War Is Boring #10

Read it here.

New Toon: The Abortion Solution

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Only one cartoon this week. I've been busy working on a few different comics for magazines and getting multiple major projects lined up. Can't talk about them yet, but soon...

War Is Boring #9

Read it here.

Brush Fired

John Citrone, the Editor of the Alt Paper Folio Weekly, has been kicked off his guest slot on a morning show for making a joke about brush fires. From AAN:

...He usually said something funny about the previous segment. In this case, it was a segment about the fires, and Citrone, admittedly not knowing about their severity and wanting to have a little fun with an interstate rivalry, asked "in a Groucho Marx-y" way, "Do we really care if Georgia burns?"

He offered to apologize on air, but wasn't allowed on the show again. He wrote:

"At the time the remark was made, I heard only a portion of the report and assumed it was a minor forest fire. Unaware of the gravity of the situation, I put my giant foot in my mouth. But there is no excusing my remark."

Great business decision in not letting him back on air for the apology. Who knows, he may have made another joke that offended someone.

New Toon: It's Getting Better All The Time

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I linked to the quote at the beginning last week when I posted one of my comics and decided it needed a comic all its own.

Media Matters goes after comics

Media Matters has an item linked to on their front page about a cartoon by Bob Gorrell (they don't make note of the creator) posted at Townhall.com, a right-wing website that doesn't care what Media Matters thinks. The page urges readers to "TAKE ACTION!" against the posting of this comic and labeling it as part of "The Funnies."

The cartoon in question is here. Pretty stupid, I'm not sure what Gorrell is getting at. But nonetheless, is Townhall.com able to post a graphic of something they think is funny? Who really cares? The cartoon is posted on numerous websites including the AAEC. Will Media Matters call on the AAEC to remove the comic?

Many Liberal cartoons, including my own, demonize politicians. I plan on demonizing, ridiculing, and attacking them for as long as I live. Can conservatives do the same?

Media Matters is a good site when it points out errors and distortions of the press. But more and more I see them commenting on speech that's not incorrect, but just something they disagree with.

God Hates The World...the music video!

Speaking of Free Speech, one of the men who really gets people fired up (so to speak) is Fred Phelps and his anti-everything army of Christian protesters. The Westboro Baptist Church is celebrating the VA Tech massacre and has announced it intends to protest the funerals. Nice.

But put that disgusting thought aside and watch their awesome music video "God Hates the World." If you don't watch until the end, you'll miss the best part

Main Chorus: You'll eat your kids. Then the background child chorus: Yeah, You'll Eat 'em!

New Toon: Race Relation Rundown

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Introduction where, to avoid confusion, I let you know, that yes, I too think Don Imus' comments were sexist and racist and he should have apologized or better yet not said them. Now...

Don Imus has been doing what he does--did--for decades, no surprises there. If you think "nappy-headed hos" qualifies for a firing, we are in for a revolution on the airwaves--most hosts will be gone soon. If you think the FCC should regulate offensive speech, you're fucked up. Let me be clear, I don't really have a problem with people being fired for saying racist things if their employer deems it necessary. My problem is with these organized campaigns by people who don't even listen to the program but want to write the broadcaster (or whoever) and demand the person be fired. What kind of person does that sort of thing?

Liberals are going way over the top with the censorship campaign. On Alternet, Earl Ofari Hutchinson makes a "progressive" case for censorship that sounds like it was taken out of the Right-Wing Christian Fascist Playbook:

Now that Imus is officially out, the question is will Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the civil rights leaders, black professional and women's groups march on say a company such as Koch Records and demand that they pull Snoop Dogg's forthcoming album, The Big Squeeze?

They should, and that means ignoring Snoop's loud protest that he's no Don Imus. He's not, he's worse.

Why on Earth should a record company pull an album guaranteed to sell millions just because people who will never buy it anyway don't like it? Not that there should be any threshold, but if we set it at saying "bitches and hos" we'll have to take half the music out of the stores. Are we going to go after Elvis for gyrating his hips next?

While Imus's "nappy headed hos" slur has been plastered all over creation, the "B" "H," and expletive-laced rant that Snoop unleashed against Imus, has barely got a squint of mention.

His R rated words are so vile they can't be printed in adult company. But here's the gist of what he said. He gave veiled praise to the Rutgers women basketball players as ladies of distinction.

