Some unsavory bedfellows

A nice rebuttal

And a priceless quote from commenter GOPHokie on the Not Larry Sabato blog, which linked to this week's Slowpoke cartoon: "Why does everything have to be racist with you people?"

I have to say, drawing this cartoon was rather satisfying. George Allen has been an absolute blight on this state for years; he is the worst kind of regressive, pseudo-good ol' boy, southern-poseur Republican with a well-documented history of racism, who should have had his Trent Lott moment years ago. To be honest, with the changing demographics of Virginia, I am surprised he is still as popular as he is. But only slightly.

While doing some Google research for the strip, I came across the Frameshop, a most excellent blog that happens to be authored by an old friend of mine, Jeffrey Feldman. Jeffrey has got the goods on Allen and macaca. Go check out this post on the usage of "macaca/macaque" by white power groups in the U.S. Then feel outraged at those in the media who continue to strike a pose of bafflement over Allen's remark. Oh, what could he possibly have meant? I also encourage you to read Jeffrey's recent postings about Allen winking about the whole episode before "apologizing." The Frameshop does a kind of political analysis I appreciate -- taking apart seemingly innocuous phrases and ideas that distort the way people think about the world.

West Coasters, take note: A recent cartoon of mine will appear in the weekly roundup this Sunday (UPDATE: here's the link. True to the Toon-op theme "Goofs of Summer" about cartoonists taking a vacation from hard-hitting political commentary, I really was on vacation when I inked this).

Usually doomed to Plutoesque obscurity, we alternative cartoonists seem to have momentarily intersected with Earth's orbit.

My friend and fellow "Laugh While You Can" tourmate Tim Kreider has an op-ed in today's NY Times. Can Tim singlehandedly save Pluto? We'll have to wait and see.

BREAKING NEWS: Tim is scheduled to appear on ABC News Nightline tonight (Thursday), according to someone who contacted me trying to track him down. They also want to put him on World News Tonight, but there may not be enough time.

You'll recall I pointed out that the real elites in this country are the extremely wealthy, who are overwhelmingly Republican. For your reading pleasure, I provide a winger's thoughtful opposition to my cartoon:

Subject: UPPER CLASS

...Elitist, corrupt Democrats beholden to socialist, America hating environmentalists prevent any drilling or refining in or off U.S. Gas prices rise dramatically. Democrats blame oil companies because they realize profits due to the laws of supply and demand. Democrats hope intelligent people do not recognize that the $3 a gallon gas is mostly cost of crude from overseas, refining and massive taxes and not the $.09 a gallon profit.

Elitist, corrupt Democrats incapable of an original idea smear anyone who disagrees with their failed socialism as their only means to win an election.

The difference between upper class Republicans and Democrats is that generally Republicans earned their money while Democrats inherit it (Kennedy/Rockefeller), marry it (Kerry), or steal it (Soros).

I have neither the time nor the inclination to rebut such an awesome wall of twisted logic, except to say those Walton heirs who comprise 5 of the top 10 richest people in America sure are progressive Democrats!

Merely living in America these days seems unsafe. Our health insurance crisis is spiralling out of control, worker safety protections are being eroded, thousands of chemicals used in products have never been tested, people drive around in giant killer missiles blabbing on cell phones, the government wants to detain people as it pleases, there's hardly an economic safety net, and now your neighbor has more leeway than ever to shoot you if you're on his property. "Good people make good decisions. That’s why they’re good people," says Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. Life is just that simple! There are good people and bad people, and the good people never overreact or accidentally shoot someone.

Contrast this to England, where people walk for fun, and public footpaths wind for miles through the countryside. In the Cotswolds, you can wander through pastures full of sheep, stop in a local pub for a pint, and keep going through farmland until you hit the next township. Now that's freedom.

If you haven't seen the video clip of retrograde Sen. George Allen calling an Indian-American U.Va student "macaca" and telling him "Welcome to America" yet, please do check it out. It's an almost refreshing instance of a politician revealing his true self.



