This editorial cartoon by the great Michael Ramirez was published by the Washington Post on November 7 and withdrawn the next day after complaints that the cartoon was "racist."
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| Ramirez combines strong opinions with strong drawing abilities-- the ideal combination for an editorial cartoonist. |
Several forces now threaten the once-great institution of editorial cartoons. Among them are the dwindling circulation of newspapers and the sensationalism of the 24/7 cable news cycle. But there's an even larger issue: whether modern newspapers and their audiences still have the stomach for caricature.
Cartoons have an important history of offending targets in ways that words cannot. The corrupt politician "Boss" Tweed famously said he was unafraid of what newspapers wrote, but "those damned pictures" by cartoonist Thomas Nast had to stop. Tweed was right to be concerned; cartoons toppled his regime, and as a fugitive from justice he was identified from Nast's drawings.
When cartoonist David Low savagely depicted the Nazis on the eve of World war II, the German government formally protested to the British government. Low explained his strategy: "To draw a hostile war lord as a horrible monster is to play his game. What he doesn't like is being shown as a silly ass."
Hitler was reported to have personally put a price on the head of cartoonist Arthur Szyk for his cartoons lampooning the "master race."
Victims of caricature have always pressured newspapers to stop, and newspapers have had to find the courage to stand up to the pressure.
Today, villains who are indignant about being ridiculed have found more effective ways to get editorial cartoons removed. Experience shows that nothing can cause the Washington Post to retreat faster than an allegation of "racism," whether the allegation had any basis or not.
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| Racism? Caricature by Ramirez (left) of Hamas official (right) |
The same tactic was used when cartoonist Ann Telnaes drew a cartoon criticizing Senator Ted Cruz for filming his small daughters reading an attack ad against his competitor. Telnaes drew them as performing monkeys.
Cruz's allies shrewdly recognized that the best way to get the cartoon removed was to allege that the cartoon was "racist"-- a ridiculous charge, but The Post immediately caved and withdrew the cartoon.
The removal of Ramirez's cartoon last week shows that the trick still works.
So what kind of editorial cartoons can safely pass muster at the Washington Post today? Three days after withdrawing the Ramirez cartoon, the Post editorial page ran the following edentulous cartoon:
Bland lifestyle cartoons are no threat to anyone. But compare the draftsmanship and the content of this cartoon to the brilliant and biting humor of Ramirez.
Newspapers shouldn't withdraw editorial cartoons just because the target feels offended. Those newspapers that do, no longer understand the nature of caricature and might want to consider getting out of the editorial cartoon business.
72 comments:
Caricature and race just don't mix well.
In cartooning, anything we can project ourselves onto is inherently humanizing. Everyone can identify with a smiley face. To make the audience feel what a character feels, cartoon features are kept non-specific. This allows everyone to see themselves in the face. Every boy is Tin Tin. Every girl is Elsa.
Conversely, caricature exaggerates what is specific about a face. The more specific and emphasized the traits of a face, the more other it becomes. The less likable it becomes. Great for attacking someone but totally ineffective for creating relatable or humanized characters. I think we can probably all agree that that is how caricature works.
But I would argue that caricature doesn’t just make the face unlikable this way, but makes the exaggerated features themselves unlikable by association.
There's nothing inherently unlikable about straight teeth or big ears. However, when these traits are exaggerated, as in caricatures of Obama, those traits themselves become supremely punchable. A large philtrum is not unlikable on its own. But when caricatures of Bush exaggerate his philtrum to a quarter of his face, it becomes emblematic of something wrong with him.
The art of caricature makes these implicit arguments about the subject of the picture that are inherently physiognomic. We feel that we can tell something about the worst qualities of the person based on these entirely hereditary features.
This implicit physiognomy of caricature becomes immediately troublesome (problematic, even, you might say) when applied to faces that are ethnically characteristic. Whether characteristically black, Asian, or jewish features, when those features are taken to extreme, the features become unlikable through this otherizing quality of caricature.
In Ramirez's case: There’s nothing inherently unlikable about the racially characteristic Palestinian eyebrows of Ghazi Hamadi, for example. They’re just an accident of evolution. But when exaggerated so heavily, it makes those features themselves become unlikeable (as intended). We feel that these eyebrows tell us that Hamadi is evil, rather than merely that he is Palestinian. He is evil, but it’s not because of his eyebrows. It’s just because he wants to kill Jewish people.
Recognizing these knee-jerk physiognomic feelings about racial characteristics, the WaPo readers of the world react by accusing the picture itself of being “racist”. I don’t think a picture can be racist, but I do think they can cause us to have negative feelings about racially characteristic features. Those aren't the same thing, but I wouldn't bother trying to fight that battle, you can't win that one.
I don't agree with many of Ramirez's cartoons (he's to conservative for my tastes) but I admire his craftsmanship.
Racist or not, this cartoon makes me sick. It's the combination of draftsmanship, blame games, the cute kids drawn, and the existence of the real pictures of someone pulling the lifeless body of a small girl from the rubble of a bombed building, with her scull open where you can see her brain is not there anymore but her eyes are still open.
There's something in my thinking that just short circuits.
Another fine caricaturist I remember from my youth was Bruce Stark whose work appeared in the NY Daily News and TV guide. His sport figure and famous actors caricatures were really great. His son Ron became a renown artist as well.
”Caricature exaggerates what is specific about a face. The more specific and emphasized the traits of a face, the more other it becomes. The less likable it becomes.”
Comedy is often unfair. But exaggeration and editing alone do not make something or someone unlikable. Because any characteristic or quality of being or sensibility can be exaggerated.
Hirschfeld’s caricature of Howard Cosell brings out his affable, lovable side.
Meanwhile another excellent caricature of Cosell brings out his forthrightness and intelligence (I presume by David Levine).
Neither caricature makes Cosell unlikable, in my view. Even though both are converting him into an unreal/hyper-real stand-alone aesthetic entity (everything in art is 'othered' by being converted into aesthetic forces that are yoked as much to an idea as reality.)
> Hirschfeld’s caricature of Howard Cosell brings out his affable, lovable side.
I think caricature by definition must look more like the person than a photo of the person does itself. It does that by exagerrating the most individual and specific features of the person's face. These pictures don't do that.
This first is uniformly less specific. It has generalized away all the information of his face. It turns towards Tin Tin, not away from him. Personally, I would not classify this as caricature at all.
The second picture feels to me more like the illusion of caricature. It too does not feel more like Cosell than Cosell himself, but rather has been endowed with several “caricature-like” distortions and tropes.
In this case, the artist has stiched together a mostly in-scale top and bottom of his head. Within those two areas, features have become less unique rather than more.
