Responses to my Thanksgiving post, part 1

I guess I'm not the only one sitting at her computer on a Saturday afternoon, as I already have a few responses to my post about the Thanksgiving holiday. Basically, I feel that time off from work and family togetherness are A Good Thing, but this whole happy Pilgrims and Indians mythology is pretty disgusting--and it just seems weird to celebrate what for many is a Day of Mourning.

Stacy S. mainly agrees with me but wanted to note that she certainly doesn't celebrate the holiday elementary-school-textbook style:

i'm not disputing anything you've said, but i do have to add that thanksgiving as we know it today is the result of Abraham Lincoln's call for a day of thanksgiving; he was thankful that he could successfully prosecute a war which ended slavery in all but four US states... I guess that's what I celebrate...

meanwhile, my closest friend since high school is pure Omaha (yes, that's a real native-american tribe) and quite irritated with the pestiferous proliferation of the Wannabe Tribe, particularly those who are 1/fraction Cherokee, yet obviously more Daimler-Chrysler than anything else...

This brings to mind 1998's televised Dialogue on Race with President Bill Clinton, in which Clinton earnestly told American Indian writer Sherman Alexie that his grandmother was 1/4 Cherokee...

But to return to responses, Philip Pangrac wrote to remind me that most people couldn't care less about the happy Pilgrims and Indians myth anyway:

In your little rant on Thanksgiving, you seem to neglect the fact that white America only celebrates the holiday for a few reasons:

1. Four day weekend.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I'm against four-day weekends, as I'm all for workers getting more days off. And I know some people celebrate Harvest or other types of seasonal holidays. But I really feel like we could have a better reason to have the extra time off than celebrating a holiday with such an awful mythology surrounding it. For starters, we might stop making some schoolchildren dress up in paper fringe and hand bundles of maize to other schoolchildren attired in black and white paper hats (I don't plan to have kids for some years yet but when I do I certainly won't allow them to wear construction paper feathers and say "How"). For many, the meeting between English colonists and the Wampanoag Indians is the beginning of years of broken treaties and genocide, not really something to make cute little classroom displays about.

2. Mark the start of the X-Mas buying season.

3. Football.

4. Family get together.

I am all in favor of family get-togethers, and I realize that for many, Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations are the only time they really have an excuse to get everyone together. I personally really enjoyed spending this weekend (which also happens to be the start of Hanukah) with my parents, sibling, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. But when I close my eyes and visions of drug-store Pilgrims and Indians cut-outs start dancing before my eyes, I get nauseous.

5. Gives sitcoms and comics strips a simple theme for the one week.

I have very mixed feelings about this one, as I am generally sick of cartoons about turkeys getting their heads chopped off. But it did give me something to blog about, and Ruben Bolling and Lalo Alcaraz something to cartoon about, so I guess every cloud has a silver lining.

But to allow Philip to finish his letter:

No one really treats the whole "Native Americans and Pilgrims getting along" crap seriously. If you're going to attack the holiday from the Native American standpoint, you should also attack it with the fact that no one views it with the actual intent.

Point duly noted.

Anyway, I don't mean to berate people for wanting to get together with their loved ones and eat pumpkin pie. It just bothers me that the mainstream media presents Columbus Day and Thanksgiving as fun holidays, and ignores the fact that for millions of Americans Thanksgiving is more of a funeral than a party. This might seem like a dour way of looking at the world, but honestly, I'm as happy as anyone waiting for George W. Bush to start World War III could be...

OK, seriously now. I am a happy person, I laugh a lot, and my blood pressure is just fine. I say this because I got a letter some time back warning me that being so bitter and political and angry all the time would make my life miserable (the letter-writer had apparently made himself happier by getting a bit more apathetic). Trust me, it's not true. I am certainly pretty angry pretty much of the time (hence "The Boiling Point"), but I like to think I have a sense of humor about it. I really like reading news articles and drawing cartoons. Also, I take plenty of breaks from Boiling Over With Rage to knit, sew, and read Philip K. Dick novels.

Responses to my Thanksgiving post, part 1

I guess I'm not the only one sitting at her computer on a Saturday afternoon, as I already have a few responses to my post about the Thanksgiving holiday. Basically, I feel that time off from work and family togetherness are A Good Thing, but this whole happy Pilgrims and Indians mythology is pretty disgusting--and it just seems weird to celebrate what for many is a Day of Mourning.

Stacy S. mainly agrees with me but wanted to note that she certainly doesn't celebrate the holiday elementary-school-textbook style:

i'm not disputing anything you've said, but i do have to add that thanksgiving as we know it today is the result of Abraham Lincoln's call for a day of thanksgiving; he was thankful that he could successfully prosecute a war which ended slavery in all but four US states... I guess that's what I celebrate...

meanwhile, my closest friend since high school is pure Omaha (yes, that's a real native-american tribe) and quite irritated with the pestiferous proliferation of the Wannabe Tribe, particularly those who are 1/fraction Cherokee, yet obviously more Daimler-Chrysler than anything else...

This brings to mind 1998's televised Dialogue on Race with President Bill Clinton, in which Clinton earnestly told American Indian writer Sherman Alexie that his grandmother was 1/4 Cherokee...

But to return to responses, Philip Pangrac wrote to remind me that most people couldn't care less about the happy Pilgrims and Indians myth anyway:

In your little rant on Thanksgiving, you seem to neglect the fact that white America only celebrates the holiday for a few reasons:

1. Four day weekend.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I'm against four-day weekends, as I'm all for workers getting more days off. And I know some people celebrate Harvest or other types of seasonal holidays. But I really feel like we could have a better reason to have the extra time off than celebrating a holiday with such an awful mythology surrounding it. For starters, we might stop making some schoolchildren dress up in paper fringe and hand bundles of maize to other schoolchildren attired in black and white paper hats (I don't plan to have kids for some years yet but when I do I certainly won't allow them to wear construction paper feathers and say "How"). For many, the meeting between English colonists and the Wampanoag Indians is the beginning of years of broken treaties and genocide, not really something to make cute little classroom displays about.