The words can't be printed? I hate a lot of the violence, glorifying of drug dealing, misogyny, and homophobia in rap. That's why I don't buy a lot of it that is like that. I've always thought of Snoop as more of a cartoon character anyway. Who doesn't like the classic album Doggystyle? The lyrics are atrocious, but it's a great album.

When Hutchinson laments song titles like "F----in is Good for U" he sounds like a Christian fanatic. He also denies the reality that Snoop is right: Fuckin is Good for U. And when Snoop sings:

Rollin down the street, smokin indo, sippin on gin and juice
Laid back...with my mind on my money and my money on my mind

It doesn't cause me to drive drunk and high while obsessing over my bank account. It causes me to bob my head at a fucking party.

Rap, Talk Radio, America, the fucking planet has race issues. They won't go away by banning it.

Finally, a very succinct comic by Ann Telnaes and a funny one by Mike Lester.

(click here to view)

Ann Telnaes New York Times Syndicate Apr 17, 2007 EditorialCartoonists.com

(click here to view)

Mike Lester Rome News Tribune Apr 17, 2007 EditorialCartoonists.com

Putting the New World Order in front of the cart

Everyone knows about the horrible massacre at VA Tech that happened yesterday. Before the dead bodies were even counted the pro and anti gun folks were ready to go into action. I'm sure the Christian Right is having a look in the murderer's house for Marylin Manson records and gay porn and Joe Lieberman will propose banning video games. All of these people will get duly criticized as this endless media coverage plays out over the next month or so.

One person we probably won't be hearing about is Alex Jones, the conspiracy-mongering opportunist. By early afternoon he concluded this was a government black-op--a "Columbine-style set-up" to push gun control and move towards the New World Order.

Early details about the horrific school shooting at Virginia Tech strongly indicate that these events represent a Columbine-style black-op that will be exploited in the coming days to push for mass gun control and further turning our schools into prisons.

No evidence is presented. Every thing is like this with Jones. He starts at a conclusion and works his way backwards.

What's the big deal, right? This man is a fringe conspiracy theorist and is ignored by the media. Yes, but his ever-increasing conspiracy empire bothers me as it seems to keep pulling more liberals and celebrities into its fold. This guy is the main man for the so-called 9/11 truth movement. I keep encountering liberals who think 9/11 was an inside job and tout Alex Jones as some sort of muckraker (I wonder what they think about his theory that Global Warming is a plot from the global bankers and NWO overlords).

Many fellow liberals feel this way. Get a few beers in them and they start talking about the 9/11 inside job. "There wasn't a plane crash in Pennsylvania." What?!

Many otherwise completely smart and rational people have fallen for this garbage, putting their distrust and hatred for this administration into a convenient narrative and not thinking too hard about the facts.

Maybe a few who read this will take another look at the paper thin claims of Alex Jones after his bullshit claims made today to exploit a tragedy and start thinking about real solutions to problems that actually exist.

Poster Design

Here is a poster I designed for Campus Progress and their Iraq Film Project. They are hosting screenings of various documentaries related to the Iraq war on college campuses all over. It is more of a template as the names change as the schools and movies do.

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I prefer this version that wasn't chosen for the final design

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Cartoonz 4 U

• August delivers a classic on Internet discourse
  
• Slowpoke on a Poverty of News
• Rall figures out where the money went
• Walt Handelsman just won the Pulitzer for Editorial Cartooning. you can see his portfolio here.
  

New Toon: Educational-Industrial Complex

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I'm going to set out for the post office in the morning to mail off my war tithing. Hopefully there won't be a huge line.

It's late and I don't feel like typing a whole lot, so check out www.warresisters.org for a breakdown of our insane military spending and just how much of your tax dollar goes to past, current, and future military spending.

Also, event reminder: I will be tabling with fellow political cartoonists at the APE con this weekend in San Francisco.

Error

Unfortunately, my last cover illustration for the OC Weekly had a huge error in it. The Weekly printed this in their latest paper:

I am writing you to air out my disappointment in your recent front-page illustration of “Blind Spot” and inmate John Chamberlain. The front-page art of this article clearly depicts a bloody white man with two distinctly obvious Mexican inmates in the background. In reading the article, it stated it was several white men who beat John to death. So why then do you have two Mexicans as the apparent assailants on the front cover? This is clearly a misleading front page and is just adding to a stereotypical belief that violent inmates are only of Latino and African-American ethnicity.

Ray
via e-mail

Editor’s note: As the preceding letter correctly states, Matt Bors’ cover illustration did not accurately depict the account of John Chamberlain’s death described in Nick Schou’s story. The illustrator and the Weekly regret the error.