His eyes are less hooded, less fish-like. His lower lip is less unkempt. His overbite has been softened. His jowls less full. His nose, while large in comparison to the silhouette of his head and eyes, is roughly proportionate to his mouth and ears and is made rounder, less drooping, less distinctive, more anglicized.
In the few aspects where the second picture is more exaggerated and specific, such as his chin skin and his tie, it has become equally more punchable.
xopxe are you saying there can't be a good picture about a bad situation? Would this be a better picture for you if it ridiculed Netanyahu?
JSL
"In the few aspects where the second picture is more exaggerated and specific, such as his chin skin and his tie, it has become equally more punchable."
I see. The ways in which these excellent caricatures don't conform to your theory, they are not caricatures at all. Because of your newly introduced criteria: that a caricature must make you personally feel like it is more like the target than the actual person.
And where these caricatures do meet your personal exaggeration threshold, they are in fact more 'punchable.' So they must be actual caricatures, just as you decreed. No True Scotsman would disagree.
JSL, there can be a good picture about a bad situation. This one is not. As it is, the tone mismatch between what is going on and the soulless way this is handled is just so jarring.
It just all looks so sick in the mind. There are literally thousands of small children being reduced to a pulp by billions worth of the highest technology humankind has produced ever, in the middle of the most racist and dehumanizing discourse this century has seen, and then some of the most influential media conglomerate on the planet earth publishes this weird ass blame shifting piece in the form of beautifully rendered caricature of someone nobody knows who exactly he is or how he looks. They had to add a label on him for us to know what their point was, as if it was a The Onion parody. At the same time, the way the actual tragedy is used is just sick. See all those cute kids and that woman? They are actually dead, we all saw phone videos of their bodies.
So, in a weird turn of events, yes, if this same cartoon was made with a caricature of Netanyahu it would be better: would make at least the same amount of sense, and we all would know who he is. I still would expect some sense of anger or urgency to be transpired.
> your newly introduced criteria: that a caricature must make you personally feel like it is more like the target than the actual person.
I didn't think I was inventing this criteria, honest. I thought everyone agreed that a caricature is by definition a drawing that exaggerates what is specific, unique, and characteristic about a face.
I don't know a better word, so I'll say this quality I think is essential in caricature is 'hyper-truth'.
Let's take three kinds of Trump drawings, for example --
1. Once can journalistically draw one of the buffoonish faces Trump makes. It may be true that he makes this face, but one can easily ignore it. Cuneo's Trump faces all fall into this category. They're nice drawings, and the faces are true, but they're not terribly effective. He's left trying to score political points by giving Trump a small dick or killing babies or whatever. Cringe.
2. You can make Trump buffoonish by just drawing him extra ugly or stupid. Make him really obese, make him cross eyed, give him ugly teeth, give him a blank or evil stare, balding with cheeto colored skin, etc.
Plenty of otherwise great caricaturists, who just couldn't get Trump to look suitably terrible to suit their tastes, would stoop to just falsifying things about his face to get their point across. But those pictures weren't based in truth, so they were crappy caricatures. (This also works in reverse, making the individual more handsome than in reality, as with Ben Garrison.) Also cringe.
3. But I think what makes masterful caricature is that special drawing that feels more Trump than a photo of Trump himself. The caricature has become hyper-true. The drawing has become undeniable because it is distilled fact. Looking at pictures like this, we feel that we are learning something about the man. We are made aware of truths that were already there. Physiognomic truths that tell us about the deepest weaknesses and sins in a man's soul.
The Howard Cosell illustrations you linked are great drawings. Beautiful draftsmanship, fun exagerrations. But they don't feel hyper-true. I learn nothing about Cosell having looked at them, because they aren't true. I would prefer to say they're merely not caricatures, in deference to the quality draftsmanship. But if you insist that they are indeed caricatures, then I am left to say that they are bad ones.
Richard wrote: "The more specific and emphasized the traits of a face, the more other it becomes. The less likable it becomes."
I'm not sure I understand your point. There are plenty of caricatures that emphasize likable traits of a face-- a strong chin or nose, penetrating eyes; there are cute and cuddly caricatures of children, animals, beautiful exaggerations of women. Most political cartoons are hostile because of their subject matter, but that's not essential to the nature of caricature. Mort Drucker said he made a point of not exaggerating unattractive features because he thought that was a cheap shot. If someone had a particularly huge nose, he wouldn't exaggerate the obvious; he would build the likeness elsewhere. He viewed it as something of a challenge.
To the extent race is a major element in one's physical appearance, I don't know how you can say "Caricature and race just don't mix well." You're not suggesting, I hope, that the facial attributes of race are somehow verboten?
Movieac-- I'm with you. I disagree with most of Ramirez's positions, but for me that doesn't affect the beauty, humor and intelligence of his work. I am quite capable of appreciating excellence, even in someone who votes differently than I.
xopxe -- Here too, I'm having trouble following. You've thrown out a bunch of issues: the existence of photographs of the horrifying impact of this war on children, the "blame games" going on, the draftsmanship (hunh?), the cuteness of the kid. I'm not sure how these fit together. And then you have some quasi-issues: "racist or not." And also your medical condition: "this cartoon makes me sick." Are you saying that under the circumstances, all artist should be screaming obscenities rather than drawing cute kids and caricatures? Or that artsts should leave the subject alone altogeher? What is the appropriate artistic response to "someone pulling the lifeless body of a small girl from the rubble of a bombed building, with her skull open where you can see her brain is not there"? I take it you aren't persuaded by David Low's theory that "To draw a hostile war lord as a horrible monster is to play his game. What he doesn't like is being shown as a silly ass."
Movieac-- Interesting. I didn't know that about Bruce Stark's son.
Kev Ferrara-- I agree. But I'd say Hirschfeld’s caricature of Howard Cosell brings out an affable, lovable side that Cosell didn't really have. Cosell owes Hirschfeld for that one.
Richard wrote: "caricature by definition must look more like the person than a photo of the person does itself."
I'd say that caricature must say something true about the person, but that often plays up a particular side of their personality-- arrogance, venality, ignorance... these visual commentaries don't look more like the person than a photo, but may be more true.
Anonymous / JSL-- I share your confusion. I couldn't tell if the problem was the side of the dispute that Ramirez chose to attack.
xopxe-- your further elaboration reinforces my sense that your rage over the war is what "short circuits" your reaction. Artists have commented on wars as savage and unfair as this one. Goya certainly did. Kollwitz did. David Low did. Otto Dix did. George Grosz did. Is your point that there were no cell phone photographs of those wars? Some of those drawings were metaphorical (as with Goya's "sleep of reason") and some of them were quite literal (as with Goya's etchings of dismembered peasants being impaled on sharpened tree stumps.)