2. Mark the start of the X-Mas buying season.

3. Football.

4. Family get together.

I am all in favor of family get-togethers, and I realize that for many, Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations are the only time they really have an excuse to get everyone together. I personally really enjoyed spending this weekend (which also happens to be the start of Hanukah) with my parents, sibling, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. But when I close my eyes and visions of drug-store Pilgrims and Indians cut-outs start dancing before my eyes, I get nauseous.

5. Gives sitcoms and comics strips a simple theme for the one week.

I have very mixed feelings about this one, as I am generally sick of cartoons about turkeys getting their heads chopped off. But it did give me something to blog about, and Ruben Bolling and Lalo Alcaraz something to cartoon about, so I guess every cloud has a silver lining.

But to allow Philip to finish his letter:

No one really treats the whole "Native Americans and Pilgrims getting along" crap seriously. If you're going to attack the holiday from the Native American standpoint, you should also attack it with the fact that no one views it with the actual intent.

Point duly noted.

Anyway, I don't mean to berate people for wanting to get together with their loved ones and eat pumpkin pie. It just bothers me that the mainstream media presents Columbus Day and Thanksgiving as fun holidays, and ignores the fact that for millions of Americans Thanksgiving is more of a funeral than a party. This might seem like a dour way of looking at the world, but honestly, I'm as happy as anyone waiting for George W. Bush to start World War III could be...

OK, seriously now. I am a happy person, I laugh a lot, and my blood pressure is just fine. I say this because I got a letter some time back warning me that being so bitter and political and angry all the time would make my life miserable (the letter-writer had apparently made himself happier by getting a bit more apathetic). Trust me, it's not true. I am certainly pretty angry pretty much of the time (hence "The Boiling Point"), but I like to think I have a sense of humor about it. I really like reading news articles and drawing cartoons. Also, I take plenty of breaks from Boiling Over With Rage to knit, sew, and read Philip K. Dick novels.

Keith Knight visited the Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square yesterday...

... and I missed out because, yes, I still can't breathe through my nose or talk very much without my throat hurting (the latter being particularly difficult, as I generally like to make long sarcastic speeches whenever I see anything or anyone on TV that upsets me, which means pretty-much non-stop gab). The worst thing was that Keith had actually mentioned that I would be showing up in his blog, which would have been really cool if I had actually been there... But my boyfriend was nice enough to attend the event and buy me loads of books, CDs, and posters signed by Keith, Keith's new wife (a big congratulations to him on that) and Keith's mom. And I got to talk to Keith over the cell phone, so I can tell you all with certainty that he's a really nice guy and that he used some of my cartoons in college lectures he gave last week.

Keith Knight visited the Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square yesterday...

... and I missed out because, yes, I still can't breathe through my nose or talk very much without my throat hurting (the latter being particularly difficult, as I generally like to make long sarcastic speeches whenever I see anything or anyone on TV that upsets me, which means pretty-much non-stop gab). The worst thing was that Keith had actually mentioned that I would be showing up in his blog, which would have been really cool if I had actually been there... But my boyfriend was nice enough to attend the event and buy me loads of books, CDs, and posters signed by Keith, Keith's new wife (a big congratulations to him on that) and Keith's mom. And I got to talk to Keith over the cell phone, so I can tell you all with certainty that he's a really nice guy and that he used some of my cartoons in college lectures he gave last week.

And a new radical daily comic strip is born... La Cucharacha by Lalo Alcaraz

Lalo Alcaraz has already distinguished himself as a political cartoonist, and now he's given us a second reason to read the daily so-called "funny" pages (the first, of course, being Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks). According to the official La Cucaracha web site, the strip launched November 25th in 40 newspapers (see articles in the Washington Post and Arizona Republic), but until daily strips are available on that site you can preview the strip here and here. La Cucaracha is the first nationally syndicated political Latino comic strip, it's funny, angry and beautifully drawn, and it features a politically radical anthropomorphic cockroach, so I suggest you immediately write desperate, pleading letters to your local paper asking them to run it.

And a new radical daily comic strip is born... La Cucharacha by Lalo Alcaraz

Lalo Alcaraz has already distinguished himself as a political cartoonist, and now he's given us a second reason to read the daily so-called "funny" pages (the first, of course, being Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks). According to the official La Cucaracha web site, the strip launched November 25th in 40 newspapers (see articles in the Washington Post and Arizona Republic), but until daily strips are available on that site you can preview the strip here and here. La Cucaracha is the first nationally syndicated political Latino comic strip, it's funny, angry and beautifully drawn, and it features a politically radical anthropomorphic cockroach, so I suggest you immediately write desperate, pleading letters to your local paper asking them to run it.

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Surprise, surprise: study finds that marriage and workfare don't actually help poor people

From this morning's New York Times:

Many programs intended to lift people out of poverty by promoting marriage and mandating work do not address the realities of poor immigrants, a study released today has found.

The report, by the Urban Institute, a public policy research group in Washington, was based on a national survey of more than 42,000 households. The study showed that low-income immigrant families were more likely than their native counterparts to have two parents in the household and that poverty often persisted in these families despite the fact that both parents worked.

The study found, for example, that children of two-parent immigrant families were twice as likely to live in low-income households as children of two-parent native families. Low income is defined as less than twice the federal poverty line, which was $16,700 for a family of four in 1999.

"It shows that policies that assume low incomes are a result of not engaging in the work force, or not having stable families, are wide of the mark," said Michael Fix, director of immigration studies at the Urban Institute and an author of the study. "Since it is wages, not lack of employment or work ethic, that is at issue, what these families seem to need are work supports to enable them to boost their wages."

Of course, you won't convince the White House that spending millions on "marriage promotion" isn't a cure-all. Do these politicians seriously believe that the reason some poor people are unmarried is because they just haven't seen a billboard or TV ad that tells them marriage is a good thing? Apparently:

Dr. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the study focused on the wrong data: "The comparison should not be between married immigrants and nonimmigrants, but between married immigrants and nonmarried immigrants," Dr. Horn, a strong supporter of marriage promotion as part of welfare programs, said.

