Cartoon: Hush, Woman, The Strawfeminist Is Speaking

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Ampersand

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I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of arguing with someone about politics, and it becomes obvious that they’re not actually responding to, or truly listening to, anything you’re saying; they’re just using what you say as cues for the already formed arguments they’re eager to use.

Obviously, that experience inspired this cartoon. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve seen people criticize or mock the slogan “believe women” by pretending it’s a slogan about courtroom standards and getting rid of due process – which it obviously is not. I wouldn’t say no feminist has ever used it that way – there are, after all, millions of feminists – but it’s definitely not the common usage, and pretending it is is just so intellectually dishonest and I GET SO FRUSTRATED AND

…And hence, this cartoon. I hope you like it!

I’m not sure I’ve ever used the word “hence” in a sentence before.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows the same thing: A man and woman walking through a hilly park – not side by side, but with him ten feet or so ahead of her. There are shrubs and trees and little pedestrian paths through the grassy hills. She is wearing big round glasses (“big round glasses: the cartoonist’s best friend”), shorts, and a  black tank top. He has a beard, and is wearing a bowling shirt with two thick vertical stripes, and black pants.

PANEL 1

GLASSES is talking and making an “I’m just explaining things here” gesture, with her palms held out in front of her. BEARDY is looking grumpy as he talks back.

GLASSES: “Believe women” means that if a woman says she’s been raped, we shouldn’t reflexively dismiss her story.

BEARDY: So courts should just assume men are guilty?

PANEL 2

Glasses looks a little annoyed, putting one hand on her hip. Beardy is smirking.

GLASSES: I’m not talking about courtrooms. What if a friend tells you she’s been raped by a man?

BEARDY: So feminists hate men! Funny, that’s just what I thought.

PANEL 3

Glasses looks even grumpier; Beardo is raising his voice a bit.

GLASSES: I don’t hate men. But I have to keep in mind that any man could potentially be a rapist.

BEARDY: So you admit you think all men are rapists!

PANEL 4

Glasses is now shouting, her hands balled into fists. Beardo looks positively cheerful.

GLASSES: Are you listening to me at all?!?

BEARDY: No, thanks, I already ate.

Posted in Anti-feminists and their pals, Cartooning & comics, Feminism, Feminism, sexism, etc | 24 Comments

Cartoon: Transgenderism Is Coming! Run Away!

Posted on September 12, 2020 by Ampersand

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Hi, folks!

This week ((Actually, this was written and posted to Patreon back in July.)) I’m moving out of the studio I’ve been in for… 12 years? Longer? (Update: ten years.) A very long time. It’s been an amazing space to work in, but the building owner has new uses in mind. And all good things end eventually.

Me and some friends already have a new studio rented, but I’ve put off actually packing and moving until the very last moment. (My lease on the old space runs out this Friday!).

So I lettered this cartoon, and am typing this message to you, from an oddly empty room, with most of the furniture gone and piles of packed cardboard boxes around. It’s a bit surreal, but moving always is.

So anyway… This cartoon! The art is by Becky Hawkins, who did an amazing job. I just love the variety of expressions and little movements she put in there. (It was also Becky’s idea to have it be a cable TV yapping show of some sort; in my original sketch, it was just three people talking on zoom.)

This cartoon is about a specific aspect of the so-called “cancel culture” issue – pronouns and the supposedly apocalyptic results of getting a pronoun wrong. Many of my friends and acquaintances are transgender in various ways, and – being a big dork – I’ve more than once gotten people’s pronouns wrong. It’s something I’m especially liable to do if I haven’t known the person long, or if I have known the person long but they’ve only recently announced their pronoun preference.

Nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a thousand, there’s really nothing more to it than saying “oops, sorry” and moving on. But that’s not how right-wingers – most of whom have never known any out transgendered people outside of Twitter – tell it. Their interest – both emotional and, in the case of media personalities, financial – lies in demonizing transgender people as much as possible. And they egg each other on to greater extremes. (“Transgenderism is the new fascism” is something I actually saw somebody say!)

So this cartoon is an attempt to illustrate – and make fun of – that dynamic.

The original last line of this cartoon was “Thanks! So, about lunch…,” but that line rang really untrue in the age of Covid, so I changed it to them talking about a YouTube video.

