Wednesday is Cartoon day! (Swallow)
| June 25th, 2003
No new cartoon this week, I’m afraid… but here’s a favorite of mine from the archives.
I’m just too busy with Other Projects this week. Some of which I’ve already mentioned on this blog, others of which I’ll describe in the future.
One thing that may be of interest to Portlanders… my work will be appearing in a Portland gallery, Pushdot Studio, in July, alongside work by six other Portland cartoonists. I’m quite excited… some of the other cartoonists are close friends of mine, others are folks whom I’ve never met but whose work I’ve admired for years. The opening’s on July third; if you’re in Portland, please come see us. Jenn Lee is organizing the show, and her blog has the details.
June 25th, 2003 at 7:18 pm
So Wrong, Yet So Right
This comment was written by Blargblog.Barry Deutsch has put a sick little spin on corrupting the youth for this Wednesday’s cartoon. Not that I’m complaining.
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June 25th, 2003 at 7:40 pm
Hm. The exhibitor list is impressive, even beyond the proprietor of this site. ::grin::
I am quite tempted to go.
This comment was written by ben.Report this comment to the moderators
June 25th, 2003 at 8:59 pm
Congrats one and all.
This comment was written by Phil.Report this comment to the moderators
June 25th, 2003 at 10:22 pm
Can I have your autograph ? ;)
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 12:24 am
OMG!!!! Is that the great Dr. Phil actually reading and posting to this blog?! How did we get so blessed? :-p
This comment was written by bean.Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 10:45 am
I link to this at my site, but I wanted to comment here that this is one disturbing mindfuck of a cartoon, Barry. Which from me is a very high compliment. ;)
Technical question: Did you use your brushpen on this one, too? I ask because, online anyway, the cartoon looks like it is drawn with grease pencil, charcoal and nib. Or else I’m just raving.
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 12:03 pm
Y’all be sure to note this is from August of 2000–back when a majority of folks still thought Bush was a centrist candidate.
Boy, we learned our lesson on that one, didn’t we.
This comment was written by --k..Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 1:13 pm
Speak for yourself. I couldn’t imagine anyone with two brain cells to rub together ever uttering “Bush” and “Centrist” in the same sentence. Which is why I couldn’t get that cushy gig at NPR. :p
I was, however, foolish enough to believe that if he got elected, the Democrats would snap out of their collective coma long enough to effectively rein in the little fucker. Are we even ? :p
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 2:16 pm
I’m not speaking for myself, Amy. I’m highlighting the astounding bit of Conventional Wisdom Barry snarks on in this strip. (See the 3rd panel.) Just thought I’d remind the folks hereabouts that there was indeed a time when Bush was presented as a centrist candidate with a straight face. (Why, he STILL is. Imagine that.)
–I need to work on my SARCASM tags or something. They aren’t coming through.
This comment was written by --k..Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 3:08 pm
I hadn’t had seen this cartoon before, Amp, but I think it’s brilliant and beautiful in a very scary, very creepy sort of way. It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in awhile, so congrats there.
This comment was written by PinkDreamPoppies.Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 3:26 pm
*I need to work on my SARCASM tags or something. They aren’t coming through.*
That’s because you’re too cool for emoticons, kip. Striking a pose has its price, y’know. ;)
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 3:31 pm
Perhaps I am misreading the cartoon. The sweaty white guy does not seem to be parodying the view that the two parties are the same. He seems to be promoting it. Presumably the baby really needs a nice warm bottle of Ralph Nader. Because we all know how well that worked out. This would be a devastating cartoon if the sweaty guy was Ralph and the third panel read “The major candidates are identical. A vote for me is a vote for truth.” or some similar sentiment.
This comment was written by JDC.Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 4:31 pm
Yawn.
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 5:24 pm
Indeed we do. An insufficient number of us were willing to turn our backs on Gore and vote Nader, so he didn’t get his 5% and the Greens were marginally delayed in turning into a major party. Since we know now that even had we voted Nader, Gore would still have been defeated by a vote of 5-4 the only place it mattered, all of us Gore voters threw our votes away on a hopeless candidate, rather than contributing to building the Greens.