Far worthier of heavy rotation on the cable news networks than the Dean Scream.

Props to whoever opened the "Macaca Shop" on Cafe Press, selling bumper stickers saying "We Are All MACACA".

Ian of the Republican Dictionary brings up a point I wanted to mention in this week's cartoon, but didn't have enough room:

Love your toon as always. With organic food in mind, the food corps and their flying-monkey lobbyists have been in a campaign since at least 2003 to redefine "organic" to include the same old nasty-ass crap they've been selling all along. And therefore, responding to consumer demand not by providing what the consumer demands, but by lying to the consumer about what they're selling. Now THAT'S capitalism! Woohoo!

Some more background here.

This week's cartoon was inspired by a recent article in the C-VILLE Weekly (which runs Slowpoke and currently hosts this website) about locally-grown, organic produce. Entitled "The $5 tomato: How upscale produce, a status symbol for the new foodies, is saving local farms", the article borrowed heavily from right-wing pundit David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise, suggesting that the market for organic food was driven largely by status-conscious "bobos" -- bourgeois bohemians -- who are prone to spending $15,000 on slate shower stalls and, yes, $5 on a perfect tomato. Here's an excerpt:

On the grocery shopping habits of Bobos, Brooks writes, “When the shoppers push a cart through the entrance, they are standing in an epicenter of the Upscale Suburban Hippiedom…The visitor to Fresh Fields [Whole Foods by another name] is confronted with a big sign that says ‘Organic Items Today: 130.’ This is like a barometer of virtue.”

The tomato, selected for its quality and taste, is also chosen for its purity, as well as the status it suggests for its consumer...

Among those who derive their identity from their food choices, Ann Haskell is a standout example. Leader of the Virginia Old Dominion Slow Food convivium, an organization dedicated to cooking from scratch with in-season, local produce, she comes from a long line of Virginia gardeners. Haskell, who lives in Charlottesville, is increasingly concerned about food’s political implications, she explained via e-mail: “Because of its treatment of employees, we do not buy anything at Sam’s Club (or any Wal-Mart stores) or from other markets that have been identified…as unfair to labor. And we try not to buy products whose shipping entails great fuel expenditure.”

Clearly, it’s not just about eating vegetarian anymore. The foodie identity is wrapped up in many things—politics, the environment, health, purity, taste and status.

I doubt Haskell's awareness of the politics of food, and her conscientious shopping habits, are motivated by a sense of "identity" or "status." She sounds like an informed person trying to do the right thing. AND she's practicing Slowpokedom! I am tempted to join the Slow Food convivium myself.

I have to say, I was disheartened to see David Brooks' pompous pseudo-sociology infiltrating the pages of my beloved hometown altweekly. It's not that I can't take a joke -- I often make fun of new-agey/lefty marketing clichés in my cartoons (see the Buddha Brand tea and Rowdy Lesbian cupcakes in "Santa Claus or Beyoncé?"). But this idea of "bobos" must be placed in a larger context. Statistically-speaking, the higher one's income, the more likely one is to vote Republican. David Brooks' book is subtitled The New Upper Class and How they Got There. Except the upper class in America ain't a bunch of rich hippies. You'll recall the famous Bush quote, "This is an impressive crowd -- the haves and the have mores. Some people call you the elite -- I call you my base." A rare moment of honesty!

But a major cornerstone of Republican strategy is to convince Americans that progressives are the true elites to be despised. And so we hear over and over again about "latte-sipping liberals" and "limousine liberals" and the all-powerful "liberal elite." Many progressives swallow this narrative themselves, reproducing the right-wing frame. I call this participating in your own disempowerment, and it was a theme running through a presentation I gave last week at the Center for American Progress in DC. It's how the right divides Americans now, and half the time, progressives are doing the work for them. We're prone to mocking our own; it shows how independent-minded we are, and it gives us street cred.

Certainly there are extreme cases worthy of satire; but I don't know anyone with a slate shower stall. Yes, there are yuppies. But are they overwhelmingly progressive? I don't think so. The bobo stereotype fits so perfectly into Republican rhetoric, it's almost like it was hatched in a think tank. And who knows, maybe it was.

