oppression of millions of women, even while they have continued to stare into the Western patriarchal abyss, indignant over female executives who cannot join an exclusive golf club and college women who do not have their own lacrosse teams.

Have feminists paid more attention to Augusta and lacrosse than to the oppression of women under Sharia law? I decided to search the websites of the two largest feminist organizations in the US; how many hits would I get for Sharia versus Augusta?:

Contrary to Ms. Hymowitz’s accusation, feminists overwhelmingly pay more attention to women under Sharia than to women golfing. Her entire argument is based on a factual mistake - and one that she could have easily have corrected herself, if she had bothered to do fifteen seconds of research. (That feminists pay more attention to the plight of women in Saudi Arabia than the plight of women excluded from Augusta is no surprise; conservatives have been far more obsessed with Augusta than feminists. Body & Soul has an excellent post about the “feminists-only-pay-attention-to-Augusta” silliness.)

(Of course, none of the many right-wing bloggers who blogged this article checked to see if Ms. Hymowitz’s thesis was true, either.)

Statistics aside, there’s a deeper issue here: Is it ridiculous for American feminists to be concerned about American problems when women elsewhere have it worse?. Ms. Hymowitz wants us to answer “yes,” but the same criticism could be applied to Ms. Hymowitz’s work. In the mid-1990s, when the Feminist Majority Foundation was gearing up their campaign against the Taliban, Ms. Hymowitz was trying to show that Sesame Street doesn’t help kids learn to read. By her own standards, shouldn’t she have been ignoring that issue, concentrating instead on more urgent educational problems faced by Afghani children (especially girls)?

Well, yes - but Ms. Hymowitz wouldn’t dream of living up to the standards she measures feminism by, because those standards are ridiculous. It’s human nature to pay more attention to what’s going on in our own culture; and if anything, feminists have been less insular than most Americans. (Even Ms. Hymowitz has to admit that the Feminist Majority Foundation was focusing on the Taliban years before 9/11).

Perhaps it would be better if Americans paid less attention to American issues, and more attention to people who have things objectively worse abroad. But is it fair for Ms. Hymowitz to hold feminists to a standard she doesn’t hold anyone else - including herself - to?

Let me make a prediction: Five years from now, Ms. Hymowitz will have moved on to some other issue-of-the-moment; but feminists will still be working to help women under Sharia law (alongside the thousand other issues feminists worry about). Feminists were almost the only Westerners who gave a shit about women under Sharia law before 9/11 (Dworkin was writing about it in the 1970s), and we’ll still give a shit when it’s no longer fashionable.

The truth is, feminists haven’t been silent; Kay Hymowitz just hasn’t been listening.

Update: Boy, am I late! Off the Kuff and The Sideshow were covering this question back in September.

Second Update: There’s a little discussion of this going on over on Eschaton (whose post on this subject sums up what’s happening well). The funniest comment comes from Carpeicthus: “Ah yes, how well I remember my pre-9/11 college days, when the Young Republicans were constantly holding rallies and passing out flyers decrying the Taliban.” Hee hee.

Update the third: Body and Soul picks up the ball (is it a golf ball?) and runs much further with it; if you liked this post, you’ll love Jeanne’s.

It’s strange writing about Al Hirschfeld, because I know most of my blog readers aren’t cartoonists, or particularly into cartoons as an art form. So how do I explain that the single person in the world who knew the most about how to draw someone’s character with lines on paper has died?

Listen: the more you do an art form, the less magic it seems. My reading of comics and cartooning is nowadays much more in-depth than it was when I was a kid, but I’ll never recapture the wonder again; just how completely magical the comics are, the miracle of how line on paper forms meaning. Because I can do it myself - not as well as the cartoonists I admire, but I can do it - and I know how it’s done. There’s a technique to it. It’s not magic.

Well, let me tell you: Al Hirschfeld is fucking magic. I look at his stuff and go “wow! How the hell does he do that? How does he get the essence of a person down so perfectly with linework that has next-to-no literal resemblance to the person he’s drawing? How does he know the exactly perfect place each line goes?”

Mark Evanier gets it right:

…he nurtured and cultivated the most amazing, functional line in the time-honored craft of Caricature. Its very simplicity maddened those who tried to imitate him. He always knew precisely how to lay it down, and how to contour and bold it just so, the better to denote not only the look of his subject but some perceptive, vital quirk of personality or posture. That he could see this in people — even strangers, up there on stage or screen — was a function of the man, himself. Others could and did draw like him, but they could only draw what they saw, and Hirschfeld saw more than any of them.