So just for the record, this isn't my "nappy-headed ho's" moment. If you're interested in learning a bit more as to how it ended up this way, check my answer to a commenter in this blog post.

New Toon: Mythbuster McCain

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How much did the rugs McCain bought in that Baghdad market really cost? He spent a few bucks, but what were the costs of putting over a hundred soldiers in the area, providing for the media's accommodations and safety, black hawk helicopters, and sniper teams?

This was nothing more than a political stunt to salvage his tanking presidential aspirations--did his campaign pay for it or the American Taxpayer?

Cash Rules shirts now available in XL

Get 'em in the store.

New Toon: Baghdad Safety Tips

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McCain on his Baghdad Rug Buying Trip:

“I can understand why [the Army] would provide me with that security, but I can tell you that if it had been two months ago and I’d asked to do it, they would have said, ‘Under no circumstances whatsoever.’ I view that as a sign of progress”

The New York Times has an even better way of putting it:

Nearly two months into the new security push in Baghdad, there has been some success in reducing the number of death squad victims found crumpled in the streets each day.

A great measure of success by any standard.

Thursday: More McCain Madness!

Second Best Cartoonist Death Ever

Johnny Hart the creator of "B.C." died this weekend.

...Johnny Hart, who died Saturday at age 76 while working at his home in the nearby hamlet of Nineveh. “He had a stroke,” his wife, Bobby, said Sunday. “He died at his storyboard.”

First place goes to Charles Schulz:

Schulz died in Santa Rosa of a heart attack at 9:45 p.m. on February 12, 2000, at age 77. He was interred in Pleasant Hills Cemetery in Sebastopol. The last original strip ran the day after his death.

I can only hope to be able to regularly produce work that long, then croak with an unfinished comic on the table.

And I hope I'm not speaking too soon after a creator's death, but let's end "B.C." honorably and not have yet another strip by a deceased artist on the comic pages. No reruns or new artists, please. Just put in some new talent that can hopefully build a legacy like these artists.

New Toon: Pelosi Goes To Syria

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So Pelosi goes to Syria and the Right condemns her for associating with sponsors of terrorism. And for wearing a hijab. Drudge, Glen Beck, Gingrich, everybody is getting up in arms about not persuing an alternative foreign policy to the Bush Administration's public stance on Syria.

Oh, and the Bush Administration drops people off there to be tortured for a year or two before being released, but please don't mention it. That goes for all Democrats and reporters as well.

I've got multiple cartoons coming this week so do be checking back.

Break His Nose Geraldo!

This Video Of Bill O'Reilly losing him mind is making the rounds today. I've got to give props to Geraldo for fighting back to Bill's psychotic bullying. This guy is getting real close to completely losing it. Let me rephrase that. He has already lost it and we are getting real close to him strangling someone on video at a book signing and watching it on YouTube. The show has degenerated from a reactionary opinion show into an attack show against O'Reilly's growing enemies list; slightly liberal newspaper editors, Judges who don't execute all child molesters immediately, secularists, Rosie, etc.

War Is Boring #8

Read it here.

New Toon: Sugar Beet Pork To Nowhere

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It's pathetic and shameful that with the majority of the public saying this war shouldn't have been fought in the first place, the Democrats have to throw in a bunch of bribes in the form of millions in pork to get everyone to vote for a withdraw date from Iraq. And just for good measure, so no one could accuse them of being members of Al-Qaeda, they gave the war even more funding than Bush asked for.

The $24 million for Sugar Beet farmers is a real earmark to the bill. You can see a list of all the pork at Citizens Against Government Waste. My favorite is "$13 million for the Ewe Lamb Replacement and Retention Program" What the fuck?

The Right is naturally focusing on the pork so they don't have to mention the intractable quagmire we are in. But the Dems deserve the criticism--attaching a bunch of unrelated bullshit to bills should be banned. Is it too much to ask a law be passed on its own merits?

Non-Binding resolution? Thrown in the trash. Binding Timetable for withdraw? A certain veto. After this they'll move to the next step and defund the war, right? Heh.

Matt Taibbi's latest column:

You'll know that something real is going on in Washington when either a) the Democrats force the "antiwar conservatives" to actually cast a vote on whether or not to cut off spending for the war, or b) a dozen or so more Republicans cross the picket line to set up a possible override of a Bush veto. Until and unless one of those unlikely moments arrives, it sure looks like what we've got is one of those rare "good for both teams" baseball trades, an arranged standoff in which everybody gets to suck a little of that hot nourishing blood in the ballooning antiwar poll numbers.