Ramirez could scream himself hoarse over the unfairness of war, or he could post angry ineffectual screeds on the internet like everyone else, or he could do what a good artist does-- break off a small, manageable piece of the larger conflagration and use artistic tools to communicate a meaningful message. He doesn't purport to say here who started the war, or who is most blameworthy or which side has more casualties. He says: here is the height of hypocrisy, one side doing exactly what he is indignantly accusing the other side of doing. Meanwhile, the hapless, innocent confused victims are sympathetic characters who deserve none of this. More than the person who is using them for shields or the people who are continuing to fire at him nevertheless, it seems to me that this drawing is sympathetic to the victims.
"I thought everyone agreed that a caricature is by definition a drawing that exaggerates what is specific, unique, and characteristic about a face."
If this were so easily ascertained all caricatures would look more or less the same. But they don't. To be an artist is to notice more than other people and uniquely. But also truly, so that anyone can recognize the affinity of the insight to reality.
Also, we're all malleable, we all contain multitudes and pass through multiple moods; we go through phases in a day. You don't look the same just waking up as at dinner time, telling people what to do versus being told what to do, different on a Saturday than on a Tuesday. We go through phases in life where we are more funny than at other times, more intellectual, more worried, more exhausted or energetic, more put together, pudgier, more impatient, and so.
It is not only in fact a subjective matter as to what is specific, unique and characteristic about a face, but also just what makes that aspect characteristic, and just how one would articulate that. And a big question is just how much is the gist caused by a particular feature versus a particular relationship among features? Many times, people do not notice just how much character is coming from the less obvious features and aspects and from proportions and relationships. Sometimes even skin color or value. (For instance, if someone were to come up to me claiming to have done a fine caricature of Jimmy Durante, I might say, "Okay, show me everything but the nose.")
The old artists talked of the face as a mask over the true spirit of a person. So that even as the face changed through life or illness, as features distorted or sagged, there was a unique dynamic underneath that came from the mind or soul or personality that stayed consistent.
Then more subjective questions: How much to exaggerate? What to omit? How real should I be? How do I feel about this person? How do I want the audience to feel about him?
And each good caricaturist has his own style and modes of operation; likes drawing ears a certain way or jawlines or eyeballs.
And even the caricaturist is changing. You think David Levine, Abe Hirschfeld, and Mort Drucker don't themselves contain multitudes and go through phases? The funhouse mirror is always changing, even as established style seems to hold continuity.
David--
When I said there can be a good picture about a bad situation I had specifically Goya and Dix pop into my mind. When I look at their work I see they are angry, even broken inside. They live in the same world they are depicting. Could any of them have produced something like the cartoon discussed? Hell no.
That cartoon is from another universe. It's a US editorial cartoon that, on its professionalism, could have been about anything. When I mention the photos of piles of dead bodies this is part of what I mean, that such a reality is handled in such a generic, pipelined "here are the talk points do something with it" way, looks obscene to me.
And this leads to the sympathy issue, where my perspective is different. The point of this cartoon, directly expressed in the depiction, is that the not-even-dead are not important. They are cute and loveable and innocent and sort of generic, but they are the periphery of the real problem: THAT guy (or his label, because you don't who he is). And this is exactly the line the well thinking use to write the photos of those actual dead off. Which is doubly sick given that the people actually infringing those deaths openly say among themselves "fuck them, let them burn". Just read their press, not the Washington Post. I'm sure the racial supremacists and religious zealots pulling the trigger watch that cartoon and smirk.
So yes, this cartoon causes a physiological reaction in me. If I only was an artist good enough to express how sick it all is.
infringing -> inflicting, and so on. Never type on a phone.
Oh, and on Low's theory, I do believe it to be true, even without knowing much about the psychology of evil warlords.
But there's an even more important rule for humor. Mocking can be a weapon of justice when used by the weak against the strong. When the strong uses is against the weaker it's just not funny.
> There are plenty of caricatures that emphasize likable traits of a face-- a strong chin or nose, penetrating eyes
What I am saying is that any likable trait becomes unlikeable if sufficiently distilled. Big boobs or a big booty on a skinny lady is great. But if you sufficiently distill and exaggerate those features they eventually become a moral failing.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a bad ass dude. But if you sufficiently exaggerate his square jaw, thick neck, or muscularity they turn into criticisms. When cute children are caricatured, the cuteness sufficiently exaggerated becomes nauseating, they begin to look almost parasitic.
A good caricaturist can make handsomeness or beauty itself so exaggerated that it becomes an offense. The very act of distillation and exaggeration produces unlikeable faces out of any qualities or traits.
> If this were so easily ascertained all caricatures would look more or less the same.
I don't think so, for the same reason that saying a round is "A short musical piece in which multiple voices sing the same melody but start the song at different times." doesn't mean that every round sounds the same.
That caricature as a genre has commonalities that make it identifiable from other portraiture, does not mean that it doesn't contain all of the artistic depth of other genres of portraiture. Everything else you said it right.
> When the strong uses is against the weaker it's just not funny.
Sounds like Xopxe's argument here just boils down to Palestinians good/Israelis bad, which was probably the thrust of most of the criticism against Ramirez.
"When cute children are caricatured, the cuteness sufficiently exaggerated becomes nauseating, they begin to look almost parasitic."
You are vacillating in your claims between exaggeration per se causing detestability versus sufficient extreme exaggeration causing it.
And further you seem to be defining caricature now as a likeness that is sufficiently exaggerated in its telling characteristics that it becomes nauseating, ugly, and detestable. But I only recognize that in edge cases of caricature (Sebastian Krüger at his most distortional and cruel, for instance).
Many stars, for example, wanted to own Hischfeld's caricatures of themselves. Just as many stars wanted to own Mort Drucker's interpretations of their movies, and Mad Magazine covers that they were represented on. Why would someone want to own detestable representations of themselves? It doesn't make sense. Why would anybody want to own caricatures of their favorite stars or personalities if they were made detestable by the caricaturing?
So I think it a wild overstep to assert that all exaggeration or distillation results in such grotesquery in a representation that it causes some variant of antipathy in the audience.
After all, all great art includes exaggeration and distillation; and is beautiful, often to the point of being transcendent because of the exaggeration and distillation. (After all, what is the expression of a composition?)
Damn. Brandolini's Law gets me every time.
Richard, sounds like you saying that makes you feel clean from not actually caring for the carnage.
Is that how this works?
"When the strong uses it against the weaker it's just not funny."
