23 Responses to “Saturday Links/Open Thread”

1. #1 |  James Hill |  February 21st, 2009 at 5:05 am

   “Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict warrior code, or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands.”

   Yes, because humans certainly haven’t committed any atrocities and strongly stick to their moral codes. Clearly the robots are what we have to worry about.

      +8
2. #2 |  Marty |  February 21st, 2009 at 5:13 am

   terminator robots, the us govt torturing people in secret prisons, nonsensical drinking lawsuits… I need a drink.

      +4
3. #3 |  Mike H |  February 21st, 2009 at 6:42 am

   “You have to deform someone facially in order to make a larger point about their character,” Rauser said. “But that deformity reveals their inner truth and makes them look more like themselves.”

   What a load of horseshit. Political cartooning isn’t about making “larger points”, it’s about taking cheap shots. Subtlety and insight are not things these guys get paid to illustrate.

   I can’t remember the last cartoon I actually chuckled at – maybe it’s time to let this particular art form expire. Do we really need today’s vital, complex isssues distorted and dumbed-down into simplistic caricatures? I wouldn’t expect the Post to monkey (sorry) with its format, but why are broadsheets still running these Fleet Street throwbacks?

   Cartoons belong in the funny pages.

      +0
4. #4 |  AMW |  February 21st, 2009 at 8:55 am

   Not to worry…

   Old Glory Insurance now offers an insurance policy with a robot plan.

   http://www.hulu.com/watch/2340/saturday-night-live-old-glory

      +5
5. #5 |  billy-jay |  February 21st, 2009 at 8:55 am

   @Mike H:

   Maybe because the newspapers themselves have passed their expiration date?

      +3
6. #6 |  Chalicechick |  February 21st, 2009 at 8:56 am

   Cartoonists-

   I know this is a complicated issue. so I will try to lay out my explanation of how to draw cartoons about Obama without being racist clearly and carefully.

   Ready?

   OK…

   Don’t
   draw
   him
   as
   a
   monkey.

   Do you need me to go over that again?

      +13
7. #7 |  Marty |  February 21st, 2009 at 9:22 am

   @Mike H:

   ‘I can’t remember the last cartoon I actually chuckled at -’

   I didn’t know political cartoons were supposed to be for nice laughs. I think they can be an important tool to support or illuminate a point.

   I hope it’s not time to let them expire.

      +3
8. #8 |  Brian |  February 21st, 2009 at 9:29 am

   “Alcaraz was disturbed. “I try to bend over backwards not to make him look like a cartoon stereotype,” and certainly not a racial stereotype, he said.”

   That’s funny. They didn’t seem to be bothered by racial stereotypes whenever they drew pictures of Condaleeza Rice. But when your target is a Republican, instead of “The One”, it’s okay to draw them with big lips, watermelon in one hand, and a broom in the other while muttering “Yes Massah George”.

      +15
9. #9 |  CDH |  February 21st, 2009 at 10:14 am

   I think the problem really arose from the fact that the cartoonists at the Post know that 1) Barack Obama was NOT gunned down by police and 2) Congress writes bills, not the President.

   I know I had to have the outrage explained to me, because as someone who knows how Congress works, it never occurred to me that the monkey would represent Obama. Rather, the obvious conclusion was that the cartoonist was saying that Pelosi and Reid hired a monkey to write the bill for them.

   I suspect all the protesters know this, too. If the cartoon monkey REALLY represented the President of the United States, shouldn’t the bigger outrage be over the cartoonist mockingly celebrating an assassination? Eh, except Sharpton probably wouldn’t get as much camera time with that argument.

      +19
10. #10 |  Boyd Durkin |  February 21st, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Robots are rational and fiscal conservatives. I’ll take robots controlling robots over the state controlling robots.

    “I welcome our new overlords.” –Kent Brockman

       +2
11. #11 |  Frank |  February 21st, 2009 at 10:38 am

    What all the race warlords and butthurt Obummer brownshirt wannabes forget is that Obummer ceded the writing of the stimulus package to Pelsoi and company. So why did they assume that the chimpanzee (NOT monkey) in the cartoon was Obummer?

    Clearly they were looking for something to get riled up about and stretched this out as an excuse. Much like that brownshirt-with-a-badge in Oklahoma City.

       --14
12. #12 |  z |  February 21st, 2009 at 12:25 pm

    Opinion piece in Washington Post today goes further, suggest legalizing all drugs in U.S. to save Mexico and all of Latin America.

       +8
13. #13 |  nobahdi |  February 21st, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    If a cartoonist has previously drawn a white politician as a monkey, on several occasions–with no public outcry–it would be racist not to draw Obama as a monkey.

       +3
14. #14 |  Tim C |  February 21st, 2009 at 1:57 pm

    On the cartoonist thing – 1) I think the main point is that people need to get a life. Obama IS a monkey (I don’t mean racially or anything like that), for crying out loud. Actually, some monkeys are getting pretty smart, so no offense to them. 2) Political cartooning can be more than “cheap shots” – see http://www.coxandforkum.com/ for some of the best political cartoons I’ve ever seen. C&F are to be greatly missed, in my opinion. And Bloom County did nice crossover-into-politics stuff without getting all pedantic about it like Doonsebury does. Again, in my opinion.