With Portland so much in the news this month, I’ve more than once found myself reassuring out of state friends and relatives that I’m perfectly safe and things are actually very quiet here (everything you see on the news takes place in approximately six blocks of downtown). It reminded me of this cartoon Becky and I created almost a year ago. But looking at the last panel of that cartoon actually makes me sad, because that entire style of living has been cancelled, and who knows for how long, by Covid.

(A very, VERY minor silver lining: I do feel that my visual vocabulary for showing people talking over the internet has really been expanded by Covid.)

 

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels, plus an additional tiny “kicker” panel underneath the cartoon.

The first three panels all show some sort of news or talk show, in which the screen is divided “zoom” style to show three pundits who are talking to each other from separate locations. There’s a large window, for whomever is currently speaking, and then two smaller windows with the other two pundits.

The three are: A white man with a beard and mustache, in front of a cityscape background; a white woman with brown hair and a blue blouse, in front of red-white-and-blue stripes; and a white woman with blonde hair and an off-white blouse, with a framed something on the wall and a houseplant behind her. I will call these characters CITYSCAPE, STRIPES, and HOUSEPLANT.

At the bottom of the largest window, a chyron – which is the word for captions at the bottom of news programs – displays changing messages. It is presumably scrolling, so not all of each message fits on screen at once.

PANEL 1

Cityscape looks angry; the other two look grimly concerned.

CITYSCAPE: These “transgenders” jump down your throat if you don’t use their “preferred pronoun.” That’s why I’m not friends with any.

CHYRON: …ew study proves liberals are stupid…

PANEL 2

Houseplant, in the main window, is making airquotes. Stripes is screaming, her fists raised in the air. Cityscape has his arms crossed and looks serious.

HOUSEPLANT: I don’t know any “gender nonbinaries,” but I heard that anyone who uses the “wrong” pronoun is fired and blacklisted!

STRIPES: Transgenderism is the new fascism!

CHYRON: …God hates who you whate, says sour…

PANEL 3

Stripes, now in the main window, looks very frightened and wide-eyed, like she’s about to cry. In the smaller windows, Cityscape looks sad and Houseplant is shaking her head with her arms akimbo.

STRIPES: Can you imagine the Hell of actually associating with these people? Watching every word… Living in constant fear… Knowing that the slightest misstep means you’re cancelled! Forever!

CHYRON: Scientist: Watching Fox cures cance…

PANEL 4

This panel shows a person with curly hair in a low ponytail and a purple shirt holding up a tablet. On the tablet’s screen we can see the other person in the conversation, who has glasses and bright pink hair. Ponytail looks concerned, Pinkhair is smiling and looks cheery.

PINKHAIR: By the way, you said “he.” I use “they.”

PONYTAIL: Oops! Thanks, I’ll try not to do that again.

PINKHAIR: Thanks! Hey, did you see that turtle video?

TINY KICKER PANEL UNDER THE CARTOON

An angry short-haired white man is yelling and pointing at Barry, who looks taken aback.

ANGRY MAN: This cartoon is bull! I “misgender” transgenders for fun on twitter all the time, and lots of them get angry!

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Transsexual and Transgender related issues | 5 Comments

Cartoon: Are you GENUINELY Poor?

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Ampersand

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This cartoon is based on a cliche I’ve heard so many times – that poor people aren’t “really” poor, and so don’t deserve help, if they have a phone/big TV/smartphone/microwave etc. Basically, any consumer durable. (“Consumer durables are a category of consumer products that do not have to be purchased frequently because they last for an extended period of time (typically more than three years”)). It’s not enough to be food insecure, in danger of eviction, and not knowing where the money for utility bills will come from – if you’re not suffering in every single way, this thinking goes, you’re not really poor and don’t really deserve help.

For example, the Heritage Foundation grouched that “the typical poor household, as defined by the government, has a car and air conditioning, two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR.”

(Color televisions! I love that they specify “color.” How does the Heritage Foundation think poor people could even find the black and white TVs that they presumably think are all poor people should have? I guess they could use a time machine, except probably Heritage wouldn’t approve of poor people owning that, either.)

It’s particularly ridiculous to hear people complaining about cars and phones – two items that are actual necessities for many people who’d like to be part of society. And they’re often necessities for being able to find a job, or to find a better job.

Hence, this cartoon.