Al Hirschfeld passed away today, at the age of 99, never having retired (or wanted to). I don’t feel the slightest bit bad for him; he had a long life, which he seemed to enjoy, and left thousands of wonderful drawings behind.

I don’t feel bad for him - I feel bad for me. And you. Because the master of the perfectly graceful line has put down his pen, and there will be no new Hirschfeld drawings for us to enjoy.

Like most of us, I’ve probably read a hundred blog posts on Affirmative Action in the last couple of weeks. This one, by Jack Balkin (who also has written a terrific post consulting the I Ching for Iraq war advice), is one of my favorites. Here’s a sample:

What about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, then? It’s a terrific question, and it cracks the case for colorblindness wide open, because it brings us to the issue of baselines. John argues that laws like the 1964 Civil Rights Act that guarantee blacks equal opportunity clearly are designed to help them, so doesn’t that make them race conscious? Well, if your baseline is a world in which everyone has the right to refuse service to anyone they don’t like, and the right to hire and fire anyone they don’t like, yes, it does. The law is altering common law rules of contract and property for the explicit purpose of benefitting black people.

Indeed, this *is* the argument (made in 1964) that the Civil Rights Act does not guarantee equal rights but rather creates “special rights” for black people. It is the argument made in 1883 in the Civil Rights Cases that the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which outlawed public accommodation discrimination (an ancestor of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) was unconstitutional because it made blacks, in Justice Bradley’s words, “the special favorite of the laws.” Today opponents of gay rights laws say they give gays and lesbians “special rights” because these opponents work from a baseline in which its ok to refuse to deal with someone whose sexual practices they find morally offensive.

Another favorite of mine is Sam Heldman’s, which includes this paragraph:.

First, you’ve got to figure out why we admit people to public universities. It’s not as a reward for making good grades in high school. It’s so that we can improve our society — spending public resources to expand the minds of a lucky relatively-few, so that they will go on to do things that will make the world better. Admission is not an entitlement that arises from being smart. It is a matter of being chosen to be the subject of a public investment. Second, we have decided that we ought to invest in just about as many minority kids, proportionately, as white kids. Why? Because it seems pretty obvious to us that this is the way to improve the world — not by reserving this public good mostly for white folks, but by spreading it around. The world will be better more quickly, we think, if there are black lawyers as well as white lawyers, Hispanic engineers as well as Anglo engineers, etc. And it also appears to us that any fairly-designed system of assessing “merit” just would result in approximately proportionate representation among races and ethnicities — that is definitional, we think, as to the words “fairly-designed” and “merit”. Third, if we went solely on SATs, LSATs, and grades, we wouldn’t achieve this goal — so we make adjustments. It’s not a perfect system, but no one has ever yet designed a perfect system for measuring or even defining human merit in any sphere. So get over it.

A phrase I read over at Eve Tushnet’s place gave me deja vu:

…anti-aff. action people talk about the colorblind ideal, judging people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Eventually, I remembered where I’d recently read something similar: Foxnews’ Wendy McElroy had quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in a recent anti-affirmative action column:

…is it ever proper for a tax- funded institution to systematically privilege one class of people at the expense of another?

Martin Luther King, leader of the ’60s civil rights movement, didn’t think so. In his justly renowned speech “I Have a Dream” King declared, “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Contemporary “civil rights” leaders are demanding King’s grandchildren be judged on the basis of skin color.

Both Eve and McElroy are pretty typical of their movement: conservatives love citing Dr King to attack affirmative action. In California, the Republican party has even used film clips of Dr. King in anti-affirmative-action ads.

Strangely enough, none of these folks seem to know - or care - that they’re distorting King’s words and meanings to oppose what King himself believed. Without making too big a deal of it, there’s something dishonest about dozens of conservatives quoting MLK to make their anti-AA case - none of whom admit that they’re arguing against what Dr. King himself believed, and against how King himself meant the “I have a dream” speech.

Did Dr. King oppose affirmative action? Well, the term “affirmative action” wasn’t in play during Dr. King’s life; and it’s impossible to know for certain what King would think if he were alive today. But during his life, he certainly didn’t oppose special programs to help blacks. According to historian Clayborne Carson:

Even before the March on Washington, he had applauded the Indian government’s efforts to help the caste once called untouchables through “special treatment to enable the victims of discrimination” including the provision of Especial employment opportunities.” Moreover, in his 1964 book, “Why We Can’t Wait,” King compared the social reforms he favored to the GI Bill of Rights, which gave World War II veterans special preferences including home loans, college scholarships and special advantages in competition for civil service jobs. King maintained that African- Americans could never be adequately compensated for the “exploitation and humiliation” they had suffered in the past, but he proposed a “Negro Bill of Rights” as a partial remedy for these wrongs. He insisted that African-Americans should be compensated through “a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law.” He added that “such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest.”