But then, the reckless irresponsibility of Gore voters such as myself, and how it interefered with building a new progressive party, has already been hashed and rehashed to death. This cartoon is much more interesting in the current context as a reminder of the vileness of the ‘electability’ arguments that anyone supporting Kucinich is harming the Democrats and doing their best to re-elect Bush (and yes I really have seen such arguments).
Charles
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 5:56 pm
Charles is even better than coffee. Really good coffee. ;)
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 6:29 pm
Bravo, Charles! Well put. And Kucinich is within the Democratic party so most of the anti-Green arguments don’t apply.
This comment was written by Al-Muhajabah.Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 3:49 am
Kevin, many thanks for the props (here and on your site). I don’t remember exactly what I drew this with. I used either Pigma Micron markers, or a hunt pen nib, or both. (And then the flat gray tone was added later in Photoshop). I’m positive I didn’t use grease pencil or charcoal, however.
JDC, perhaps you do misread the cartoon. But even if you’re a Nadar-hater, surely the 2000 election results support the cartoon’s main premise - that there’s something wrong with how we run Democracy in the USA. I mean, post-November-2000, is there any Democrat who can honestly say they see nothing wrong with how we run our elections?
Bravo, Charles.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 6:39 am
No argument that there are substantial problems with the American electoal system. Certainly, under any just electoral system (or even a just interpretation of our current election laws), Gore should have won the 2000 election. Ralph Nader or not.
I do have trouble divining the “main premise” of the cartoon. (This may well be symptomatic of how differences in politics affect the ability to “get” a cartoon as was discussed in the Israeli wall cartoon earlier. Maybe I do get it but simply don’t like it.)
I’m not a fan but I don’t hate Nader. (I voted for him in NY as part of one of those vote-swapping schemes. I would not have voted for him if I thought he could win. I supported the Green Party as an idea rather than the notion of Ralph being Commander in Chief.) I do find some of his statements and actions strange. And I think running a candidate against Wellstone was idiotic.
I don’t believe in the “it’ll be so bad people will come to us next time” school of thought. The same was said of Reagan. And it took an operator like Clinton to regain the White House.
I think that the 2000 election offered a clear choice between Gore and Bush. Voting for Nader because you believe in the Green Party is fine. Voting for Nader because you believe there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is ignorant.
I agree with Charles that “electability” is an insufficient factor in supporting a candidate. Especially in primary elections. Vote your conscience, your heart. I’m a big fan of Kucinich and would love to see him get the nomination. But if he doesn’t and, say, Kerry does, I’ll vote for Kerry. (Please don’t ask me what I’ll do if the nominee is Lieberman. I get chills just thinking about it.)
But in the 2000 general election, I think it was more important to defeat Bush than to be ideologically pure. I suppose we could accuse each other of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good (or less-bad if you prefer in Gore’s case).
And thanks for the “Yawn” Amy S. Your trenchant analysis helped me come to a fuller appreciation of the issues at hand.
This comment was written by JDC.Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 7:03 am
JDC, there are these things on this blog called archives. Try them. I haven’t got much time for you today, and I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve gone over this with someone. I could probably scoop up that villa in France with no trouble at all.
I’m fucking sick of listening to people wail about how bad it was to say there were no differences between the two parties. Last I heard, hype was an integral part of the campaign process. I doubt Nader really believed that there was, literally, no difference between the two parties. Neither did I. However, the differences have become more and more negligible in the last thirty years. Meanwhile, Gore crowed that “he would fight for you.” Which was hype. The man couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. Meanwhile, Bush said he was compassionate. It was hype. The man’s compassion could fit inside a peapod with room left over for two subway tokens. So what ? Only an idiot believes, literally, every last thing a candidate says on the trail.
And don’t even get me started on the colossial joke that was “vote swapping.” Yikes.
If you look at the record of the Dems in the past two years, Nader’s assertion wasn’t as much hype as it first appeared to be. At the national level, the Dems have appeased where they should have attacked most of the time. No one held a gun to their heads and ordered them to rubber stamp every bloodthirsty, hateful piece of shit Shrub lobbed at them. But they did. Maybe you’d like to take five minutes of your time to get worked up about that, instead of about some hype from a three-year-old campaign trail.
