SlowpokeBlog

The second panel of this cartoon is an oblique reference to the sleazy ads run against Vietnam vet and triple-amputee Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia in 2002, in which Osama's face appears just before his. Coincidentally, I saw Max Cleland speak today at a rally for senatorial candidate Jim Webb, who is running against George "macaca" Allen. A hush fell over the cheering U.Va crowd as Webb wheeled Cleland onto the stage. Cleland delivered a spirited introduction for Webb, noting that both he and Webb (as well as vets Kerry and McCain) have suffered outlandish smears at the hands of the GOP. Webb wrapped up his speech with a nice line about how these character assassins need to find a third-world dictator to work for.

I was going to take pictures, but my digital camera conveniently developed a glitch just beforehand. Sorry.

The third panel of this week's strip refers to the disgusting race-baiting campaign being run by Bob Corker against Harold Ford in Tennessee in which, among other things, a blonde bimbo claims she met Ford (who is black) at a Playboy party. Talking Points Memo has been covering the ads extensively.

Kindly spare me any arguments that "both sides do it." One side does it on a much grander and nastier scale than the other. It is not partisan to point that out. It is far more objective to say the Republicans engage in dirty smear politics more than the Democrats do than it is to say "both sides do it." If the Democrats ever tried to engage in Republican-style character assassination, they would be ridiculed by the mainstream media so much you'd never hear the end of it. It's all part of the double standard commonly known as IOKIYAR -- It's OK If You're a Republican. These ads are destroying our democracy more than any terrorist, and they need to be tightly regulated or banned altogether. I'm serious. You can't wear political advertising into a polling place, yet these ads are legal? Give me a break!

On a lighter note, after learning of my reference to Rob Halford, Mr. Slowpoke dug out his copy of Judas Priest -- Unleashed in the East for inspiration while I drew the cartoon. Mr. Slowpoke, whose musical taste is admirably far-reaching, tried to convince me it was a great album. I will admit to liking the Judas Priest song "Livin' After Midnight."

To my amusement, my "Museum of Lost Formats" cartoon is featured in the latest edition of RLG Diginews, a newsletter about digital preservation for libraries and museums. It appears at the end of the article, following the line:

...prompt action using the manufacturer’s own migration tools will almost certainly produce better results (at least, until the device in Figure 8 becomes a reality).

Figure 8 being the cartoon, which features a machine that can read 96 different formats.

So the voting machines in Charlottesville, Alexandria, and Falls Church have a programming bug that causes Jim Webb's surname to not be displayed on the summary page of the ballot. Allen's name remains intact, though his party affiliation will not appear. Unbelievable.

[Update: I've heard there will be signage to address the situation. So I'm less worried about this than other possible shenanigans.]

After I drew my cartoon about George Allen, I decided on a lark to offer the original art to S.R. Sidarth, the University of Virginia student whom Allen addressed as "macaca," since we both live in Charlottesville. I figured he might appreciate it since he's featured in it, and could think of no better home for that particular work. Sidarth graciously agreed to my request for a photo, and the moment of cartoon changing hands has been immortalized above. I'm going to go on the official record and state he's cool.

What's not cool is the fact that the race between Allen and Webb is still excruciatingly close. I confess I'm somewhat baffled that the same state that elected Democratic governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine back-to-back could fall again for this old-school racist goofball, especially given his recent comments and the Republicans' calamitous leadership at the national level. I'll be embarrassed for Virginia if he wins.

As you may have inferred, this cartoon is about John McCain. The dude is a real salesman; he's managed to convince the punditry he's a "moderate" while maintaining a very consistent, hard-right voting record. According to one academic study, he has the third most right-wing voting record in Congress, and he gets an 83% overall rating from the American Conservative Union. Not very moderate, especially given the rightward shift of the so-called "center" in American politics.

And please. The man is hardly a font of "straight talk." Here's McCain on the Military Commissions Act:

I can assure you I would never agree to anything that I believe could allow torture. I promise you that.

Straight Talk Express, comin' atcha!

My money is on McCain to be the GOP's 2008 nominee. I think he'll be tough to beat, especially if the Dem insiders make Hillary the nominee. What freakin' solar system are these buttbrains from? Her base can't stand her pandering, and we all know how Joe Wingnut feels. Now that Mark Warner has dropped out, I'll have to pin my hopes on Edwards... or Obama, maybe.

I'm back from my trip to DC, where I had a rocking good time at the Small Press Expo and the book signing at Politics & Prose. Got to clink glasses with my cartoonist chums, meet some cool new people, and eat a stroopwafel, which is now my new favorite food. A special shout-out to Warren and his cats for their hospitality.

I'd been kicking around the idea of tolerance wars for a few weeks, and the wingnut rationalizations for the Foley scandal -- that the "culture of tolerance" is to blame -- made it suddenly timely. A quote from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council:

When we hold up tolerance and diversity as the guideposts for public life, this is what you end up getting. You get congressmen chasing 16-year-olds down the halls of Congress. It’s a shame.

Ah yes. Once you start arguing against bigotry, it's only a matter of time before you wind up instant messaging jailbait-aged underlings about their "cute bouncing butts."

The cartoon points out the silliness of demonizing "tolerance" by showing it as a cause of unlikely historical conflicts. It crossed my mind that some of these peoples' views are already so extreme that they might not see the strip as satire so much as an accurate reflection of their views of the lib'ruls. It can be hard to parody views that are already a parody.