The most interesting challenge about drawing this cartoon was the need for change without changing: To see these two characters on three different days, but with their personalities, social roles and circumstances unchanged. So each of them had to have three sets of clothes, and I needed to draw what looked like three slightly different parts of the same general area. My collaborator Frank Young, who did the colors, did a really bang-up job on making the panels look like different times of day.

In hindsight, I think I could have done it better – really, there’s no reason all three locations had to be on the same sidewalk – and hopefully I’ll take that and do better next time this comes up. But I’m still pleased with how this came out.

The figures were fun to draw. The villain is a perfect Barry character – super exaggerated expressions and a huge mouth. The other character was more of a challenge, since he had to be downbeat and restrained without being boring to look at.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows two men: A not-wealthy looking man with shaggy hair and some stubble, and a bald man in glasses, wearing a business suit and tie. Each panel shows them at a sidewalk with grass growing in the background.

PANEL 1

Shaggy is wearing a wrinkled collared shirt and jeans. Necktie is wearing a gray suit with a tie with a dot pattern.

It’s bright daytime. Shaggy, with his back turned to Necktie, is looking at and poking a smartphone, and, in the helpful way people so often do in the first panel of my cartoons, talking aloud to himself. Necktie is turning to look at, and yell at, Shaggy.

SHAGGY: I can’t find a job and I’m out of money… Time to google “food stamps.”

NECKTIE: Food stamps are for people who are genuinely poor. If you were poor, you wouldn’t own a smartphone, would you?

PANEL 2

A caption says “one week later.”

From the light, it appears to be early evening. Shaggy is wearing a plaid shirt and Black pants, and has a backpack; Necktie is wearing a pinstripe suit and a tie with horizontal stripes.

Shaggy is looking worried and has a hand on his chest; Necktie is sternly talking to, and pointing at, Shaggy.

SHAGGY: I sold my phone, but now I’m out of money again.

NECKTIE: So sell your car. No one who owns a car is poor.

PANEL 3

A caption says “one month later.”

The same two men, on a similar patch of sidewalk. Shaggy is wearing sweatpants with a stripe down the side, and a hole in one knee, and a tee shirt. Necktie is wearing a dark blue suit, a black shirt, and a light-colored necktie.

Shaggy is sitting on the curb, slumping, looking down both literally and metaphorically. Necktie, talking to Shaggy, looks very cheerful.

SHAGGY: Now I’ve got no money for food, no phone for job hunting, and no car to get to a job!

NECKTIE: Excellent! Now you’re genuinely poor!

PANEL 4

The same scene, a moment later. Shaggy, looking hopeful, is looking up at Necktie. Necktie folds his arms and grins even more.

SHAGGY: So now you’re okay with me getting food stamps?

NECKTIE: Nope!

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Economics and the like | 41 Comments

Open Thread and Link Farm, Mailboxes Edition

Posted on August 15, 2020 by Ampersand

  1. How to Test Every American for COVID-19, Every Day – The Atlantic
  2. U.S. Immigration Law’s Unconstitutional Double Standards – The Atlantic
  3. Three Words. 70 Cases. The Tragic History of ‘I Can’t Breathe.’ – The New York Times
  4. Three Cheers for Socialism! | Commonweal Magazine
    “Chiefly, what [Americans] have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions.”
  5. Why Black Voters Prefer Establishment Candidates Over Liberal Alternatives | FiveThirtyEight
    Established relationships, and being risk adverse. The effect seems somewhat smaller if the liberal alternative is a credible Black candidate.
  6. A Better Remedy for Cancel Culture – Persuasion
    That “better remedy” being ending (or at least limiting) at-will employment. Some very interesting comments, as well.
  7. Lackawanna woman died as she lived: hating Tom Brady | Buffalo Bills News | NFL | buffalonews.com
  8. The Black Officer Who Detained George Floyd Had Pledged to Fix the Police – The New York Times And an alternate link.
  9. The gruesome, untold story of Eva Peron’s lobotomy – BBC Future
    Interesting, but less than certain.
  10. New Work by Gary Larson | TheFarSide.com
  11. Words for cutting: Why we need to stop abusing “the tone argument”
    Written five years ago and still terribly relevant today.
  12. Teens in Argentina are leading the charge to eliminate gender in language – The Washington Post and an alternate link.
  13. The Unstrung Power of Elaine Stritch in “Original Cast Album: Company” | The New Yorker
  14. Why Are Hospitals Censoring Doctors and Nurses? – The Atlantic
  15. Why It Was Easier to Be Skinny in the 1980s – The Atlantic
  16. Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine
  17. Abigail Nussbaum — How to do Garak/Bashir in Canon DS9

Posted in Link farms | 92 Comments

Cartoon: How Politicians “Lead”

Posted on August 4, 2020 by Ampersand

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So yesterday someone was telling me that “the Democrats have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the left on this” – “this” being health care, in this case, but you could say the same thing about any number of issues. I thought “hey, I did a cartoon about that years ago” and searched around, and couldn’t find it on any of my webpages.