As Emma said on her blog, Nader did not invent the notion that Democrats and Republicans were alike. The Democrats, including Clinton the Slug, have sold themselves by aping the Reps for years. If they want people to understand the differences between them and the Reps, they damn well better do a better job of showing it.
I assume that when Lieberman gets the nod, you’ll focus on whatever sliver of policy appears to differentiate him from Shrub and pull the lever. Better you than me.
This comment was written by Amy S..Enjoy.
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June 27th, 2003 at 7:49 am
Amy S.,
I said “Voting for Nader because you believe in the Green Party is fine. Voting for Nader because you believe there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is ignorant.”
Do you really disagree? Perhaps I was unclear. I take no issue with anyone who pulled the lever (or punched the chad) for Nader out of a conviction that that was how to build a viable third party or honestly wanted Nader to be president. (I wouldn’t agree with that conviction but that’s a separate issue.) However, voting for Nader to send a message to the Democrats strikes me as stupid.
Are you saying that “the major parties are the same” rhetoric is OK because everybody lies? If everybody does lie, why have a third party? If Nader didn’t sincerely believe it, why was he running like that? Personal glory? He certainly wasn’t going to win.
Vote swapping *is* a joke. But it let me (in some minescule way) support the idea of a third party without facing the consequences of a cannibalized vote. There’d be no difference in outcome if I’d been a sincere Nader voter. He got my vote either way.
And of course I’m underwhelmed by Democratic performance over the last 2 years. It is almost entirely craven. And I think it hurts them immensely. As for what I should be outraged about in the here and now, the present wasn’t the topic of the cartoon.
I honestly don’t know what I’d do if faced with a Lieberman candidacy. He’s abhorent. I’ve described myself as an anyone-but-Bush voter. But Lieberman? Uggghh . . . I’m counting on not having to make that choice. Which may be chickenshit but there it is. What do Greens do then? The faction that doesn’t want to run a presidential candidate in an effort to defeat Bush would be nauseated.
This comment was written by JDC.Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 7:55 am
Y’all be sure to note this is from August of 2000–back when a majority of folks still thought Bush was a centrist candidate.
Whuuups. Sorry. That’s what I get for reading quickly before going to bed. I overlooked the “no new cartoon” notice.
Anyway, blah blah blah Nader blah blah blah Gore blah blah blah stolen election blah blah blah DLC blah blah blah spoiler blah blah blah I so don’t care about that argument anymore.
There’s a new election season approaching with a fair share of progressives on the ballot: Dean, Kucinich, Moseley-Braun, Sharpton. And they are actually Democrats worth voting for. So let’s pay attention to that.
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 8:23 am
*”I take no issue with anyone who pulled the lever (or punched the chad) for Nader out of a conviction that that was how to build a viable third party or honestly wanted Nader to be president. (I wouldn’t agree with that conviction but that’s a separate issue.) However, voting for Nader to send a message to the Democrats strikes me as stupid.”*
Well, as they said in “Fiddler On The Roof,” that’s YOUR headache, Tevye. I could care less why people vote Green as long as they do. Besides, it seems awfully simplistic of you to assume that people did it for any ONE reason. It implies that every ex-Dem (or ex-nonvoter who came out of hiding) was just a-ok with everything until Nader made his statement about the two parties. As if this were that dumbass Cold War film “Telefon” and we were all subliminally programmed to respond to that single “triggering” statement and go psychotically off the rails at the ringing of a phone.
Like I said: Check the archives. It’s all there.
*Are you saying that “the major parties are the same” rhetoric is OK because everybody lies? If everybody does lie, why have a third party? If Nader didn’t sincerely believe it, why was he running like that? Personal glory? He certainly wasn’t going to win.*
It’s not a lie, for pity’s sake. It’s a simplified comment that idiots take out of context to dismiss Greens out of hand. Nader could’ve been more nuanced about it, and Democrats could have acknowledged that he had a point. And you know perfectly well that if Green detractors hadn’t latched onto that, they would’ve latched on to something else. Please.