King wrote that “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years, must now to something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.” King’s organization began “Operation Breadbasket,” an early AA-type program. Here’s how Dr. King described the program in Where Do We Go From Here?

Operation Breadbasket is carried out mainly by clergymen. First, a team of ministers calls on the management of a business in the community to request basic facts on the company’s total number of employees, the number of Negro employees, the department or job classification in which all are located, and the salary ranges for each category. The team then returns to the steering committee to evaluate the data and to make a recommendation concerning the number of new and upgraded jobs that should be requested. The decision on the number of jobs requested is usually based on population figures. For instance, if a city has a 30 percent Negro population, then it is logical to assume that Negroes should have at least 30 percent of the jobs in any particular company, and jobs in all categories rather than only in menial areas, as the case almost always happens to be.

In fact, King’s writings - taken as a whole, rather than the out-of-context quotes right-wingers prefer - make him sound pretty much like any current defender of Affirmative Action. “Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic.”

Conservatives like Eve do share a dream with Martin Luther King: a dream of a society in which everyone is judged by the content of their characters, not the color of their skins. But we’re not there yet; and as Dr. King said, it’s unrealistic to expect that we can achieve equality without preference programs. To use Dr. King to oppose the policies he favored - or to simply lie and claim he’d oppose such policies, as Wendy McElroy did - ain’t playing kosher.

Attempting to reframe Dr. King as an AA opponent is both dishonest and disrespectful.

UPDATE: So what is going on here? If it were just a matter of Eve’s post, there’d be no problem. But what’s going on is a widespread pattern of conservatives using MLK against affirmative action - and generally using him in a far less evenhanded and fair way than Eve did. And I’ve yet to see a single conservative citing MLK’s “dream” acknowledge that MLK himself thought his vision was compatible with supporting AA-type policies.

Overall, I think conservatives cite MLK so much because Dr. King has - not just with liberals, but with virtually all Americans - a great deal of credibility on race issues. Conservatives, in contrast, have zero credibility on race (except among other conservatives). Since conservatives are so lacking credibility on race, they try and “borrow” some of MLK’s for their own purposes.

Eve asks if she should have to cite MLK’s actual views every time the phrase “content of their character” comes up. Maybe not - but it would be nice if the conservative movement, when frequently citing MLK on affirmative action, would cite his actual views at least some of the time.

1. Chelsea came to us - well, to Jenn, really - via someone Jenn knew (or was it someone who knew someone Jenn knew?), who couldn’t keep a dog in his apartment. This was in 1993; Chelsea was already four or five years old by then, according to a vet who looked at her. Before moving in with us, Chelsea stayed in her former owner’s truck, where she learned to recognize the golden arches and the word “cheeseburger.”

2. For years afterwards, we had to avoid saying the word “cheeseburger” in front of the dog, since we didn’t want to disappoint her. We started saying “heart murmur” instead, but eventually Chelsea cracked our clever code.

3. I remember a bunch of us hanging out in the yard and kicking Chelsea a volleyball - too big for her to control with her mouth and feet. But she had a wonderful time trying, getting happily hysterical in her attempts to make the ball stand still.

4. When we chained her in the front yard, she’d dig herself beds of cool dirt to sleep in, which I thought was very industrious of her.

5. Irish Setter, if you’re wondering.

6. When we (Sarah, Charles, Brad, Jenn, Kip, and myself) moved from Massachusetts to Oregon, we took the scenic route (badlands, Yellowstone, WalDrug, etc), and so were driving all day, camping out by night for two weeks. I think that was probably the best two weeks of Chelsea’s life; she was with her whole pack all day long, and even better she got to be in a car all day, every day. She even slept in the car - she refused to sleep outside and there wasn’t room for her in any of the tents. She was greatly disappointed when we arrived at our new house, because by that time she had decided that we were going to be nomads forever.

7. Chelsea was never the smartest dog in the pack. I was once watching a video of the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods, and when the actor playing the Wolf howled - a very stagy, fake-sounding howl - Chelsea woke up from a sound sleep and started barking back.