"Sounds like Xopxe's argument here just boils down to Palestinians good/Israelis bad,"
Israel v Palestine is just the specific instance in a larger framework, although a key battleground in the grand evil game.
The larger framework involved is the Postmodern addendum to Marxist class warfare rhetoric that came out of the college grievance 'studies' departments. Wherein every moral judgment is reduced in complexity down to childishly simple power dynamics where all that matters is 'weak' or 'strong'.
The whole purpose of the ideological media(tion) is to control what simple belief the flock holds about who is weak-thus-good versus who is strong-thus-bad. Photography is a big part of this strategy; always show your target demographic your dead babies, not theirs. Always show the poverty versus the wealth, never the ineptitude versus the industriousness. Etc.
This is all based on controlling/hijacking mass compassion and empathy among the hyper-empathetic in order to start a political cascade in sentiment in order to eventually win material gains for your cause/people and justify the murder and destruction of hated enemies.
The fact that such rhetorical tactics have become so common, institutionalized and disproportionately target women - goes a long way towards explaining why the incidence of misery and mental illness among women has skyrocketed in recent years. Women are much more prone to focus on the negative. This is why TicToc is such a sinister and devious weapon for the enemies of freedom and the west.
As I've said often, politics is mostly about the mass distortion of common information through manipulative media and biased-but-claiming-to-be-neutral 'information sources'. To ultimately benefit one side materially. That radical Islam and Communists have made common cause using common propaganda tactics should be no surprise to anybody who knows anything about either the 1967 war or Ideology in general.
I get analyzed by Kev again, and again it's the cringiest.
First, I'm from Latin America, I don't know what "college grievance 'studies' departments" are you talking about. My niche leftist tradition is early XX-century Italian quarry-working anarchist immigrants organizing labor strikes.
Second, I said the strong making fun of the weak is not fun. I never mentioned being right. You are doing a reverse projection: being a right-wing conservative, you mix being strong with being right. That's typical of the right, to the extreme of the fascists considering that being strong IS being right. So you project on the left, assuming the left equals being weak with being right, which is just kind of funny to us. We have a long tradition of problematizing strength and justice. From the theology of the liberation people and their Christian perspective, which is the closest to what you imply, to the Marxists asking where the source of strength is, to the gazillion of revolutionary orientations discussing how to get strong and how power should be administered. For the right handling power is just natural, for us it's a huge problem.
Then comes you talking about the hijacking of hyper-empathetic people through media to justify murder and destruction of the enemies... The lack of self-reflection in this is just mind-boggling. Tip: scroll to the top of this page and check what this is about.
So, you just know nothing about ideology in general. You are just very good at convincing yourself you are correct in not having basic human reactions when presented with human tragedy.
"You are doing a reverse projection: being a right-wing conservative (...) That's typical of the right, to the extreme of the fascists considering that being strong IS being right."
When standing at 'The Left Pole" every direction is right.
One of us is definitely ideologically hijacked (which is to say, emotionally hijacked - because ideology runs on negative emotion). Let's figure out who!
Of course I don't believe that 'strong IS right'. Strong doesn't mean 'wrong' either. One has nothing whatsoever to do with the other. Except insofar as power corrupts slightly more effectively than desperation.
Although the combination - desperate and powerful - describes the most dangerous thugs of all. From failed states and goon-laden Juntas that govern ineptly, to collapsing corrupt business models, to street hustlers aging out of the life.
"I said the strong making fun of the weak is not fun."
In framing it this way you prove my earlier point about the radical pomo-left and pathological compassion; characterizing complex conflicts in terms of simple dogmatic emotion-laden power dynamics which have been assigned to the parties involved irrevocably via mass leftist mediation as quasi-religious declarations.
Which, to dissent from, results in a form of excommunication (Either take down this cartoon or you will be cancelled, shamed, mobbed, doxxed, and immiserated!)
You've clearly gotten the message too, though you seem not to even realize it. Which is by design in effective indoctrination. Whether you got on board the program via college indoctrination or global leftist media or local comrades or by which photographs were shown to you and which weren't doesn't matter. Everybody in the cult works in tandem to always make sure the whole choir is reading from the same hymn book. Both the top-down and emergent organization and information-control is incredible.
Incidentally, the Italian side of my family was kicked out of Italy because my grandfather's older brother was a freedom fighter against Mussolini and the damned "Fascista!" as my grandfather used to yell when he'd get worked up. (I think my grandfather just saw all tyranny as fascism, he wasn't technical about the definition which is about the iron-fisted oppression and corruption that results when there is collusion between government and business in ruling over a populace and profiting.)
My politics are all over the map. Mainly because my religion is Art. I detest propaganda of every sort, and see it as all antithetical and destructive to Art, competitive with it, and constantly usurping its power to its own ends. Even when it pays for art or does good in the world, I think propaganda is bad for Art.
Where there is propaganda there is always censorship awaiting. Because propaganda dies in the light of truth. So truth must be boxed out of the public space and crushed. And where censorship is so enforceable, tyranny awaits. Because tyranny is the only way to stop information.
> Of course I don't believe that 'strong IS right'.
Then why did you assume I thought weak is right? When a bunch of skinheads tries to disrupt a punk joint only to discover they are vastly outnumbered and get tramped over, I have no doubt who is in the wrong and who is in the right. And because there is no mocking involved I find it actually funny.
>"I said the strong making fun of the weak is not fun."
>
>In framing it this way you prove my earlier point about the radical pomo-left and pathological
>compassion; characterizing complex conflicts in terms of simple dogmatic emotion-laden power
>dynamics which have been assigned to the parties involved irrevocably via mass leftist
>mediation as quasi-religious declarations.
What? It's just one of the basic lessons of schoolyard ethics. Stuff everybody should learn as a kid to avoid being an arsehola as a grown up.
When a bunch of skinheads tries to disrupt a punk joint only to discover they are vastly outnumbered and get tramped over, I have no doubt who is in the wrong and who is in the right.
Skinheads come with a strongly negative moral valence attached, even before they start the fight. Then they start the fight. So this isn't really a difficult model you've set up to exhibit your judiciousness.
What? It's just one of the basic lessons of schoolyard ethics. Stuff everybody should learn as a kid to avoid being an #*$&% as a grown up.
Yeah, you still are unable to grok the framing argument. It's all first-order emotional reaction for you based on hypersensitivity, confirmation bias and schoolyard simplicity. And because of that, you're stuck as a foot soldier in the propaganda war, and you'll never be able to get outside that box.
Emotions are the problem, not the solution. Emotions are being weaponized on a mass scale via global billion-dollar technology-based campaigns. And the only result will be more and more death and horror. And more and more emotions; moaning and bewailing and the rending of garments until the end of days.
Have a good one.