"If the comparison were fair," he said, "I'm certain it would indicate that nonmarried immigrant households are, in fact, poorer than married immigrant families."

Which is entirely beside the point. Just because nonmarried households might have a tendency to be poorer, that doesn't mean that marriage will magically solve all their problems (see old cartoon of mine, and note that the amount given to marriage advertising and other such moronic schemes was actually even larger). Especially if the reason a single mother isn't married has to do with, say, domestic violence... It's a false causality, like saying that because studies show women who have Botox injections have more money than women who can still make facial expressions, getting Botox injections will magically propel poor women into prosperity (when in reality, it's more likely to leave them much poorer than before).

Surprise, surprise: study finds that marriage and workfare don't actually help poor people

From this morning's New York Times:

Many programs intended to lift people out of poverty by promoting marriage and mandating work do not address the realities of poor immigrants, a study released today has found.

The report, by the Urban Institute, a public policy research group in Washington, was based on a national survey of more than 42,000 households. The study showed that low-income immigrant families were more likely than their native counterparts to have two parents in the household and that poverty often persisted in these families despite the fact that both parents worked.

The study found, for example, that children of two-parent immigrant families were twice as likely to live in low-income households as children of two-parent native families. Low income is defined as less than twice the federal poverty line, which was $16,700 for a family of four in 1999.

"It shows that policies that assume low incomes are a result of not engaging in the work force, or not having stable families, are wide of the mark," said Michael Fix, director of immigration studies at the Urban Institute and an author of the study. "Since it is wages, not lack of employment or work ethic, that is at issue, what these families seem to need are work supports to enable them to boost their wages."

Of course, you won't convince the White House that spending millions on "marriage promotion" isn't a cure-all. Do these politicians seriously believe that the reason some poor people are unmarried is because they just haven't seen a billboard or TV ad that tells them marriage is a good thing? Apparently:

Dr. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the study focused on the wrong data: "The comparison should not be between married immigrants and nonimmigrants, but between married immigrants and nonmarried immigrants," Dr. Horn, a strong supporter of marriage promotion as part of welfare programs, said.

"If the comparison were fair," he said, "I'm certain it would indicate that nonmarried immigrant households are, in fact, poorer than married immigrant families."

Which is entirely beside the point. Just because nonmarried households might have a tendency to be poorer, that doesn't mean that marriage will magically solve all their problems (see old cartoon of mine, and note that the amount given to marriage advertising and other such moronic schemes was actually even larger). Especially if the reason a single mother isn't married has to do with, say, domestic violence... It's a false causality, like saying that because studies show women who have Botox injections have more money than women who can still make facial expressions, getting Botox injections will magically propel poor women into prosperity (when in reality, it's more likely to leave them much poorer than before).

People magazine names new Sexiest Man Alive: Donald Rumsfeld

Seriously.

I'm SOOOO not joking.

But I am slightly stretching the truth. To be exact, People bestowed the dubious honor of "Sexiest Man Alive" on bland boring boy Ben Affleck. But they really did declare everyone's favorite war-mongering Bush cabinet member one of the 23 "Sexiest Men Alive" (along with George Clooney and Enrique Iglesias). This soon after they named Republican Ken Doll (now Massachusetts governor-elect) Mitt Romney one of the "50 Sexiest People in the World."

(Presumably next year's "Sexiest Men Alive" issue will feature Information Awareness Office chief John Poindexter?)

Not that I had any respect for the editors of People in the first place. But the idea that a real live group of editors got together and actually decided that a bloodthirsty fascist like Rumsfeld was crushworthy is just dizzying. You certainly won't catch me posting any magazine photos of him in my locker...

(Thanks go to Yves for bringing this to my attention.)

People magazine names new Sexiest Man Alive: Donald Rumsfeld

Seriously.

I'm SOOOO not joking.

But I am slightly stretching the truth. To be exact, People bestowed the dubious honor of "Sexiest Man Alive" on bland boring boy Ben Affleck. But they really did declare everyone's favorite war-mongering Bush cabinet member one of the 23 "Sexiest Men Alive" (along with George Clooney and Enrique Iglesias). This soon after they named Republican Ken Doll (now Massachusetts governor-elect) Mitt Romney one of the "50 Sexiest People in the World."

(Presumably next year's "Sexiest Men Alive" issue will feature Information Awareness Office chief John Poindexter?)

Not that I had any respect for the editors of People in the first place. But the idea that a real live group of editors got together and actually decided that a bloodthirsty fascist like Rumsfeld was crushworthy is just dizzying. You certainly won't catch me posting any magazine photos of him in my locker...

(Thanks go to Yves for bringing this to my attention.)

Cartoonists weigh in on the Freedom of Information Act

Good cartoonists, that is. See what Tom Tomorrow and Clay Bennett have to say...

In unrelated cartoon news, I also recommend Lalo Alcaraz's take on the Democrats, "The Lily White Liberal Party".

Or you can always go read cartoons about Michael Jackson and Winona Ryder.

Cartoonists weigh in on the Freedom of Information Act

Good cartoonists, that is. See what Tom Tomorrow and Clay Bennett have to say...

In unrelated cartoon news, I also recommend Lalo Alcaraz's take on the Democrats, "The Lily White Liberal Party".

Or you can always go read cartoons about Michael Jackson and Winona Ryder.

Keith Knight suggests a new Democratic mascot

Can you guess which animal he's talking about?

To "liberals" who blame Nader for Gore losing the election...

(...yes, I'm still sick, but just so you all don't feel abandoned...)

For a long time my boyfriend Yves has been a big fan of "Savage Love" advice columnist Dan Savage. But Yves never felt compelled to write in until Savage printed & agreed with a letter from "Pissed-Off New Yorker" declaring that all the bad things happening in the country right now can be blamed on people (such as Yves and myself) who voted for Nader in 2000. Or as "Pissed-Off New Yorker" himself puts it: "Now you need to remind those assholes that the death of Roe v. Wade—and of any progress on privacy and gay rights in the United States—is all THEIR fuckin' fault."