I think I simply forgot to post this one. So here it is!

As I said, it applies to many issues, but the issue I had in mind when drawing this was same-sex marriage — one of many issues in which the Democratic base got there years before the politicians did.

People forget that Joe Biden began his career as a pro-life Democrat — he even supported a constitutional amendment to undo Roe v Wade. But over time, the base became too solidly pro-choice for a pro-life Democrat to be a viable presidential candidate. So Biden changed. And he continues to change, such has his newfound opposition to the Hyde amendment.

I don’t say this to criticize Biden. It’s good that he changed. We want our politicians to move to the left!

If elected, Biden will not be left enough for my tastes. But at the same time, his administration will probably support policies well to the left of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton’s administrations. Because we dragged him there.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each of the panels shows the same location: A abstract, mostly empty space. But there’s a white line dividing the space in two. On the left side of the space are three activist-looking people – a woman wearing a sleeveless turtleneck and glasses, a man wearing a hoodie and a knit hat, and a woman with a short spiky hairdo.

On the right of the line is a handsome man in his 40s or 50s, with neatly combed hair, wearing black pants and a business shirt with a necktie. He basically looks like a politician. Also to the right of the line is some sort of pole sticking straight up from the ground (I was thinking it was a lamppost when I drew it, but since we’re only seeing the bottom six or seven feet of it, we don’t see the “lamp” part in this cartoon).

PANEL 1

The Politician is clinging to the lamppost with both hands. A rope is tied around his ankles, and Glasses, Knit Cap, and Spiky are pulling hard on the rope, as if they’re in a tough game of “tug of war,” trying to pull the Politician to the left. They’re pulling so hard that the politician’s legs and body are horizontal, and he’s a couple of feet off the ground. The three activists have expressions of effort and determination; the Politician is wailing.

GLASSES: C’mon!

KNIT CAP: We’re going this way!

POLITICIAN: Can’t we be patient?

PANEL 2

As the three continue to pull on the, the politician has lost his grip on the lamppost. His fingernails are leaving scrapes on the ground as he struggles not to be pulled left.

GLASSES: Why is he being so stubborn?

SPIKY: Heave!

POLITICIAN: Nooooooo! It’s not the time yet! It’s not safe!

PANEL 3

The Politician has been pulled to the left of the line and is looking around fearfully. The three activists are panting, bending over or sitting on the ground or leaning against the side of the panel, clearly exhausted.

PANEL 4

The politician has stood up and is taking a prideful pose, The activists are reacting to what he says with surprise.

POLITICIAN: I’m proud my leadership got us over the line!

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Elections and politics | 41 Comments

Cartoon: Terfluffle in the Supermarket

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Ampersand

Help me make more of these cartoons at my Patreon! A $1 or $2 pledge really matters.

This cartoon was written by me and drawn by my most frequent collaborator, Becky Hawkins. Becky also came up with the title. Thanks Becky!

(For those of you who don’t know, “TERF” is short for “Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist.”)

Here’s something I can say for certain: When they notice this cartoon, I’ll be insulted by some TERFs, not in a “I think your cartoon sucks” way but in a “you’re a fat p.o.s. who should die” way. Of all the groups I’ve insulted in my cartoons, only the racist antisemites are more consistently hateful than the TERFs. And, of course, TERFs are kind to me compared to how they treat trans women.

It a subculture – much like the Men’s Right’s subculture – in which people sit in a bubble and egg each other on into becoming ever more bigoted. To such an extent that all of the horrible things the TERF in our cartoon says, are things I’ve seen TERFs say in real life.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels.

PANEL 1

Two women are talking in a supermarket. The first, a woman with stylish glasses and her blonde hair pulled into a low bun, and wearing a reddish orange dress with matching shoes, is grinning with a smug expression and holding up her phone to show the other woman.