8. When we got the kittens, Mosley - that’s Mosley, napping with Chelsea, in the photo - became convinced that Chelsea was his mother. Sometimes Radcliffe would concur with Mosley, and the two tiny kittens would crawl all over Chelsea, certain that somewhere on this enormous furry thing they’d find the milk dispenser. They’d find a bump (any bump, like a shoulderblade) and start nursing.

Poor Chelsea was too polite to defend herself against this kitten onslaught, so she’d just stare imploringly at any human in the room, her expression saying “save me from these horrible tiny creatures!” And we did (but only after looking for a camera).

9. Another kittens/Chelsea story: When we fed Chelsea, we’d have to chase the kittens away from her bowl; otherwise they’d duck in under her chin and eat her food, while she watched helplessly. One day, Chelsea - who almost never barked, except at the mailman - let out a single calm, firm “woof!” when the kittens were eating her food. It worked - the kittens ran away, and let her eat in peace after that.

10. Despite weighing 40 or 50 pounds, Chelsea was convinced she was a lap dog, and both Kip and I indulged her in this conviction.

11. Chelsea wasn’t an especially graceful dog, except while jumping over branches. Then she’d tuck her legs tightly under her while doing an adorable show-dog jump.

12. Chelsea had terrible dog manners; she hated having her butt sniffed, and never cared to sniff other dogs’ rear ends. Which was odd, since any other disgusting thing in the universe she’d be glad to not only sniff but roll in.

13. Before Chelsea got too old, she loved chasing cats and squirrels in the park (although she never chased our cats; only stranger cats). The one and only time she caught a cat, she was utterly bewildered. When I caught up (she had taken off to chase the cat), she had the cat cornered and looked up at me with a totally innocent expression: What on earth do I do now?

14. Chelsea was something of an escape artist, finding gaps in fences or digging her way under them. She never felt guilty about this; she’d wander off on her own business for an hour or two and then return cheerfully to our front door.

15. Chelsea learned only one doggie trick. Once, on a lark, Emily Care and I taught Chelsea to shake hands, praising her enormously when she got it right. We taught her in a day, and were quite pleased with ourselves. But it turned out to be a “careful what you wish for” sort of deal; for months and months afterwards Chelsea would annoy everyone by constantly wanting to shake hands.

16. Although Chelsea liked her vet Rebecca Scott quite a lot (the only vet Chelsea ever liked, really), she still hated visiting the vet’s office, which she did fairly often in the last two years. During one of of her most recent visits, she tried to make a “great escape” - but the office had too many doors, and Chelsea got confused. So first she fled to the door to the operating room (which was even worse), next to the door to the closet. Rebecca found this adorable (and it was).

* * *

We’ve been worried about Chelsea for years; her ability to walk (among other functions) has been steadily degrading. This week Chelsea’s condition finally reached the “there is no other choice” level. I emailed Jenn and Kip to let them know, and they came over the night before to pet Chelsea goodbye. Our old friend Phil (my college roommate in 1987) also happens to be visiting this week, and although I was worried that would be too weird it turned out to feel right having him here.

So I indulged myself in spoiling Chelsea (her last meal was a half-pound burger and then two hot dogs) and spent yesterday hanging out with Chelsea on her favorite sofa. Our vet - the aforementioned Rebecca Scott, who genuinely liked Chelsea - is so incredibly nice that she came to our house, rather than making us come into her office.

(Larry, the very nice man from the body removal service, also came to the house. When I was calling services to have Chelsea’s body cremated, the choice came down to either “Dignified Pet Services” or - I swear this is true - “Critter Gitters.” I still can’t say “Critter Gitters” without giggling.) (By the way, Larry from Critter Gitters was perfectly nice; and they actually do a lot of good rescue work of live animals, so the name makes sense.)

So Chelsea was lying on her favorite sofa, partly on my lap, with the rest of us (Sarah, Charles, Bean and Phil) around her and petting her (which she found a bit odd, but didn’t mind) when Rebecca carefully injected the anesthetic into Chelsea’s thigh muscle. Abut ten minutes later, when Chelsea was totally asleep, Rebecca put a second injection into her vein, which stopped Chelsea’s heart in less than a minute. It was as nice as it could have been.

It was a long, bewildering journey for Chelsea, and now it’s ended. I miss her, but I’m sure we did the right thing for her, and that’s a comfort.

I know that some of Chelsea’s other friends sometimes read this blog; I’d love it if you’d leave any thoughts or Chelsea anecdotes in the comments (if you want to - don’t feel obligated).

[There were many lovely comments left at the time, which made me feel quite a bit better at the time. Unfortunately, all the comments from this period were lost at some point. :-( –Amp]