Yves (and I) would beg to differ. So he wrote his own letter:

Just read your column (like I do every week), and saw the letter from "Pissed-Off New Yorker". I'm going to say this one last time to "liberals" who blame Nader for Gore losing the election.

Thousands of registered voters were removed from the polls in Florida in the months leading to the election. State law says that ex-felons cannot vote in Florida -- but an overwhelming majority of those removed had never committed a crime in their lives. An additional eight thousand Floridians were thrown off the polls thanks to another list erroneously listing them as ineligible -- even though their voting privileges had been reinstated, or, in some cases, were never taken away in the first place. The elections supervisor of Madison County, Florida -- who had never committed a crime in her life -- was on a list of people denied their right to vote.

The majority of those people blocked from voting? African-Americans, who historically vote Democrat.Who was responsible? Surprise, surprise -- Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and the state of Texas, who sent Florida the latter list.

If people who bitch and moan about the inability of Al Gore to capitalize on eight years of Democratic prosperity spent even a fraction of that energy actively protesting against perhaps the worst violation of the Civil Rights Act in forty years, we might not have a puppet presidency right now. But it's a lot sexier to blame Nader for that slim margin of defeat, isn't it? -- Pissed-off At People's Perpetual Ignorance

P.S. It's hard for me to say something this "cold", Dan, since I love you, your books, and your column, but I do dare you to print and respond to this.

I hope Dan prints his letter, but just in case he doesn't, I figured I would.

New Cartoon! Teach Yourself U.S. Government Euphemism...

To my own pleasant surprise, despite my continued illness I managed to crank out a new cartoon for the Phoenix about the lovely new Information Awareness Office... I'm vaguely dissatisfied with it, but deadlines are deadlines and I need to crawl back to bed and lie in a fetal position now.

Also, a quick apology to anyone who has sent me email in the last week or so--as I said, I've been ill. I will get back to you when I recover... hopefully that means "soon."

The inability to breathe through my nose continues...

... which is why I didn't have a new cartoon for you all this morning. But there WILL be a new cartoon tomorrow night, never fear.

So I'm still unable to breathe through my nose or swallow without pain...

... and won't be doing any hard-core blogging until those things are once again possible. So in the meantime, I suggest you all read Tom Tomorrow, if you don't do that already. I also recommend Robert's Virtual Soapbox, although I don't share his crush on Eminem and have no intention of going to see 8 Mile (I'm more into Lalo Alcaraz's take on the subject).

Also, I want to remind everyone that this coming Wednesday, November 20th is the Transgender Day of Remembrance to "honor all persons of non-conforming gender whose lives have been violently silenced or who have otherwise passed from our lives." There are events nationwide, and I'll be attending the Boston event, which begins at 7 p.m. at the St. John the Evangelist Church on 35 Bowdoin St.

All right, I'm going to go back to bed for the rest of the day now.

Just one of those days...

...when your carpal tunnel is acting up and you run headfirst into a STOP sign and smash up your glasses and you're supposed to go out to Brazilian food for your one-year anniversary but you've suddenly come down with a really nasty cold or generally nasty flu and are incapable of consuming anything but frozen yogurt.

Yeah, well, that was my day. It started out nicely enough with a nice anniversary E-card from reader Stacy S., but went downhill quickly as my hands hurt too much to type out a short paper so I had to write it out by hand. Then as I rushed to class, reading and walking at the same time, all of a sudden---WHAM!---my glasses went flying and I had to feel around in the grass before I found their mangled, mangled remains. I'm so nearsighted that without my glasses everything farther away than an inch is just a big vague blur, so instead of dissecting sheep brains in science class (which I wasn't particularly looking forward to but was probably a class requirement) I made my vague blurry way to the eyeglasses shop, where my frames were miracously hammered back into decent shape.

And then of course I mysteriously and spontaneously developed a complete incapacity for breathing through my nose or swallowing anything solid or not being alternately freezing and overheated.

I'm not all doom and gloom, however. I was pleased to discover that really freaking amazing cartoonist Keith Knight has started a blog, that it mentions me, and that he will be coming to the Million Year Picnic comic book store in Harvard Square on November 29 for a book signing. So mark your calendars, kiddies.

When I don't get a chance to blog much...

...it's usually not for lack of horrendous news items to point out, but lack of time to point them out in or excess amounts of carpal tunnel pain. Tonight, however is an exception--I'm too busy being really happy that tomorrow is the ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of my first date with my boyfriend Yves. Which, incidentally, was not to dinner or a movie but to an Afro-American Studies lecture by Cornel West (may Princeton be treating him well). Anyway, here's my superfast computer-scribbled rendition of Yves and me in one of those rare moments when we're not thinking about politics, or at least not thinking too hard about politics. So, bon anniversaire a nous.

"Tempers Stirred By Harvard Cartoon" + "Editor Resigns Over Cartoon"

No, it wasn't one of my cartoons. And no, it wasn't the editor of The Harvard Crimson who resigned, but the editor of the Harvard Business School's weekly paper The Harbus, Nick Will. But the story is worth hearing nevertheless.

Now, as a college newspaper cartoonist last spring, I made a vow not to do what I saw as fluffy student life cartoons--cartoons about how rough exam period is, cartoons about dining hall food, cartoons about dating life at Harvard or the lack thereof, and so on. Honestly, Harvard students occasionally having to eat a slightly less than stellar meal now and then just doesn't rate on my personal cartooning crisis meter compared to, say police brutality, global warming, or impending war with Iraq. The only Harvard-related cartoons I've done were one on Harvard president Larry Summers' treatment of Cornel West and the general lack of faculty diversity, and this cheerful cartoon for the commencement issue.