The second woman has short brown hair, worn in a style called a “quiff”:  “short hair that’s left longer on top and dramatically swept to the side.” She’s wearing jeans, brown boots, an open red button-up shirt over a white tee, and four piercings in her ear.

The two are waiting on line by a counter at a supermarket; we can see a glassed-in counter (like a Supermarket deli) behind them, with ad pictures on the wall showing a sub sandwich, a big joint of meat with slices carved off, and a salad.

GLASSES: As a feminist, I look for small ways to fight misogyny every day!

BOOTS: What a great idea!

PANEL 2

A close up of Glasses, holding up her phone in one hand, and raising her other hand’s forefinger to make a point, still smiling widely.

GLASSES: Like, here on FaceBook I told a trans “woman” that he‘s just a man in a dress!

GLASSES: And on Twitter I said that all transgenders rape women by appropriating women’s bodies!

PANEL 3

Another close up of Glasses, reading her own screen and laughing big, but with a rather mean expression.

GLASSES: And here, I said transgender “women” are to women what Twinkies are to food!

GLASSES (very large): HA!

PANEL 4

In a shot similar to panel 1’s shot, we see Glasses continuing to smile and talk to Boots. Boots, with a horrified expression, has turned away from Glasses and is now holding her own smartphone, which she’s frenetically typing on with a forefinger.

GLASSES: So what’s a small way you’re fighting misogyny?

BOOTS: Telling everyone I’ve ever met to block you.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Transsexual and Transgender related issues | 38 Comments

Cartoon: You’re So Brave, I’d Rather Be Dead

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Ampersand

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I’m not disabled, so the first time I heard a disabled person say that ablebodied people repeatedly tell them “I’d rather be dead!,” it boggled my mind. I actually wondered if that disabled person could be an unlucky outlier, someone who had run into an extraordinarily large number of ablebodied jerks through sheer chance. (Every statistical group has clusters and outliers, right?)

But then I saw it again, online, in a forum for disabled people, and I read the comments – person after person saying “oh, yeah, that happens to me, I’m sick of it.” And then I saw a similar thread on Twitter.

And then I finally thought, “hey, this should be a political cartoon.” (I’m sometimes not the swiftest.)

Once I had that thought, the cartoon was very easy to write. This general structure – a series of repetitive events showing how stigma or prejudice cumulatively wears down its targets – is one I’ve done several times before, including in the cartoon I posted here yesterday.

This doesn’t bother me; many cartoonists I admire have themes they return to again and again. The trick is finding new angles for exploring the same theme.

* * *

Embarrassingly, exactly as I wrote the words “new angles,” I remembered a cartoon I did four years ago that’s almost exactly like this one, about white people’s habit of touching Black people’s hair. What I wrote back then, about that cartoon, also applies to this one:

Part of what I wanted to get at, with this cartoon, is the cumulative nature of these small indignities (aka microaggressions). It’s simple for the character, in panel 1, to repel the request with at least an appearance of good cheer.  But when it comes again and again and again and again and again, it’s not so easy. Things add up; pressure builds. What if it were just one person might be “wow, that person was really awkward, what was up with that?” becomes a pattern of small assaults to one’s dignity.

If I had remembered that four-years-old cartoon, I would have tried to find a different angle for this one.

So am I sorry I did this one? I admit, I’m not. If some readers (especially disabled readers) enjoy seeing the “I’d rather be dead” cliche made fun of in a cartoon, and feel that the cartoon at least partly reflects their own life, then for me that completely justifies making this cartoon.

It’s interesting (to me at least) to compare the art of the two cartoons. The script is very similar, but the layout and the drawing style are radically different. I definitely put a lot more work into drawing this one.

 

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has six panels. The first five panel shows a woman with blue hair with a thin pink streak, thin oval glasses, and arms that end slightly above where her elbows would be. In each panel she appears, she’s in a different setting talking to a different person. I’m going to call her GLASSES.

PANEL 1

A caption at the top of the panel says “Monday.” A brown-haired woman, hands clutched together in front of her chin, is anxiously staring at Glasses. Glasses, who was walking and is wearing a backpack, turns back to look at the woman.

ANXIOUS: You’re so brave. I’d rather die than live like that!

GLASSES: Um… Thank you?