I hate to criticize my fave progressive rag, but I feel this issue is of tremendous importance.

What an obnoxious tit! (I have become rather fond of that Britishism since reading a message board spat between two blokes in the UK recently.) So now Rove and Cheney's Connecticut darling is parroting the Republican nonsense that the foiled terror plot in England proves we need to stay the course in Iraq. As if the plotting of extremists to blow up ten airplanes, killing thousands, shows Republican foreign policy is somehow working.

If the Democrats don't go on the offensive soon about Republicans' so-called "terror-fighting" efforts , I'm afraid things will go badly in November. The key message is: THEY ARE MAKING THINGS WORSE. Republicans are stupid on terror. They're spending billions and destroying our military, only to create more terrorists -- and they're giving antiterrorism funding to the Arkansas Bean Fest, for god's sake. Stupid on terror! Got it? .

Someone sent me a wildly off-the-mark email about the "Trading Places" cartoon from two weeks ago, but it seems I accidentally deleted it. So I'll have to paraphrase.

You'll recall that cartoon was about the Senate bill which criminalized those who help a minor cross state lines to obtain an abortion without getting parental consent. The third panel showed a Senator having to seek permission to leave his state from a group of "abusive, alcoholic, mentally-ill, drug-addicted parents."

Well, this particular reader seemed to think I was suggesting that all anti-abortion parents are abusive, alcoholic, mentally-ill, etc. He accused me of demeaning millions of decent American families.

It never occurred to me that I would have to spell this out, but I was not in any way suggesting that all parents opposed to abortion are, as Axl Rose might say, on the Night Train. Nor are they loaded like a freight train, or flyin' like an aeroplane, or speedin' like a space brain one more time tonight. No, I was simply pointing out the obvious, which is that a teenage girl should not have to seek permission from some totally messed-up parent. The grandparent or clergy member or friend who helps her should not be put in jail, for heaven's sake. Sheesh!

The origins of this cartoon began a few weeks ago when I heard "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" playing in a local coffee shop. The song stuck in my head, repeating over and over, becoming a sort of internal Ob-La-Di channel. While I don't have satellite radio, I have fiddled with others' satellite radios, and I've read about the Elvis channel. So I came up with more micro-programming niches.

So you know how dedicated I am to the accuracy of my cartoons, I actually listened to Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like I Do" and watched a live concert video on YouTube. I have always found the talkbox effect disturbing, perhaps because it reminds me of people who have had their larynxes removed.

Okay, we're back in action here at the Slowpoke hut. Last week was my first trip to a beach in several years, not counting the Funny Times party last summer on Lake Erie (which has better beaches than you'd think). See, I like the beach, but as you might guess, I'm not so crazy about what passes for beach culture. So the hubbo and I decided to check out Ocracoke, a remote island off the coast of North Carolina accessible only by ferry. The entire beach is national parkland, and the quaint village contains no corporate chains to speak of. The locals pride themselves in a quiet, laid-back way of life, which appeals to my slowpoke sensibilities.

The island itself turned out to be perfectly charming. Our fellow visitors, on the other hand, were not quite the solitude-seeking set I'd anticipated. Let's just say the Expedition/Suburban/Hummer/hypermasculine-pickup factor was a little high. You see, four-wheel-drive vehicles are allowed on the beach in several areas, so people line up their cars in a row as far as the eye can see, thus turning an otherwise pristine natural area into a giant stinking parking lot. Only in America (I hope!) would people think to have a tailgate party on an unspoiled coastline. I mean, being sandwiched between a Yukon and a Navigator isn't exactly my idea of getting away from it all. Why travel to a remote island in the first place?

Fortunately, there were miles of gloriously empty beaches farther away from town. And there are people who come for the natural beauty. But I am struck at how challenging it can be to escape motorized vehicles, even in areas renowned for their isolation.

Click on photo for larger version. At peak hours, vehicles are more tightly-packed than this.