Wow, just wow.
Not much analysis is really neded here.
The cartoon is problematic because it does not adequately convey the singular identity of the person being caricaturized. The majority (by far) of the North American audience this was aimed at would not have recognized the supposed target of ridicule, and thus it becomes, at best, a caricature of an organization (if and only if said audience is in possession of non-caricatured knowledge of Hamas, which is doubtful) or a caricature of a people (by far the most likely scenario).
The only complexity lies in determining precisely where, from the cartoonist's poorly communicated idea to its reception by poorly informed audience, the obvious aligment with the tradition of portraying jews as vermin occurs.
"It makes me sick" sounds like a political opinion, not an artistic judgment.
"The cartoon is problematic"
Weird. Sounds like you're more offended by a cartoon than real life.
Just to ensure we're not dealing with a sociopath, please hyperlink us to you discussing how offended you were and how problematic it was when, in real life, Hamas killed more than a thousand innocent Israelis in their initial raid, murdering and raping women, brain bashing children, ending the lives of babies by various means, and so on. I'm sure you've seen the photographs or at least heard the stories, and since this topic is obviously important to you (enough to comment here at least) you've surely commented elsewhere where we can see.
Of course, 'Anonymous' you'll need to give up being anonymous to demonstrate that you're not just some cowardly political hack here to obfuscate rampant and wanton violence and murder against Jews by commenting on the supposedly 'problematic' nature of a cartoon. (Presumably the tactic of 'problematizing' is in order to not just negate a piece of effective propaganda against your side, but to prevent any such 'offensive' effective propaganda being made public in the future by scaring the hypersensitive and pusillanimous off the topic entirely.)
Once we see that link to you talking about how 'problematic' real life murder and barbaric violence against Jews is, we'll know you aren't just some rabid Jew-hater pretending to be an intellectual.
Then you can tell us how offended you were about the cartoon. Deal?
>>The cartoon is problematic
What about the idea of Dhimmmitude under Sharia Law? Dhimmis are second class citizens forced to pay more taxes and often killed for minor offenses. Everybody but Muslims is a lower-tier citizen. Dhimmitude makes every state under Sharia into an Apartheid state. Same people who call Israel an apartheid state, even though arabs and muslims have more rights in Israel than in the rest of the Middle East, never mention that Sharia itself is a call to tribalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, bigotry, antisemitism and warfare against the 'infidel.' Way more offensive that a stupid cartoon. But people don't know history. They're brainwashed.
JPL
1. «The only complexity lies in determining precisely where, from the cartoonist's poorly communicated idea to its reception by poorly informed audience, the obvious aligment with the tradition of portraying jews as vermin occurs.»
2. The last two comments.
QED.
Nobody knows what you're talking about dude. The hamas terrorist guy is being portrayed as sinister not some kind of 'vermin' animal that needs to be exterminated.
Since Hamas want to wipe out the jews, they're the nazis here anyhow. And since they use children as human shields, which is as sick as sick goes, sinister fits.
If you don't like it, draw your own cartoon. Or go cry in the corner. Hamas are obviously jew killers and have done the blood-libel thing any number of times and even their charter is basically a death warrant for jews. They teach their children hate 24-7. Their used to be videos online of a children reciting antisemetic preaching. Can't find it now. I feel sorry for the palestinian kids under their reign. But their ideology is poison. Sounds to me like you don't mind Jews being killed. amiright?
JPL
After all, all great art includes exaggeration and distillation
Agreed. So I have to ask, how do you define caricature then? Is that just a synonym for portraiture, since any portrait will have been exaggerated or distilled to some degree?
Do you at least agree that caricature definitionally implies more exaggeration or distillation than portrait at large?
This is all based on controlling/hijacking mass compassion and empathy among the hyper-empathetic
Emotions are the problem, not the solution.
Generally speaking, I think it's insufficient compassion masquerading as compassion which is the problem.
The left is, for example, nominally compassionate for Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs (that's good, children deserve compassion), but lack broader compassion for the Israeli children surrounded by Arabs who want to exterminate them.
It's police violence all over again. Cops sometimes kill innocent kids, this is bad. The nominally compassionate recognize this, and call for defunding the police. But the police catch criminals, and criminals also kill innocent kids. To the degree you help one, you hurt the other.
The truly compassionate, the person who sees both the Israeli child and the Palestinian child as their own, doesn't have easy answers because there aren't any. Reality is whack. It's the trolley problem, except no one is quite sure how many kids are on either track, no one can see the future, and no one really even knows where the trolley is headed.
Many of the reactions to this Ramirez cartoon seem to be driven by political anger and emotion rather than the quality of the drawing or the quality of the humor.
Some commenters argue that it's bad because it sides with the strong over the weak. (This makes little sense to me, as I thought it was siding with the weak Palestinian civilians who were being mistreated by the stronger Hamas.) Other commenters argue that it is "problematic because it does not adequately convey the singular identity of the person being caricaturized" so for the uneducated newspaper reader, "it becomes, at best, a caricature of an organization." (This makes little sense to me because I've never heard that you can't caricature an organization, and the whole point of cartoons is that they are comprehensible to uneducated or hasty readers who don't intend to read an historical treatise.) Some argue that the cartoon is "obscene" because it is not sufficiently angry about the deaths in the war. (Instead of drawing like Goya or Dix, Ramirez draws with "professionalism [that] could have been about anything."
This last point is one that we've discussed before on this blog. Is art stronger when the artist retains control or loses it due to the strength of his or her emotions? I've previously quoted Peter Viereck for the proposition that "art, being bartender, is never drunk." (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2012/08/magic-that-believes-itself.html )
Putting politics aside (as I often must do with Ramirez) I think this is a strong, excellent cartoon and the decision by the Washington Post to remove it shows that the Post is not only weak but doesn't understand the nature of caricature.
"how do you define caricature then? Is that just a synonym for portraiture, since any portrait will have been exaggerated or distilled to some degree?"
Well, caricature is a type of portraiture, but one where certain qualities or aspects are emphasized to produce a noticeable outsized or cartoonish effect. Any aspect of the person can be emphasized and any aspect diminished to assist the effect. And any style can be used. (So we can say that both Hirschfeld and Krüger are tilling the same field, even though their styles are a world apart.)
The exaggerations and distillations by Sargent are much more subtle. And I don’t think the average person is going to have the sensitivity to see just how much artistry he’s is putting in there. Fechin is roughly equivalent to Sargent in the amount of exaggeration he’s putting into his portraits. The thing with both of them is that they draw so well, and they’re both such excellent students of character, that they thoroughly justify their abstractions and emphases.
Norman Rockwell is just slightly more exaggerated than Sargent and Fechin, which you would expect.