PANEL 2

A caption says “Tuesday.” In a grocery store, a muscular man in a sleeveless tee, who is pushing a grocery cart, talks loudly at Glasses. He is between Glasses and the shelf, and Glasses is gesturing towards the shelf behind him, looking a little annoyed.

MUSCLES: I can’t imagine being you. I’d rather be dead.

GLASSES: Dude, I just want some Pop Tarts.

PANEL 3

A caption says “Wednesday.” Glasses is seating in the… what do you call those things? The sort of built-in stadium seating some college lecture halls have, with a series of long curved benches and desks, each one on a higher level as they get further from the front of the room, so everyone has a good view of the professor. Glasses has a laptop open on the desk in front of her. We can see a couple of bored looking students in the row behind Glasses.  Next to Glasses is a man wearing a jacket, one of those “image of a necktie” tee shirts, with his black hair in a long ponytail and an expression of extreme disgust. Glasses looks very annoyed as she responds to him.

PONYTAIL: I couldn’t stand not wiping my own butt. I’d die first!

GLASSES: Shockingly, butt wiping isn’t actually the pinnacle of human existence.

PANEL 4

A caption says “Thursday.” Glasses walks down a city sidewalk, a cartoon cloud indicating grumpiness floating above her. Behind her, a man wearing sandals and pants with torn knees, and carrying a shopping bag, grins as he talks at her; she doesn’t even bother turning back to look.

SANDALS: It’s inspiring that you haven’t committed suicide.

PANEL 5

A caption says “Friday.” An older couple, a man and a woman, are looking at Glasses; the man, wide-eyed, is speaking, but is cut off by Glasses yelling at him, leaning forward angrily.

MAN: I’d rather be dead than-

GLASSES: I don’t want to die. I have a great life! Except for ablebodied people telling me my life isn’t worth living!

PANEL 6

The “camera” pulls back to show the man and woman now standing by themselves; Glasses, it is implied, has stomped off and left the scene. The man and woman look annoyed as they look in the direction Glasses went.

MAN: Those people are so rude!

WOMAN: Obviously it’s the disability that makes her so angry.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Disability Issues, Disabled Rights & Issues | 3 Comments

Cartoon: Capitalism/Socialism

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Ampersand

If you like these cartoons, help me make more at my Patreon! Lots of $1 or $2 pledges means I can make a living.

Today’s comic is written by me and drawn by Jake Richmond, creator of Modest Medusa. Jake is a longtime friend and collaborator of mine – he colored my “Hereville” graphic novels – but this is the first time he’s drawn a comic of mine.

Jake’s a terrific cartoonist. The major reason I asked him to draw this strip rather than another is because I’ve always liked how Jake draws water.

This strip was obviously inspired by our current situation. The amount that Congress has allotted to stimulus is frankly not nearly enough to address the size of the economic crisis – but it’s still much larger than what most American politicians would ever support, and even the Republicans voted for it. (For round one, at least. I suspect they’ll give in and vote for round two, but who knows?) When things get dire, it turns out a safety net isn’t optional.

To my patrons: As always, thank you for supporting these cartoons.

As this crisis goes on, I keep being blown away by how lucky I am. I live in a nice house with eight housemates, so I have plenty of company, and none of us are ill. I have a job I love that I can keep doing through the crisis. We have food and even toilet paper.

And I have the pleasure of knowing that my work means enough to folks that they’re willing to support it. I am awed to be so lucky.

Extra thanks, this time, to Claire Nolan (who is also thanked in the sidebar of the cartoon). I hope you like this one, Claire! If you’d like to be emailed a print-quality high-res copy of this cartoon, signed to you by me and by Jake, please get in touch.

(Would any other folks like to be thanked in the sidebar too? Upgrade your pledge to $10 or more and it will happen!)

 

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. All four panels show a man in a one-person rowboat. He’s rowing  The man is wearing an “Uncle Sam” style red-white-and-blue top hat.

PANEL 1

The man – let’s call him Uncle Sam – is rowing and talking cheerfully. He’s rowing facing backwards (as people often do in rowboats), so he can’t see that his boat is heading straight towards a large rock jutting above the water.

SAM: Capitalism capitalism capitalism capitalism…

PANEL 2

The boat hits the rock, and Sam is thrown over the side of the boat. His hat flies up a little off his head, and we can see that he’s bald.

SAM: Capitali- AHH!