So I was surprised to learn that all the hoopla was indeed over a student life cartoon. As I gather it, Harvard Business School students have been frustrated lately with a buggy career offices computer system which has resulted in some of them missing interviews with various corporate recruiters. (Apparently they are also under pressure from the fact that many HBS alumni were the number-one culprits in the Enron scandal and others, but let's put that aside for the moment). So a student cartoonist decided to express his fellow student's frustration. According to the Crimson ("Editor Resigns Over Cartoon"):

The editorial cartoon mocked the persistent bugs that have plagued Career Link—the server that students use to post resumes and sign up for job interviews. It depicted a computer screen cluttered with pop-up announcements—a spoof of the messages Career Link sends out to students when they attempt to post resumes on the overcrowded server. Most of the announcements were lighthearted messages, such as “Please attach three random documents to sign up for interviews.” Some were more caustic in tone: “Career Services absolves itself of any and all responsibility for the functionality of Career Link despite the fact we selected the vendor."

The words “incompetent morons,” which appear in one of the pop-up windows, provoked administrative response when HBS Career Service Officer Matthew S. Merrick told senior administrators that he felt offended by the phrase, according to HBS Senior Associate Dean Walter C. Kester.

The administrative response, apparently, was to call a meeting with the newspaper's editor and issue a "verbal warning":

According to Will’s resignation letter, Nelson warned him at the meeting that he “could be called in for further action in the future which could register on [his] personal student record.”

The administration claims, of course, that they have no intention of restricting free speech:

“I think that the University should have no control over what The Harbus prints. We support freedom of expression and free inquiry,” Clark said. But according to Will’s letter, this was not the view Nelson expressed in their meeting. “He suggested I steer clear of all questionable content in further issues,” Will wrote.

All I can say to that is... whoa. But wait, it gets better:

According to Will’s letter, Nelson also criticized The Harbus’s photo coverage in the meeting and suggested that The Harbus should provide writers with the opportunity to enhance the image of Career Services in future issues. The deans complained that the cartoon violated HBS Community Standards, which stipulate that HBS community members must have “respect for the rights, differences and dignity of others.” “We do not want students to engage in discourse that hurts others,” Clark said.

An awfully broad declaration--leaving the definitions of "hurt" and "others" open to question. And asking a newspaper to write articles "enhancing the image of Career Services" is flat-out ridiculous. As the editor wrote in his resignation:

“Invoking Community Standards to supersede editorial judgment and issue personal threats against those involved in the paper is in my personal view as unreasonable a posture for the administration as it is an unsustainable one.”

Um, yeah. Fluffy topic or not, this was a ridiculous reaction to a cartoon well within the bounds of satire (even by definitions far too narrow for my taste as a card-carrying member of the ACLU). If you like, you can read more about this case in the Globe ("Tempers stirred by Harvard cartoon").

Yet more cool cartoonists who make my day + people using my cartoons for a good cause

I hope you all read Keith Knight's strip the K Chronicles and his Africana.com Th(ink) cartoons every week, cause if you don't you're missing out. Anyway I sent Keith a big fan letter the other day and was quite surprised to find he had actually already seen my cartoons and liked them. I quote:

good gawd, woman!! i love your cartoons!! i've admired them from afar. i know i've seen at least one in the funny times and one in the phoenix when i was visiting in september.

It is these kinds of emails that get me through those days when I start to think about the state this country is in and I just want to pull the blanket over my head and hope it all goes away.

Cartoons used for good causes

It also makes me really happy to hear that my cartoons are being used to promote good causes (in which case I am happy to provide high-res-versions free of charge, just email me first). As I mentioned before, Friday was the API ForCE (Asians and Pacific Islanders for Community Empowerment) National Day of Action Against Deportation. The buttons above, printed in both English and Khmer, use one of the images from my cartoon "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor... (sort of)" (regarding the deportation of Cambodian refugees).

Bush treating Haitian refugees like crap, part 4 (see part 1, part 2, and part 3)

The way the New York Times spins the headline ("Bush Remark Gives Advocates Hope for Release of Haitians") you might almost imagine that our quasi-elected president was thinking of letting Haitian refugees stay in the country. No need to twist your head around that one. Although there is a possibility that Bush might rethink his decision last year to keep all Haitian refugees locked up for months and months and months and months while awaiting their hearings (as opposed to migrants from EVERY OTHER COUNTRY), that doesn't mean he's going to let them stay:

Mr. Bush made the remarks at a news conference on Thursday. He said Haitians should be treated the same as all migrants, except Cubans. "And the difference, of course," he said. "is that we don't send people back to Cuba because they're going to be persecuted."

As my boyfriend put it when he read that "But it's OK to send Haitians back to death by slow starvation?"

And speaking of Pulitzer-Prize Winners (Or cool cartoonists that make me happy, part 2 or 3 or whatever it is)

... I must say, it's not every night that I get invited out for a drink by Clay Bennett, Cindy Procious and Tom Toles, so they all get major props (Cindy might not have a Pulitzer but she is just as cool in my opnion). I went to a talk last night by Clay and Tom at The Christian Science Monitor, and they kindly invited me to the bar afterwards. The main lesson of the evening, I think, is this: political cartoonists like beer. A lot. And they make really lewd jokes when they've had large amounts of it.

I hope this means I can still be a political cartoonist as I can't even get down a mouthful of the weakest beer without going into facial convulsions--the best I can do is one glass of cranberry juice with a minimal amount of vodka. But maybe I can get a hang of the jokes...

... which I won't repeat here as they may offend the delicate sensibilities of say, the cartoonists themselves when sober. But I will note that Tom Toles asked me to put in this blog that he was able to recognize a song being played over the bar radio when no one else could. I actually can't remember at this point what the song was, but there you have it. And when he tried on Cindy's glasses, he looked just like Trotsky.

A bleak look at the future

So it begins. Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes gives her take on what the election results mean. And then there's the whole federal judge issue. I've got to write a paper now, but I'll try and post links to some more good cartoons regarding the post-election mess we're in ASAP.