And as he goes more for the laugh, Rockwell gets a bit more cartoony with the features. But he still keeps defending what he’s doing with unbelievable draughtsmanship. (Just look at the structure in Rosie’s nose.)
I think the real scale to pay attention to, where portrait crosses over into caricature, is believability and the sublimation of the abstractions. When does the audience start to notice the exaggeration? When do they start sensing humor? That’s where caricature begins. In my opinion. It is the point where even the most diligent justification with structural naturalism can’t fully sublimate the cartoonification.
So I agree with you when you say that “caricature definitionally implies more exaggeration than on a portrait” generally speaking. 'Distillation' though, might be at least a tie. The way Sargent and Fechin distill the planes of the face and the hair is more poetic in its concision than anything either Rockwell or Krüger would do.
I am not surprised that the Washington Post pulled this cartoon. It is par for the course nowadays. Whole generations of college students have been coddled and made to believe it is violence to hear a different point of view. Respect for the freedom of speech, even in the United States where it enjoys stronger legal protections, is at an all-time low.
A recent court case revealed that the current US administration pressured social media companies to censor its political opponents in violation of the First Amendment; this revelation, which should have cause a major scandal and resulted in accountability for the offending parties, hardly made headlines. Not only are people ambivalent towards, or outright supportive of, censorship, we are rapidly moving towards a state of affairs in which expressing the "wrong" opinions or even objective facts, or making jokes at the expense of politicians, could result in arrest and imprisonment.
I don't believe this cartoon should have been pulled, but I don't think it is a particularly good editorial cartoon. It is a very fine cartoon drawing, as Ramirez is an excellent draftsman. My problem with it is, firstly, that the idea being expressed, and the manner of its depiction, are wholly banal and derivative; the "human shields" cartoon has been done to death already. It is basically an old Israeli government (and, in the course of other wars, a US government) talking point made into a cartoon: "We only killed all those civilians because the enemy is hiding behind them." Conceding the point that Hamas does launch attacks from places where civilians gather, this cartoon says nothing about the morality of killing the hostage (using that term broadly to include the population being used as "human shields") to get the hostage taker — or, indeed, the strategic implications, short- and long-term, of blowing apart scores of children whose broken bodies will be broadcast across social media.
Furthermore, statements from numerous high-ranking Israeli officials have been explicit that the emphasis of Israel's bombardment of Gaza has been "on damage and not on accuracy" (R Adm Daniel Hagari, IDF spokesperson, Oct. 10). From Netanyahu himself (Oct. 28): "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember." That is a reference to the first Book of Samuel, in which God commands King Saul of ancient Israel, "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." These are but two examples among many that give the lie to the claim that Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties.
These facts — and they are facts, widely reported in both Israeli and US media — to me, render Ramirez's cartoon little more than propaganda in the service of a lie. That is certainly a purpose art has served in the past, particularly during wartime, but it is a debased purpose. I believe the aim of art, even editorial cartoons, ought to be the illumination of truth.
I think editorial cartoons are meant to evoke strong responses so I guess Ramirez’s work is a success.
Nobody has any comment on that lame replacement cartoon by Edith Pritchett?Horrible.
"Conceding the point that Hamas does launch attacks from places where civilians gather, this cartoon says nothing about the morality of killing the hostage (using that term broadly to include the population being used as "human shields") to get the hostage taker — or, indeed, the strategic implications, short- and long-term, of blowing apart scores of children whose broken bodies will be broadcast across social media."
Get your morals straight.
Those who use women and children as shields in war are the murderers of those women and children. Not anybody else.
And they are murdering their own children using the 'human shield' strategy expressly for the political theater of putting the images of their dead and mangled children on social media to hijack the empathy of normies (dumb distracted girls and resentful confused males on tictok for instance) who don't know how sick the propaganda war is.
If you understand these points, then the moral argument is over. All you should be doing is letting people know that this is actually what is going on; that this is the operative strategy. Because only when the strategy stops working, will they stop murdering their own children for the propaganda value.
"Those who use women and children as shields in war are the murderers of those women and children. Not anybody else."
Tragically, this point is not well understood -- at all. The propaganda war is being won by Hamas (on this issue) and the deep anti-Semitism (always present and ready) is already glibly assuming the Israelis to be the murderers of the human shields. One could make the argument that Israel has shown incredible restraint in its aims (all of them) here, since it is obvious that they are trying to rescue kidnapped and terrorized innocent survivors from a mass murder and carnage on Oct 7 (and likely continuing certain death in the future too of those innocents), trying to limit the casualties of thier own soldiers, and trying to find and kill Hamas. How can any of those goals be suspect?
Its astounding to me that anyone would criticize Israel in their aims and methods here. The news media, as usual, is incompetent to see what is happening in front of their eyes, let alone report it.
>>>The news media, as usual, is incompetent to see what is happening in front of their eyes, let alone report it.
Incompetent? No. The "news media" is part of the political play. They are running the hoax operation under threat of being mobbed online and cancelled because they have been overtaken by the woke. They are under constant attack from within because of all the indoctrinated ivy league grads they've taken on and from woke social media mobs. Which is just why the OP cartoon was snatched away so quickly from public view. And why nobody serious trusts the media anymore.
JPL
This is what I meant. That cartoon's purpose, by content and form, is to help people rationalize them not caring for the real images of kids bodies being pulled from under the rubble of demolished buildings. Somehow they were human shields that stood between a 500kg bomb and a hamas, which apparently is an alternate name for "bulding fundation". Or a guy who walks around with kids tied to him, so there's absolutely no way to get to him without disemboweling a few. And at the same time, the people doing the carpet bombing are saying "in another year there will be nothing there, we will annihilate everyone". Psychos all around.
>>That cartoon's purpose, by content and form, is to help people rationalize them not caring for the real images of kids bodies being pulled from under the rubble of demolished buildings.
You are so full of it. The point of the cartoon is that the leader of Hamas is running a con game for emotional media consumers wherein real children, the children of his people, are sacrificed for propaganda purposes. And that is what he is doing. That is a fact. And Ramirez is nailing him on the point. (And these people need to be nailed on the point again and again because they keep using the tactic for media consumption and dumb emotional people keep believing it.)
Since you're a lefty, and twisting reality is how you operate, nobody is surprised that 'somehow' you got it wrong.
And also 'somehow' the young Jewish women who were raped during the initial Hamas raid into Israel don't get a mention from you. The entire Israeli families that were tortured and then murdered don't get a mention. That tells us something about you and the 'selective empathy' you accuse others of.
JPL
Get your morals straight.
Those who use women and children as shields in war are the murderers of those women and children. Not anybody else.