PANEL 3

The man, looking panicked, scrambles to get back into the boat, yelling as he struggles, the water splashing around him. His hat floats on the water nearby.

SAM: SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM!

PANEL 4

Sam is now back in the rowboat, looking happy and relieved. All is calm. He has put the hat, dripping with water, back on his head.

SAM: Where was I…? Oh yes… Capitalism capitalism…

Posted in Capitalism, Cartooning & comics, Class, poverty, labor, & related issues, Economics and the like | 6 Comments

Cartoon: It Weighs You Down

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Ampersand

This cartoon is another collaboration with Becky Hawkins.

If you like these cartoons, help there by more by pledging $1 or $2 at my patreon! Every bit helps.

This month, two cartoons ended up being completed at more or less the same time – this one, beautifully painted by Becky Hawkins, and one drawn by me (with colors by Frank Young) which I’ll post tomorrow. It’s been years since I first jotted down the idea for this cartoon; the other cartoon was thought of just a few weeks ago.

But looking at them now, I realize they both have the same theme, which is the way that stigma’s effects pile up over time. You’ll see what I mean when I post the other strip tomorrow.

I’m currently in an online debate about fat acceptance with Helen Pluckrose (I owe her a response). While researching that, I read a couple of articles about the ways stigma hurts people’s health, both mentally and physically. Not only is anti-fat stigma failing to make anyone thinner or healthier; it’s actually making us less healthy and making us die sooner.

* * *

I first sketched this one out a few years ago. I liked the unusual format (I’ve done the alternating-text-and-image format only once before) and the playing around with word balloons, but somehow I never got around to drawing it.

This month, I showed Becky several not-yet-drawn cartoons that I thought she’d be a good match for, and she picked out this one. And I’m so glad she did! Her handpainted colors lend the piece a visual moodiness that I don’t think I could have matched.

So, for comparison’s sake, here’s what I gave Becky to work with.

As  you can see, virtually every visual detail in the finished strip was made up by Becky. I did suggest to her that there could be painted, cloudy dark panels instead of the flat black panels in my sketch, and holy crap did she ever deliver. I love the way this cartoon looks.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has nine panels, in three rows of three panels each. Five of the panels have black and gray paint forming cloudy, dark abstract shapes, while the other four have non-abstract drawings. The two types of panels alternate, creating a checkerboard pattern. The abstract panels get darker as the strip goes on, until by the last panel it’s mostly black. Each of the abstract panels has a caption in plain white lettering.

PANEL 1

A cloudy field of gray paint, with a caption near the top, which says: AFTER

PANEL 2

We’re on an airplane; people are finding their seats. A fat man with glasses and a red-orange polo shirt is seated on the aisle; a thin woman with a scarf, pushing a roll along suitcase, has paused next to his seat and turned to speak to the person behind her in the aisle.

SCARF WOMAN: Oh God, do I have to sit next to him?

PANEL 3

A cloudy field of gray paint, with a caption near the middle. The lettering is a little diagonal, rather than straight, and the second word is lower than the first. It says: A WHILE

PANEL 4

A laundromat. The same fat man we saw on the plane, is in the foreground, looking up blankly in the middle of folding laundry. Mounted high on the wall behind him, next to a row of driers, is a TV that’s showing some sort of talk show, with three people seated on a couch facing the camera.

Clinging to the fat man’s back is the woman’s word balloon from the airplane panel.

Person On TV: Let’s face it, fat people choose to be like that!

PANEL 5

A cloudy field of gray and some black paint, with a caption a bit below the middle. The lettering is a bit more diagonal than in panel 3, and the second word is sunk much lower than the first. It says: IT WEIGHS

PANEL 6

We see the fat man again, in a coffee shop holding a mug, looking up with an unhappy expression. Behind his back, we can see the people sitting at the next table over. One of them, a thin man wearing a sleeveless shirt and jogging shorts, is grinning and holding up a finger as he makes a point.

There are now two word balloons clinging to the fat man’s back, the woman’s word balloon from the airplane panel, and the TV’s word balloon from the laundromat panel.

JOGGING SHORTS MAN:  …put the donuts down and get off the sofa now and then!

PANEL 7

A cloudy field, about equally split between black and gray. The caption is now at a 45 degree angle and is near the bottom of the panel. It says: YOU

PANEL 8

The same fat man, identifiable because of his red-orange shirt, is lying limp on the floor, arms spread out, possibly unconscious; we can recognize him from his body shape and red-orange shirt.