New Illustration: Blind Spot

I illustrated the cover to last week's OC Weekly for a story entitled Blind Spot. John Chamberlain, who was in jail for child pornography charges, was brutally murdered by up to 20 prisoners. It was the first murder in an OC prison in 18 years and there is reason to believe the guards ordered a beating on him.

Child molesters and rapists don't usually get off lightly in prison. Murderers, Gangbangers, and armed robbers apparently feel morally superior to those people and beat the shit out them regularly. Chamberlain was not in prison for molesting any children himself, but having nude photos of children he somehow obtained.

Unfortunately I lost all my cover sketches so I can only show you the finals.

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And here are three spots detailing scenes in the story. In the first, he made a call to his ex-girlfriend, trying to get his public defender to get him in protective custody. He was feeling threatened by both the inmates and the guards. The second shows the guards in their little control tower at the center of the cell block. They can monitor everywhere except for a few blind spots where they took Chamberlain to die (hence the title of the article). The final one shows his beaten body and an inmate with a pencil. After they beat him for 20 minutes a few inmates pissed on him and one sodomized him with a pencil. nice crew of guys.

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New Toon: Jacko Bot

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Normally I would consider devoting a comic to Michael Jackson a waste of time, but the news that he is trying to build a 50-foot robot of himself that fires laser beams couldn't go unmentioned. I like the comic, but to make up for this transgression I have a second comic coming Thursday.

Killed Killed Cartoons

More on the new book Killed Cartoons from Kathleen Parker in the SF Gate:

Glaringly missing in a history of killed cartoons is one by Doug Marlette that sparked Muslim outrage a few years ago. I know it's shocking that Muslims were outraged, but try to stay focused.

The cartoon depicted a jihadi driving a Ryder truck with a nuclear bomb in back with the caption: What Would Muhammad Drive?

Wallis says he fought unsuccessfully for the cartoon's inclusion, but "I know why it didn't run and you know why it didn't run." He did note with admiration that Norton was the only publishing house of 15 he approached that had the "gumption" to touch the book.

What brave American publishers we have. It's not as if the book was going to be distributed at Border's in Sadr City or Kabul--it's for an American Audience. I can see why the cartoon is offensive to some...and that's the whole point of the book. Why is Norton so interested in abiding by Sharia law?

Many doubtless would agree with Norton's decision, figuring that the possibility of mortal threat is a pretty good reason not to publish a controversial cartoon. But, in fact, it is the very reason to publish.

Not to be gratuitously in your face, but to be purposefully in your face. To make clear that free speech -- even drawn opinion -- not only trumps special interests, but also requires a bold and sometimes insensitive defense.

Instead, by capitulating to intimidation (even if we call it sensitivity), we embolden the forces that have no interest in freedom. We telegraph to Islamist totalitarians, whose ultimate goal is subjugation of the West, that death threats and riots will silence us into submission -- the literal meaning of "Islam."

In the country that helped midwife free speech into civilization, that may be the definition of irresponsible.

30 Goddamn Dicks

I went to Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Festival this weekend. I recommend going if it's coming to your neck of the woods. Go check out this George Washington rap. It might have been the funniest thing there.

This Is Pretty Much Insane

From the HuffPost:

GENEVA — Islamic countries pushed through a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday urging a global prohibition on the public defamation of religion _ a response largely to the furor last year over caricatures published in a Danish newspaper of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

The statement proposed by the Organization of Islamic Conference addressed what it called a "campaign" against Muslim minorities and the Islamic religion around the world since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The resolution, which was opposed by a number of other non-Muslim countries, "expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations."

Human rights violations? Nothing in Koran that would condone that! And it certainly hasn't inspired terrorism or violence, so please don't fabricate things. The resolution didn't mention any other religions except Islam. Presumably because all those other religions are make believe and Islam is the One True Religion! Why do I have the feeling that the Right will play this as Islamofacism while the Left will just ignore it? I wonder what the result would be if predominantly Christian nations led by Rick Santorum and Joe Ratzinger urged a ban on the defamation of religion?

"The problem of religious intolerance is worldwide and not limited to certain religions," said Brigitta Maria Siefker-Eberle of Germany, speaking on behalf of the 27-nation European Union.

Tell 'em Germany! Come back with a broader worldwide ban on free speech that everyone can agree on!