And they are murdering their own children using the 'human shield' strategy expressly for the political theater of putting the images of their dead and mangled children on social media to hijack the empathy of normies (dumb distracted girls and resentful confused males on tictok for instance) who don't know how sick the propaganda war is.
I try to engage with facts.
According to the available information, Israel has, since October 7, dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives of Gaza. That is the equivalent of two nuclear bombs in a span of less than two months.
More than 11,100 people have been killed — one out of every 200 people in Gaza. Over 4,000 of those killed have been children.
Now, if you believe that 1) most of those 25,000-plus tons of explosives were aimed at not only "Hamas targets," but targets of the kind that pose such a threat to Israeli lives as to justify incurring large numbers of civilian casualties, and 2) most of those 4,000-plus children killed (to say nothing of the thousands of civilian men and women also killed) were "human shields" for said targets, there is simply no reasoning with you. In that case, I would say that your fondness for Israel has actually blinded you to reason, and you are willing to believe the most absurd, brazen lies told on its behalf.
Beyond the sheer scale and relentlessness of the bombing, and the enormous death toll, you would have to ignore the many statements made by Israeli officials, a few of which I quoted in my last post, that undercut the claims that Israel is attempting to minimize civilian casualties. You would also have to pretend that Israel could both have been caught totally off guard by Hamas on October 7, and known the precise location of thousands of Hamas targets mere days later.
Many serious analysts of foreign affairs, such as John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, and Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, have stated that Israel is engaging in collective punishment of Palestinians.
On the other hand, you have neocon lunatics like Nikki Hayley and Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla), the latter of whom stated, "I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of 'innocent Palestinian civilians,' as is frequently said. I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II. It is not a far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians."
For the most part, the people dropping the bombs, and the people who continue to pay for the bombs, are the ones responsible for the dead and maimed children. That is how it works.
I submit that the reason you are bothered by "normies" seeing images of children with missing limbs, shrapnel wounds, skulls blown off and brain matter visible, others crying out in pain and terror, is because you support the regime that carried out these atrocities; you know these crimes, seen as they are and not as mere numbers buried in a newspaper article where they are euphemistically described as "collateral damage," are indefensible, and a moral stain on the perpetrators. The abortion lobby goes to great lengths to ensure people never see a real abortion, for the same reason.
>>>>According to the available information, Israel has, since October 7, dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives of Gaza. That is the equivalent of two nuclear bombs in a span of less than two months.
>>>>More than 11,100 people have been killed — one out of every 200 people in Gaza. Over 4,000 of those killed have been children.
Numbers brought to you by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. Chaired by Richard Falk. Wikipedia on Richard Falk: "His early thinking was influenced by readings of Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and C. Wright Mills." That figures.
I dare you to try to find comment by Euro-Med "Human Rights Monitor" on the Oct 7 attacks into Israel that precipitated the current conflict. Hint: You won't find any. Because its an anti-Israel leftist organization.
Regardless of the death tolls, which are no doubt rough...
Its called a war. When you start a war, war happens. Civilians die. So don't start a war. Unless you want civilians to die or you don't care if they die. So let's please recall: Hamas fired over 2000 rockets into Israel from Gaza. FROM GAZA. 2000 MISSLES. FROM. GAZA.
And now GAZA is a war zone. People are dying in GAZA. The place FROM WHICH THE MISSLES WERE LAUNCHED INTO ISRAEL.
Go figure.
And yeah, you try to win wars. You try to get the other side to submit. Otherwise the war never ends. And Hamas will attack Israel, because it is in their CHARTER, FOREVER until they are eradicated or Israel is eradicated. What part of this is difficult for you to understand?
And this war referee thing is so pathetic, such a childish way to understand conflict. Maybe you should be counting in every war to make sure the responder uses exactly the same number of bombs as the attacker. And the same amount of people die on both sides. So its, you know a fair fucking war!
And as far as you EVIDENCE-FREE back door theory that Israel wanted this to happen, for somebody who claims up front "I try to engage with facts" it sure sounds like you can't tell a convenient conjecture from the proven truth.
JSL
>>>That's your response, that the numbers are communist numbers?
Hamas and Communist numbers. Double whammy of honesty and integrity. The source of the numbers is from the AMHRM. Trace it back if you want. But it doesn't matter whatever the numbers are. AMHRM didn't report on the Oct 7 attacks. Because you liars and manipulators on the left don't believe that Israel should exist. So when they get massacred and raped, it doesn't matter. You hate Jews anyhow.
So you just keep chanting stolen land, stolen land, stolen land, control the narrative, control the narrative. As if muslims haven't stolen ten times as much land across the middle from every religion under the sun, including jews. As if Communists haven't done the same wherever they arose, with secret police and gulags and unpersoning.
But only the 'stolen land' that the Israelis took because they were getting invaded and bombed from the unrelenting psychos that lived there, only that matters to you.
You fake.
You don't care about justice or the law or innocent children. You only care about the destruction of Israel. You don't actually care about stolen land. And dollars to donuts you've never lifted a finger to actually help any Palestinians in your life.
Arguing with a leftist is always a no win scenario.
An entire alternate reality where only your facts are facts, where only your laws are laws, where only your history is history, and history only starts when you want it to start. Where only your victims are real victims. Where a state only exists because you say it does. Where international law only applies where you want it to apply. Where only your sources are the correct sources. Where only your scholars are the correct scholars. Where only your characterizations of the situation are to be discussed. Where its only a war if you say its a war. Where we are supposed to pity only those that have been so chosen to receive pity by you.
So boring. Such a shitty religion.
Bye bye.
Seg, yes Netanyahu should have to answer for underestimating how bloodthirsty Hamas can be. He should have been more repressive. It's too bad that Netanyahu is the leader of Israel but you can thank Islamic terrorists for that too. As a young commando Netanyahu became a hero by rescuing a plane full of hostages that was hijacked by terrorists. He was shot in the process. Then his beloved brother was murdered rescuing another plane full of hostages that Islamic terrorists hijacked to Entebbe where the muslims teamed up with syphilitic dictator Idi Amin. Netanyahu learned more about dealing with hostages than most of us. He never would've won his first election but a series of terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel undermined the labor party and caused the Israelis to worry that they needed a strong man. Hamas deserves whatever they get, and more.
Because you liars and manipulators on the left don't believe that Israel should exist. So when they get massacred and raped, it doesn't matter. You hate Jews anyhow.
You got all of that out of what I wrote?