*”Vote swapping *is* a joke. But it let me (in some miniscule way) support the idea of a third party without facing the consequences of a cannibalized vote. There’d be no difference in outcome if I’d been a sincere Nader voter. He got my vote either way.”*
Oh, c’mon !! You swapped a freaking vote ONLINE with a TOTAL STRANGER whom, for all you know, might very well have been a Republican themselves. Hence, you may be one of the people whose Nader vote literally WAS a Bush vote. How does that feel ? And Heaven forbid that you should have actively campaigned for Nader. Charles is right. The 5% would have helped and Gore, incompetent twit that he is, might have still lost. You wanted to have your cake and eat it, too. Fine. I didn’t. I think it’s bullshit.
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 8:26 am
(Amy scribbles a check to the BlargBlog PAC, with the caveat that it better not be spent on beer and Dixie Chick DVDs.)
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 10:32 am
….it better not be spent on beer and Dixie Chick DVDs.
How about a crib for the baby’s room?
A real crib, that is; not an MTV crib. Tho decking out the baby’s room all gangsta-stylin’ would be, y’know….dope.
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 10:36 am
Amy S.,
Well, I think you’ve made an erroneous assumption about my erroneous assumptions. Your obviously a bigger supporter of the Green Party than I am, especially at the national level. My views on the motivations of Green voters are limited to what I said. Despite what you infer, I’m not implying anything. There’s nothing there about Telefon. (Thanks for that memory, btw. I like the sleeper agent mom in the bathrobe blowing up the industrial plant. And that hilarious rattlesnake scene.)
Yes, I was mostly tweaking you about the “lying” thing. To me, your rhetoric seems to outpace your logic. I don’t blame the Greens for Gore’s defeat because the laws were subverted. I do see merit in a third party (and have worked on behalf of progressive third party candidates in local elections back in Wisconisn). I don’t think Nader is a particularly good candidate.
Finally, I think you miss the point completely about my particular vote-swap. I pulled the lever for Nader in New York, a state Gore was definitely going to win. Even if the person I swapped with was Katherine Harris, it doesn’t matter to the outcome. Either my swapee voted as they promissed in which case Gore got a needed vote and or they didn’t. In either case, Gore won the only state I was eligible to vote in. No harm from my actions and a vote for the Greens. You should be thrilled by that vote at least.
Having cake and eating it is trivial. Eating it and still having it on the other hand . . .
This comment was written by JDC.Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 10:53 am
*”…Either my swapee voted as they promised in which case Gore got a needed vote and or they didn’t. In either case, Gore won the only state I was eligible to vote in. No harm from my actions and a vote for the Greens. You should be thrilled by that vote at least.”*
Riiight. Your medal’s in the mail. Look, it’s nice that you voted for Nader. But I still think that the voter-swap business was at best, a dodge in lieu of confronting a serious problem, and at worst a sham that Republicans may well have used to manipulate a fractured block of unhappy voters.
If you can’t understand why voter-swap might have eased some folks’ consciences but, at the end of the day, was a half-hearted way of dealing with a serious problem, I guess I’m not alone in having a problem with the “rhetoric vs. logic” thing. My logic is different than yours, but it works for me. And I’m not the only one. Besides most people who trot out the “logic” challenge are just trying to mask a personal swipe as something else. “The Call To Logic” should be nearly as automatic an ender of discussion as Godwin’s Law is supposed to be.
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 10:55 am
Kevin, roll up those droopy pants. They’re predicting rain, and besides you could trip and fall down and break a drawing hand or something. And if I see one dread on that future infant’s head, you are soooo ratted out to CPS. :p
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 11:44 am
Amy S.,
Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant when you said that perhaps I was one of those people “whose Nader vote literally WAS a Bush vote.” You apprently meant that it was “a dodge in lieu of confronting a serious problem, and at worst a sham that Republicans may well have used to manipulate a fractured block of unhappy voters.”
I’m being unpleasant because I think you are being unpleasant. Which is real grown up of me. But I am tired of the motives you ascribe to me with no basis.