A hat tip to Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly, which was one of the first sites -- if not the first -- to note the erroneous identification of Mark Foley as a Democrat on the O'Reilly Factor. I suppose this shouldn't surprise me given the near-constant stream of fabrications put forth by Fox News, yet this one was so overt, it gave me pause. It's like that moment in 1984, during Hate Week, when the government announces that the enemy is no longer Eurasia, but Eastasia, and the masses accept the change unquestioningly. I don't think O'Reilly fooled anyone, but if the Republicans could get away with convincing Americans that Democrats have been in charge the past several years, I think they might try.

I was amused (and appalled) by a letter in the latest issue of the C-VILLE Weekly. A reader, Pam Sellers, had written in a few weeks ago, suggesting Sidarth was to blame for Allen's "macaca" remark, since his presence at Allen's rally provoked the senator. Someone else wrote in last week, criticizing her for blaming the victim. Now Ms. Sellers responds with this classic bit of wingnuttery:

I think that Daniel Stern missed the point of my original letter [“Macaca defined”, Mailbag, September 19]. If I thought for half a second that Mr. Sidarth were genuinely offended by Senator Allen’s comments, I might take a dimmer view of the Senator’s off-the-cuff remarks. However, I have a hard time believing that Sidarth went home and cried himself to sleep that night. More likely, he was overjoyed to have fulfilled his mission by obtaining a new 30-second sound bite for the Webb campaign. Pretending to be offended is utterly PC, and is, in itself, offensive.

Get it? Because Allen called Sidarth a monkey, and Sidarth happened to capture it on video, Sidarth is being offensive! Not only that, he's being -- gasp! -- PC! Yes, merely being the victim of a racial epithet now makes you "politically correct" (and it was a racial epithet; no more of this "liberals claim it was..." BS like I saw in the NY Times last week). I've said it before and I'll say it again: anyone who uses the term "PC" plays right into the hands of Limbaughian regressives like this.

Okay, I'll stop blogging YouTube videos after this. But this Gary Glitter clip is too perfect.

This Slade video makes me happy. The mirrored nun habit is one of the better rock'n roll accessories I've seen.

The NY Times Magazine had a lengthy article about Howard Dean's "50 States" strategy, an effort to make the Democratic party a national party again, as opposed to narrowly focusing on a few close races in battleground states. Beltway Dems don't like it, and blame Dean for not fundraising as much as his predecessor Terry McAuliffe. To which I say:

1. Shut up, you blubbering losers. Your short-sighted approach to winning elections has utterly failed. Dean is absolutely doing the right thing by thinking long-term and reaching out to those of us in red states.

2. Maybe the reason people aren't donating money to the DNC has less to do with Howard Dean than the fact that they're tired of Democratic politicians selling out their moderate base again and again in order to kiss extremist Republican ass. They're thinking, "Why give money to a party that doesn't give back?" As much as I want to support Dean's efforts, as a donor I'd be more inclined to give to real Democrats individually.

It's true: McDonald's was giving away toy Hummers in children's Happy Meals not long ago. Not surprisingly, while doing some Google image searches, I came across a photo of Happy Meal-eating children of elephantine proportions who will likely only fit into a Hummer-sized vehicle when they reach adulthood. So the cross-marketing strategy may well pay off. (The site link to the convex tots is broken, but a cached version comes up in these search results.)

Likely doofus response to this week's cartoon, imagined by the cartoonist: "Oh, come on! Kids love toy trucks. I played with dump trucks and monster trucks as a kid, and I never went out and bought one. Stop being so politically correct and let kids be kids!"

The cartoonist's reply to likely doofus response: I know. I rocked the Tonka too. But times are different now. Much, much different. And if you can't see what's wrong with marketing Hummers to kids while we're staring down the barrel of possibly the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced, then you may as well give away Joe Camel dolls in Happy Meals too. Why, to oppose such a thing would make you politically correct, wouldn't it?

While McDonald's was marketing Hummer toys to boys, girls had the choice of Polly Pocket dolls "with interchangeable accessories and colorful cases that are inspired by PollyWorld, where the coolest amusement park meets the ultimate shopping promenade." Woo! Way to destroy the planet and reinforce those gender roles! (Via McDonalds.com, where the as-yet unannounced Hummer toys were billed as a BIG surprise).

Golden arches parody taken from RonaldMcHummer.com

The New Republic has a good sendup of Allen's recent flailings on the subject of his Jewish heritage, such as his insistence that "I still had a ham sandwich for lunch, and my mother made great pork chops."

I've been asked to clarify my feelings further, since I've been falsely accused of being embarrassed about my so-called Jewish heritage. Bubkes. I am absolutely bursting with pride over having distant, distant connections to Jews that have been wildly exaggerated. But this doesn't change who I am. That's why I still had a ham sandwich for lunch and my mother still made great pork chops for Shabbes. Breakfast was the usual side of bacon drizzled with pork lard, while, for lunch, Mom cooked us a whole roast suckling pig that we washed down with a vat of its mother's milk while blasting Götterdämmerung.

More.

I'll be at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD on Oct. 13 & 14, at the Cartoonists With Attitude booth. CWA is a collective of alternative political and social-commentary cartoonists featured in the Attitude series edited by Ted Rall.

Also, I'll be signing books along with with Ted Rall, Mikhaela Reid, Matt Bors, Masheka Wood, August Pollak, Ben Smith, and Brian McFadden on Oct. 12 at 7pm at the legendary Politics & Prose in DC. Stop by and say hi if you're in the area.