Derrick Jackson on the Massachusetts Election Disaster

I've been a fan of Derrick Jackson's Boston Globe op-ed column for a long time (see my ancient cartoon about the MCAS, "Elimination Game.") So I'm glad to see he's already weighed in on the election results. You have to love a piece that begins "Mitt Romney flashes perfect pearly whites as the poor lose their teeth." And he certainly doesn't spare any pity for Shannon O'Brien:

Romney will be governor, having convinced the voters that running an extravaganza for 2,500 athletes for two weeks qualifies him to run the affairs of 6 million people for four years... . Romney is our new governor because his past claims were more impressive to the voters than those of Shannon O'Brien. Like many a Democrat these days, O'Brien claimed to be a fighter for the people, but she never defined which people she was fighting for. Unable to define, unable to connect, unable to show how she would be independent of insular Beacon Hill politics, she became another Al Gore.

Hear, hear!

New Cartoon! with a really long name

Yes, indeed, I've got the "Oh-No-Not-Another-Republican-Governor-in-Massachusetts Blues." In addition to the "Jeb-Bush-Got-Reelected Blues," the "Mondale-Didn't-Win Blues," the "Where-is-the-Nearest-Bunker-I-Can-Hide-in-to-Escape-the-Completely-Republican-Controlled-Government Blues" and the "Democrats-Are-Such-Pathetic-Uninspiring-Losers Blues."

AAAAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKKKKKCCCKKKKKKKK!

Ack. Help. Moan. Sigh. Whimper.

OK, that's all for now.

Wake me up in 2008

So it's all over. The whole country has gone to hell. Mitt Romney is governor of Massachusetts and his fiendish plan to eliminate bilingual education ("English Immersion Only!") was completely successful. Jeb Bush is still in command of Florida. It looks like Bush is going to have the House and the Senate. I'd like to think I'm just having a bad dream, but now I have to cartoon about it. Sigh...

And the winner is...

Well, I don't know yet. But I just wanted to let you all know that after the outcome tonight I'll be racing to do a cartoon for the Phoenix's special election issue, deadline at 9 a.m. I just hope I won't have too much to be depressed about.

And if you haven't voted yet... shame on you. The polls are still open!

Something to look at before you vote

So I'm on my way home to Lowell, MA to vote (I'm too lazy to get an absentee ballot, I guess) and wanted to leave you all with a final bit of reading before the election tomorrow. The article was pointed out to me by fellow Harvard student Chanda Rosalyn Sojourner Prescod-Weinstein, and it's called "As the Nation Prepares to Vote, US in Denial as Poverty Rises". Unsurprisingly, it's from a British and not an American newspaper.

Please don't read this if you have a really weak stomach

Early this morning reader Stacy S. brought my attention to a nauseating opinion piece by Zach Calef from the Iowa State Daily, deceptively titled "Double standard in reactions to rape." Calef's basic premise is that the three young men who brutally murdered Gwen Araujo (see my cartoon "Shallow Grave") not only weren't committing a hate crime, but were acting "understandably," if possibly "taking it a little too far." His reasoning? Araujo's failure to inform these men that she was born with male genitalia is the same thing as rape?!? He then goes on to argue for "mild sentencing":

The police did not stop at murder... They are trying to get a sentence extended by claiming the men committed a hate crime. This is absurd. A hate crime is a crime committed because of a person's race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion and/or handicap status. That means the underlying reason for the beating was Araujo's sexual orientation. And that is not the case.... The men should be charged with manslaughter or something along those lines. But, considering the state they were in at the time the crime was committed, the reaction is not mind-boggling. Think about it. How would you react?

Whoa. That upsets me so much I don't even know what to say. Luckily Stacy has her own response:

This column is not merely insensitive; it is not merely intolerant of "sexual orientation" or "gender identity," but is a proclamation that any woman who has sex with any man has an obligation to do and be everything the man wants, and nothing more, nothing less nor anything else. Further, it is a statement that any man not fully satisfied by a woman has the prerogative of doing her any degree of harm he deems an adequate expression of his disappointment.

Basically, Calef's argument is just another version of the disgusting old "gay-panic" defense which was thankfully not allowed to be used in the trial of Matthew Shephard's murderers (although in this case we might call it the "trans-panic" defense). The gay panic "defense" suggests that if heterosexual men think that a gay man might have made a pass at them or be interested in them, it's only understandable that they go suddenly go into a homicidal rage and brutally murder said gay man. Presumably a "trans-panic" defense suggests that if a heterosexual man finds out that the woman he consenually kissed last night happened to be born with male genitalia, of course he'll go temporarily insane with revulsion (think of Jim Carrey's shameful performance in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective).

I can't help but be reminded of the all-too-recent horrifying history of lynching in this country, in which crowds would "justify" their brutal murder and torture of black men by claiming that the men had raped, or perhaps just looked at, white women. As a white woman in a relationship with a black man (with a one-year anniversary coming up next week!), this of course gives me particularly horrific nightmares. Republican politicians, among others, like to talk about the "good old days" back in the 1950s when people were supposedly more polite and civil. But to me, those are the bad old days of segregation and lynching... back before Loving v. Virginia and Brown v. Board of Education.

And I hope that a time like today, in which some people still consider sexual identity and sexual orientation justifications for murder, will already have become "the bad old days" before I have children of my own. And I intend to be as involved in that shift as possible, as I don't have a lot of patience.

New Cartoon!: "The Roving Reporter Asks..." + an election change of heart (maybe)

A new cartoon that expresses more of my feelings on Bush and his stupid war. Of course, rather than drawing a cartoon I wish I could have gone to the big Boston anti-war rally, but such is the life of a cartoonist. (By the way, the Globe really undercounted the number of protesters... they say 15,000, but other papers say 25,000).

Now, don't get confused--this is my cartoon for Monday's Crimson--the cartoon for Thursday's Phoenix is still going to be about the Haitian refugees. (And there will also be a cartoon soon about the really cool new ordinance protecting gender identity and expression in Boston). I just wanted to make one last statement about the war before the elections.