       +0
15. #15 |  justin cook |  February 21st, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    Hmmm so http://www.bushorchimp.com is hilarious, but a cartoon about the people who wrote the stimulus bill (i.e. NOT Obama) is march-in-the-streets offensive. Gettin’ really tired of this self-righteous BS…

       +5
16. #16 |  John Markis |  February 21st, 2009 at 9:45 pm

    Rick Santelli for President 2012!!!!!

       +0
17. #17 |  Zargon |  February 21st, 2009 at 11:00 pm

    “Man kidnapped, tortured, detained for two-and-a-half years then released”

    This is news? It’s already happened to the hundreds of thousands caught smoking pot (or are we on millions now?). Oh. The other war. The government needs to step up the war on terror so that people like these are statistics instead of people like they do in the war on drugs. Once there’s a couple hundred thousand statistics under the belt for the war on terror, this won’t be such a problem.

       +3
18. #18 |  Jim Collins |  February 22nd, 2009 at 6:39 am

    Anything criticizing Obama is going to be considered rascist by some people no matter how you do it.

       +0
19. #19 |  Stephen |  February 22nd, 2009 at 8:15 am

    Since it’s open thread..

    http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Ron_Paul_Dispose_of_drug_war_0221.html

       +2
20. #20 |  CC |  February 22nd, 2009 at 10:03 am

    1. I can recall LOTS of instances of monkeys being used to make fun of Obama like this one, and this one and this one and this one

    Yes, Bush-or-Chimp existed, but it certainly didn’t catch on as a pervasive thing the way Obama monkey comparison did among people who hate Obama. You don’t see people in Bush or Chimp t shirts or bringing chimp dolls to rallies. That’s the difference between something that’s merely stupid and something that is stupid and gives people a chance to “innocently” be racists.

    And to me, the fact that this monkey had been violently killed is significant, too. Both because of the assassination plots against Obama and because it’s a level of threat that other politician-as-monkey comparisons have surely lacked.

    2. The “if a cartoonist has previously drawn a white politician as a monkey, on several occasions–with no public outcry–it would be racist not to draw Obama as a monkey” point is ridiculous.

    Some things come off as racist when applied to one person and do not when applied to another.

    For example, if you’re white, and I ask you if your Dad works at seven eleven, that’s just a strange question. If you’re Indian and I ask if your dad works at the seven eleven, that’s a strange question that is touching on the cultural stereotype of Indian guys working at convenience stores and it’s almost certainly me making fun of you.

    3. I’ve seen lots of criticisms of Obama that haven’t been called racist.

    4. There has been lots of discussion over whether various cartoons about Condoleeza Rice are racist, too. I’d say the reasons the outcry on this is bigger are that Obama’s the president and this monkey had been shot.

    5. For all that, I still don’t think it was intended to be racist. It was an example of what I think of as “Niggardly syndrome” because “Niggardly” is a word that is not racist but is OBVIOUSLY going too be taken that way. In my opinion, politicians who use the word “Niggardly” aren’t racists, but they are stupid for not seeing how the word will be taken so I’m still not inclined to vote for them. I can accept that there was some chimpanzee shooting someplace and this was a reference to that. But for the reasons outlined above, I think the people who ran this cartoon are morons for not seeing what other people are going to see in it.

       --5
21. #21 |  newshutz |  February 22nd, 2009 at 2:01 pm

    “Don’t draw him as a monkey”

    Is Obama dead?

    Even if Obama claims to have written the bill, it is clear that the cartoon is claiming that the author is now dead.

    I guess Obama can join Paul in the list of the dead and replaced.

       --3
22. #22 |  Bill |  February 23rd, 2009 at 8:49 am

    You know, this morning is the first time I had the chance to sit down and seek out the “monkey” cartoon. Of course, having heard all the hype and furor, it was probably impossible to be completely objective, but I just saw it as “this bill was so bad, a monkey probably wrote it”. Yes, insensitive considering the chimpanzee story was tragic, but I think it requires either a willful ignorance of our political system or an axe to grind (or maybe both) to see it as a racist shot at Obama.

    While CC is absolutely right that certain remarks are only racist in a specific context–the example of “does your dad own a 7-11?” is certainly apt, the question of portrayals of Bush as a monkey versus the allegations that this cartoon portrays Obama as a monkey (or chimp, for you primate purists) yields some interesting mental gymnastics:

    Fifty years ago, it would have been socially “inappropriate” to portray a white guy as an ape. You couldn’t make fun of a white guy as an ape–you could only do that to a black guy. It was wrong, of course, and racist, but ape=negro was a part of the cultural shorthand, and doing it to a white guy wouldn’t have made any sense.

    Now, because we’ve advanced beyond that, it is absolutely inappropriate to portray a black guy as an ape, because of that race-tainted history. Now it’s ONLY appropriate to use the ape=caucasian comparison. So, is someone eligible to be made fun of by comparing them to an ape? I don’t know. Is he black, or white? Oh, he’s white. Then it’s fine. ‘Cause I wouldn’t want to be racist, and treat people differently on the basis of the color of their skin or anything, you know?

       +3
23. #23 |  CC |  February 23rd, 2009 at 10:39 am

    I think everything works that way, though:

    “Hey, this is a cool pattern to sew my quilt in, but it’s a swastika. Is it 1908 or 2008?”

    CC

       +1

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