His face is covered by a pile of word balloons on his trunk, formed by all the word balloons from the previous three panels we’ve seen him in – “put the donuts down” and “fat people choose to  be like that” and “have to sit next to him?” — topped off by a new balloon spoken by an off-panel voice.

OFF PANEL VOICE: You’d look so much better if you’d lose some weight.

PANEL 9

A cloudy field of black and gray paint, with the black paint dominating. The caption is diagonal and so far down in the panel that parts of the letters disappear below the bottom of the cartoon. We can still see that it says: DOWN

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Fat, fat and more fat | 13 Comments

Open Thread and Link Farm, Happy Times Edition

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Ampersand

  1. Who Was Elijah McClain? What to Know About His Death After a Police Encounter – The New York Times (And an alternate link.)
    The three police officers claimed that all their body cameras fell off (what a coincidence!). They also claimed that five foot six inch, 140 pound Elijah McClain had “incredible, crazy strength,” and all three of them had to get on top of him.
  2. Opinion | America Didn’t Give Up on Covid-19. Republicans Did. – The New York Times (And an alternate link.)
    “Covid-19 is like climate change: It isn’t the kind of menace the party wants to acknowledge. It’s not that the right is averse to fearmongering. But it doesn’t want you to fear impersonal threats that require an effective policy response…”
  3. The origin of “African American” | Arts & Culture | Yale Alumni Magazine
    The author found the term “African American” used in 1782. There’s debate over if the writer was actually African-American, as they claimed to be.
  4. What the AI Behind AlphaGo Can Teach Us About Being Human | WIRED
    A story about the first computer AI to beat a champion human Go player.
  5. The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of “jaywalking” – Vox
    Includes a gorgeous vintage anti-jaywalking editorial cartoon.
  6. The Princess Bride Letters
    In the novel The Princess Bride, there’s a missing scene, with an address to write if you’d like to get the missing scene mailed to you. I always intended to do that, and never did. But here’s the response(s) I would have received had I mailed them.
  7. It Can Happen Here | by Cass R. Sunstein | The New York Review of Books
    A discussion of a few books about life for ordinary Germans under Hitler. “Decades afterward, memoirists referred to their ‘happy times’ in the Hitler Youth, focusing not on ideology but on hiking trips, camaraderie, and summer camps.”
  8. The (First) Time Nazis Marched in Portland
    In 1936 – “As the cruiser arrived, Portlanders lined the waterfront, not to protest the already-publicized human rights atrocities underway in Germany, but to wave hankies and exchange “heil Hitler” salutes with the Emden crew…”
  9. I Am the Dad Who Installed Lava in the Rumpus Room Floor – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
  10. Addressing The Claims In JK Rowling’s Justification For Transphobia
    Lengthy and thorough.
  11. Anti-trans group admits bathroom predator myth is made up
  12. A faster response could have prevented most U.S. Covid-19 deaths – STAT
  13. West Side Story, but 12 minutes long and Cher plays every character – YouTube
    I’m honestly impressed that, at the point in her career where Cher could do virtually anything and get it on TV, she chose this.
  14. Free Speech and Marginalized People – Liberal Currents
    “. Suppression of speech is not directed most intensely at controversial speech. It’s directed at speech by people who are controversial—that is, at marginalized people who lack power, and who are therefore easily silenced and ignored.”
  15. » 30 Rock Landed on Us
    A short essay about how 30 Rock approached race.
  16. My Family Saw a Police Car Hit a Kid on Halloween. Then I Learned How NYPD Impunity Works. — ProPublica
    Although this story is less tragic, like the Elijah McClain story, it shows how freely police lie, and how little fear of consequence many police have.
  17. New research explores how conservative media misinformation may have intensified coronavirus – The Washington Post.
    The three studies are suggestive, but of course correlation is not causation.
  18. Spray Their Names Aims to Paint Murals That Honor Lives Lost and Amplify Marginalized Voices – 303 Magazine
    Both images in this link farm came from this article. The first image is a mural of Breonna Taylor painted by Detour, Hiero Veiga and Just. The second image is a mural of Elijah McClain painted by Detour and Hiero Veiga. Both photos are by Brittany Werges.

Posted in Link farms | 155 Comments