I can understand why you would be less than thrilled with the people who wanted to vote Nader but not really so swapped a Gore vote for useless Nader vote elsewhere. But that wasn’t me. “As they said in ‘Fiddler On The Roof,’ that’s YOUR headache, Tevye.” They have impurity of purpose. Me, I may or may not have got what I wanted (getting a Gore vote in a close state) but I didn’t lose anything (New York).
I don’t think criticizing logic is akin to invoking Godwin. (Though I’m impressed by the chutzpah of trying to invoke it when it isn’t merited.) Our reasoning and goals can be (and obviously are) different. But if you have a goal and reasons, things either logically follow from them or they do not. Wishing doesn’t make it so.
I supported Gore. I also support, somewhat half-heartedly, the Green Party generally. Those precepts led me to a course of action that resulted in my voting for Nader and Gore’s winning the state. It doesn’t matter, to one with my precepts, if it was a “half-hearted way of dealing with a serious problem” because the more serious problem was defeaating Bush.
What would the Republicans gain by being behind the vote swapping? If there was no vote swapping, all the Nader voteers in close states would have stayed Nader votes. This (I assume you agree) hurts Gore more than it hurts Bush. The Gore voters that would have voted Nader (like myself) may or may not do so anyway. Maybe if all the Gore voters that agreed to vote Nader voted Nader and all the Nader voters kept their votes for Nader, that would have been enough to get to 5%. The 5% milestone obviously strengthens the Green Party. A strengthened Green Party hurts the Democrats more than the Republicans (at least in the short term I again think you would agree). If that is what you think the Republican goal was, a matching fund eligible Green Party, I take back the logic comments. Though again your real beef would be with the namby pamby Nader voters in close states rather than me. An interesting Prisoner’s Dilemma-esque problem.
This comment was written by JDC.Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 3:25 pm
*”I don’t think criticizing logic is akin to invoking Godwin. (Though I’m impressed by the chutzpah of trying to invoke it when it isn’t merited.) Our reasoning and goals can be (and obviously are) different. But if you have a goal and reasons, things either logically follow from them or they do not. Wishing doesn’t make it so.”*
Back at you, Buddy. I stand by my opinion that the reasoning that brought me to my viewpoint is every bit as “logical” as yours. You don’t like that ? How sad. I must have been out for coffee when you were appointed God of All Logic. Stuff it.
*”Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant when you said that perhaps I was one of those people ‘whose Nader vote literally WAS a Bush vote.’ You apprently meant that it was ‘a dodge in lieu of confronting a serious problem, and at worst a sham that Republicans may well have used to manipulate a fractured block of unhappy voters.’
Sigh. Yes, that’s right. As for my variation on the hoary old cliche’ from the Dem loyalists about how voting for Nader supposedly equalled voting for Bush. Here it is one more time: My point is that you have absolutely no guarantee that the person who agreed to vote for a certain candidate would do so. You made an arrangement over the Internet with someone you didn’t know from a hole in the wall. They were not legally bound in any way to do what you expected them to. They could have done what you asked. Or they could have voted for Bush. Or they could have voted Socialist, Libertarian, or written in their own grandmother. You have no way of knowing. In a country where election fraud is as old as the hills, though maybe not until 2000 so spectacularly over-the-top in scope and impact, (and in which any number of parties and interests have had a hand in various frauds and scams) I’m amazed at how many people were willing to go for this vote-swap business.
NOW is it clear ?
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 29th, 2003 at 4:52 pm
I confess, it has been too long since I have graced these pages, but I simply could not lay dormant any longer after reading this.
I applaud this piece for a number of reasons, among them the simplicity and clarity of the symbols, the “creepy”, serious tone, and the anonymity of the speaker. I think that last one (unintended though it might have been) is integral because it leaves open the possibility that anyone could have said those words. Come to think of it, various people from all walks of life probably have. Of course, the familiarity of your chosen messages and metaphors does not make them any less sobering this time, but such repetition is quite necessary in ths case. Just in case no one else has mentioned it, I found that your choice of sex for the speaker to be noteworthy. I don’t think that a woman would be more likely to “feed” a baby such lies, but I do tend to think she’d be more likely to feed a baby in general, which is the only reason I noticed it.
Fear not, Alastics, I shall return.
This comment was written by Lucius DeMarco.Report this comment to the moderators