And speaking of elections... Some of you might recall that I had been planning to vote the lesser of two evils in the Massachusetts governor's race, Democrat Shannon O'Brien. Well, while I was working on today's cartoon my boyfriend was out for the anti-war rally, and he called me on his cell phone so I could hear an assortment of religious leaders and the Green Party candidate for governor Jill Stein making really moving speeches against the war... and explaining why Stein is not a spoiler candidate... and I had a change of heart in a big way. Sort of.

Basically, this isn't just any old election--this election is taking place right after the majority of Congress got down on their knees and said "Yessir Mr. Bush" about the war. And this is an election in which neither Romney nor O'Brien has made any real attempt to reach out to communities of color... and... well, I could go on but I'm a bit overcome after listening to all those speeches today so pardon me for the moment while I get a handkerchief.

Postscript, or Mikhaela's Family Reminds Her How Nasty Romney Is

So within a few hours of posting that I was thinking about voting for Jill Stein, I received the following letters, one from my grandmother and one from my dad. My grandmother writes:

Hi, Mikhaela,
Read your blog. Am I reading it correctly? You're voting for Stein? I think both major party candidates are purposely keeping out of the war issue, because it's a national matter. The State has enough problems of its own, so they're purposely concentrating on local matters.
Love, Bobie

My dad is a little more forceful in his criticism:

Mikhaela,
Are you voting for Stein? What about the homeless, the public schools, workers' rights, gay rights and etc? With people like you voting for her we'll get Romney. He is a *!%#$*@! hatemongering #*$(@*&! If Stein had a chance of winning I would be the first to vote for her!
Love, Dad

So now I'm feeling all conflicted again, and I'm wondering how I'm going to decide by Tuesday night. As my grandmother points out, the governor's race doesn't technically have anything to do with Congress's support of Bush's nasty little war... the real important race in that sense is the Senate race. Democratic Senator John Kerry voted for the war, weak-kneed presidential hopeful that he is, and he's running with no Republican opposition. Thankfully anti-war write-in candidate Randall Forsberg has stepped in to let people voice their discontent with Kerry.

That's an easy vote, of course, since there's no way to argue that voting for Forsberg would help a Republican win. But the governor's race is a dead heat between O'Brien and Romney, and boy do I ever hate Romney. I mean, I have nightmares about him. Seriously. So... I'm back to pounding my head against the wall on this. Thanks Dad!

A little post-Halloween nausea...

... and I'm NOT referring to a hangover (I was so busy with schoolwork I didn't get to a single Halloween party this year). I just wish I had seen this article about some racist Halloween masks in time to post it before the holiday. The article comes courtesy of tolerance.org, and includes an interactive historical presentation about racist Halloween costumes like "The Chinese Man Kit" or blackface costumes.

But the main article refers not to racist masks of yesteryear but to brandnew Halloween products such as Disguise's "Kung Fool" (a squinty-eyed bucktoothed Asian stereotype sold at stores like Wal-Mart) or the "Vato Loco" mask, a Latino stereotype sold by Fright Catalog right next to werewolves and goblins. The company owner's defenses speak for themselves. Disguise defended itself from criticisms of "Kung Fool" with the following:

A spokesperson for the company, headquartered in Poway, Cal., said the mask was the result of a brainstorming process that included some Asian Americans and was intended to be a comedic parody of a Kung Fu karate character.

This sounds a lot like Abercrombie & Fitch's "hey, we asked a few Asian-American guys around the office" defense of the racist T-shirts they produced last year until protest pulled them off the shelves. But Fright Catalog goes a step further--their defense is that the "Vato Loco" masks were produced by Mexican factory workers (who they claim would have complained if the masks were racist?!):

"I would like to apologize to anyone that feels the mask is racist," Arvanigian first posted. "Our company is not racist in any way and we do not condone any type of hateful actions… In fact, the item is manufactured in Mexico, by a labor force mostly made up of Latinos. They did not have a problem with it when it was manufactured." Arvanigian stated his company had received only two e-mails from customers claiming to be offended. That, he said, "hardly represents the entire Latino community." Arvanigian later threatened to put "Vato Loco" on next year’s cover of Fright Catalog, according to a news article published at GrandeMesa.com.

So, yeah, happy post-Halloween everyone.

Haitian Refugees Slideshow

In doing research for my cartoon on the disgusting and discriminatory treatment of Haitian refugees, I came across a helpful and extremely long slideshow on Yahoo. One of my favorites is below. The show includes a lot of photos both of the refugees being detained and of protesters demanding their freedom (but it has since been removed, sadly).

Jeb looks away as Rep. Carrie Meek calls on him to help the refugees.

Refugees Cartoon Roundup, part 2 (see part 1)

The really obnoxious thing about a lot of the cartoons I've seen about the 200+ Haitian refugees currently being detained by the INS is that they're not even about the particular problems faced by the refugees, but an excuse to make some other comments:

Now, Bruce Plante is a nice guy (I got to meet him at a big political cartoonist dinner thing last year) but I totally disagree with this cartoon--which seems to suggest the arrival of the refugees is proof of how we need to beef up "Homeland Security." I'm particularly disturbed by the caricature of the man holding the newspaper. Who is he supposed to represent--Osama Bin Laden or just some horrible generic stereotype of a maniacal hook-nosed Arab Islamic Fundamentalist? Um. Eeeeek. Help.

John Trever also uses the Haitian refugee situation as an excuse to make a snide attack on those who dare to suggest the rest of the world has reason to hate us. Apparently he takes the fact that so many people want to live in the US as proof that they love us? But I would argue that part of the reason people in many other countries have so little is because America has too much... which it apparently doesn't want to share with any Haitian refugees.

I will say flat-out that I don't think I've ever even VAGUELY agreed with any of conservative cartoonist Chuck Asay's ideas, and this cartoon is no exception. Here he contrasts opportunistic politicians' views of what he refers to merely as "illegal immigrants" (and not "refugees") with what he presents as the "normal" person's reaction to Haitian migrants, which apparently involves a thought bubble containing the words "Illegals!" and a phone call to the INS. This sort of thing makes me feel nauseous... Stacy, a reader who saw the cartoon, thought that perhaps it makes a point its author isn't even aware of:

okay, if asay's drawing has a point (which may have escaped him) it is that almost everybody sees these haitians as only one more variable in a "success formula" and not as people in desperate circumstances

I completely agree. Sadly, the only new cartoon I saw on the subject that actually addressed the subject of discrimination against Haitian refugees was this one by Don Wright. But most of the new cartoons I saw today weren't about the refugees at all, but were just gags about Winona Ryder's shoplifting trial...

"Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor... Your Anglo"

Devoted reader Philip Pangrac had a fitting email postscript to my post about discrimination against Haitian refugees, with the subject line "Give me your poor, your tired, your anglo." He writes:

I think Elian was so well received by the media because his skin was paler than the Haitians'. I also noticed this during the summer when kidnapping stories were all the rage (despite the fact that kidnappings were--say it with me--lower than before). The media would give all the attention to white skinned and preferably blonde haired kids, with ethnic children recieving less attention on the average. If Jon Benet was black, do you think the media and tabloids would have cared a month after she died, let alone a couple years?

No, I don't. I think if Jon Benet was black she would have been a newsbrief on the bottom of page 12, if she was in the paper at all.

Double standards for Haitian refugees, or "(Don't) Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" Part 2

Note: it may seem somewhat random to start a post about the hundreds of recently detained Haitian refugees with clippings from my personal photo album, but just bear with me.

In my humble opinion, when my boyfriend Yves was little, he was just as cute as (if not infinitely cuter than) Elian Gonzalez, as this photo (circa 1978) amply demonstrates:

But apparently Dubya (and Jeb) don't think so. According to a New York Times article about a rally for the detainees :

The Bush administration quietly changed its detention policy on Haitian refugees in December to discourage a feared mass exodus from the impoverished country. Before the change, Haitian immigrants applying for asylum were released into the community while their petitions were processed. Now, they are kept in immigration custody.

A later article ("Renewed Calls for Revising Policy on Haitians") elaborates:

Under a Bush administration policy that does not apply to refugees of any other nationality, Haitians seeking political asylum are held in detention centers pending the dispositions of their cases. All others are deported to Haiti. Civil rights advocates and a growing number of lawmakers from both parties say the policy is discriminatory in part because a separate law allows Cubans who reach the United States shore to remain in the country and to apply for permanent residency in a year.

In other words, refugees from Cuba (or any other country besides Haiti) seeking asylum in the US are free to live in the community during their hearing periods. And chances are, if they made it onto American soil before being picked up by the INS, they will be allowed to stay--what's known as the "wet foot-dry foot" policy.

But people from Haiti of all ages and genders are jailed (often for as long as a year) pending their hearings, which almost invariably end with forced repatriation to Haiti (where they are sometimes jailed for attempting to leave in the first place). No matter if they have wet feet or dry. No matter that thousands of Haitians have died in the attempt to cross to Florida in make-shift rafts and leaking boats. The INS is still detaining 187 Haitian men, women and children who made it to shore last December pending their hearings.

Are we really expected to believe that living in Communist Cuba is grounds for asylum but living in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere (with a history of political turmoil and persecution) is not? It's hard not to agree with human rights advocates and community activists who call the policy racist. The following is from the EFE News Service:

North Miami Mayor Joe Celestin, of Haitian origin, told reporters that immigration officials were discriminating against Haitian asylum seekers. "It's very sad to see the way human beings who are fleeing their country for a better way of life are treated," Celestin said. In reference to the 229 Haitians and three Cubans who arrived Tuesday off the Miami coast following an eight-day journey, he said his countrymen would most likely be deported, while the Cubans would be granted asylum. Human rights activist Edelin Eclond characterized the current U.S. migration policy as discriminatory and racist, saying it denied black Haitians the same treatment given to other groups seeking asylum.

Democratic Representative Carrie Meek was the most outspoken on the issue. From the AP:

"It is plainly and simply a racist policy that singles out black Haitians and denies them the treatment we give other groups seeking asylum," Rep. Carrie Meek (D-Fla.) said in a statement. "They imprison Haitians indefinitely; they don't release Haitians into the care of the Haitian community; they don't let Haitians get the help they need to prepare their asylum cases; and then they deport them," Meek said.

Amen. But when Meek challenged Governor Bush to ask his brother to free the refugees, Jeb could only respond vaguely that "I have been assured that these individuals will receive fair and decent treatment by federal authorities."

But as the INS seems to think "fair and decent" and "cruel and unusual" are synonyms, that won't help me sleep at night.

And if you're still wondering why I stuck a faded childhood portrait of my boyfriend at the beginning of this post, my point is that while the case of adorable little Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez and his adventures in American toystores was front-page news, we never see such detailed and sympathetic stories about any of the cute little Haitian children being detained by the INS. And since I didn't have pictures of any of those kids, I had to make do. Yves is actually second-generation (i.e. his parents came from Haiti but he was born in New York) but I just think it's a really adorable picture and I hope he's not too embarassed by it. For the record, he's still just as cute today, only taller.

Refugees cartoon roundup

As you might guess, my next cartoon for the Phoenix will likely be about discrimination against Haitian refugees, but in the meantime I thought I'd give you all an idea of what other cartoonists have been saying on the subject. Rex Babin and Jim Morin weigh in on treatment of Cuban vs. Haitian refugees. Doug Marlette highlights Jeb's fervent wish that all those pesky refugees would just disappear (ironically enough, I seem to recall Mr. Bush was doing a campaign stop in Little Haiti when their ship ran aground).

And then there are a few cartoons that just confuse me. Chip Bok and Jeff Danziger appear to be using the refugees to make comments on the Twilight Zone that is Florida elections, but I'm not sure exactly what those comments are. And if Bruce Beattie is really suggesting that the average American has it even a fraction as rough as the refugees, then I completely and totally disagree.