I am a native New Yorker. I think the 9/11 attacks were horrible, an atrocity, unjustified. I also think that almost every action undertaken by the US government in response to the attacks was wrong: the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen; secret prisons, Guantanamo, rendition, torture; warrantless spying on Americans. Does this mean I hate...Americans, Christians, Jews, New Yorkers? I would say that's childish, but I don't think children are that uncharitable.
Criticism of the policies of the Israeli government is not equivalent to hating Jews or Israeli citizens. Many Jews and Israelis are protesting against Israel's war right now.
I suppose because Fox News and other propaganda outlets are putting a magnifying glass over the worst sort of leftist campus radical protesters (mostly the same bunch who constituted antifa and BLM, and who have now jumped on the Palestinian cause as another "class struggle" based on Marxist doctrine), so as to portray the Palestinian side to their viewers in the most unsympathetic light possible, many conservatives have been hoodwinked into believing that any questioning of Israel's war policy is "leftist."
I am not a leftist. Skepticism of state power is, or was at one time, the province of the right. And state power is at its most dangerous during times of war and crisis, when the public is afraid and thus willing and eager to cede money and power to the state almost without limit. Americans who claim to be conservatives should at least oppose their government sending billions of dollars overseas (much of it to be funneled back into the military industrial complex) while it is trillions in debt.
One final thought: You are clearly emotional, angry, lashing out. That is understandable. But if you think what Hamas did to innocent Israelis justifies killing thousands of innocent Palestinians, at least be consistent, and be honest, and acknowledge that Palestinians seeing the broken bodies of their children have as much reason as you to be angry and, based on the example you have set, to seek retribution for what was done to their loved ones. Nothing is solved. Time will make this clear even to you; it is only sad that so many will die, for nothing, between now and then.
Seg, I agree with much of what you say but my sympathy for the "innocent Palestinians" is limited because the Palestinians elected Hamas as their leaders in a fair election. The Palestinians received billions of dollars of aid from the west (including $600 million from the US). If they'd used that money to build universities and hospitals rather than military tunnels and rockets over the last 25 years, think about how different their lives would be today. Think about how much more acceptable they would be to neighbors like Israel and Egypt. The Palestinians watched for 2 years as Hamas trained to attack Israel on October 7. With thousands of attackers by land, sea and air, it would've been impossible for people not to know about it, yet no Palestinian said a thing to alert Israel or to challenge it within Palestine. What did the innocent Palestinians do to prevent Hamas from using their schools and their residences to launch thousands of rockets against Israeli civilians over many years? The retribution is more terrible than anything the Palestinians dreamed, but they were hardly "innocent."
This is not the only website where the reaction of artists to the war between Israel and Hamas has generated some heat.
As some of you may know, Artforum Magazine published something purporting to be “An Open Letter From the Art Community to Cultural Organizations.” The people holding themselves out to be the "Art Community" include famous airheads such as Barbara Kruger and Nicole Eisenman. Their simplistic letter calling for "Palestinian liberation" was as insubstantial as their art. The letter launched a huge squabble which led to the firing of David Velasco, the magazine’s editor of almost six years. The contretemps it began in the fine art world is still raging: (
https://www.vulture.com/article/israel-palestine-gaza-artforum-letter-fallout.html?origSession=D230829Cb4vnUPcWnwnmybPxMcX2vkm%2Fz2rxrAh%2FHI1cE5LY9c%3D#_ga=2.158222714.158048696.1700426630-252634053.1687962186 ).
I expect that this group can do better than Artforum in every way.
Commenters on this blog have identified some of the complex issues involving hostages and human shields. Putting aside politics, history and which side started what first, I think Ramirez's cartoon shows how a talented cartoonist takes on this cause. Ramirez has clearly taken a side, but instead of preparing a long treatise with names and dates and facts, he ridicules his villain by tying a baby to his head like a clown hat. The same goes for his cartoonish treatment of the other bodies and facial expressions. There's nothing subtle or indirect or arguable about the hypocrisy Ramirez wants to depict. No room for the back-and-forth in these comments. That's why "Boss" Tweed was right about Thomas Nast. Political cartoons are a powerful medium.
If they'd used that money to build universities and hospitals rather than military tunnels and rockets over the last 25 years, think about how different their lives would be today.
This made me laugh, because it shows we in America have something in common with the Palestinians. Our infrastructure is falling apart and our schools are failing, but our government still spends more on weaponry than the next 10 highest-spending countries combined.
Seg, I agree with much of what you say but my sympathy for the "innocent Palestinians" is limited because the Palestinians elected Hamas as their leaders in a fair election...
What did the innocent Palestinians do to prevent Hamas from using their schools and their residences to launch thousands of rockets against Israeli civilians over many years?
Several years ago, I read a report by the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic called "The Civilian Impact of Drones." It details the effects of the CIA's covert drone program on the people who live in the mountainous region of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, as well as in Yemen and Somalia.
Some excerpts:
In locations such as northern Pakistan, where drones often buzz overhead 24 hours a day, people live in constant fear of being hit. Michael Kugelman of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars notes: “I have heard Pakistanis speak about children in the tribal areas who become hysterical when they hear the characteristic buzz of a drone.”
An investigator at the UK charity, Reprieve, who met a young man named Tariq Aziz shortly before he was killed in a March 17, 2011 strike, reported: “I asked him, ‘Have you seen a drone,’ and I expected him to say, ‘Yes, I see one a week.’ But he said they saw 10 or 15 every day. And he was saying at nighttime, it was making him crazy, because he couldn’t sleep. All he was thinking about at home was whether everyone was okay. I could see it in his face. He looked absolutely terrified.”
With US targeting criteria classified, civilians in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia do not know when, where, or against whom a drone will strike. The US policy of “signature strikes” — in which targeting is conducted on the basis of behavior and not identity, as we explain in greater detail below — substantially compounds the constant fear that a family member will be unexpectedly and suddenly killed.
According to media reports, the threat or prevalence of drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan mean some parents are unwilling to send their children to school out of fear. In Pakistan, there have been several reports of drone strikes that have damaged or destroyed local schools.
...[A] teenager called Saadullah survived a drone strike that killed three of his family members, but lost both of his legs and one eye. He said: “I wanted to be a doctor… but I can’t walk to school anymore. When I see others going, I wish I could join them.”
We are not aware of any cases in Pakistan or Yemen where drone strike civilians have received apologies, explanations or monetary payments as amends from the US Government.
I bring this up because Americans voted for the presidents (George W. Bush and Barack Obama) who signed off on these drone strikes. We go about our lives while children in far off places experience symptoms of PTSD as they hear drones buzzing in the skies constantly, day and night. Many of the people on the Pakistan-Afghan border had never even heard of the United States; their first contact with us was drone strikes!
Osama bin Laden thought we were collectively guilty for similar crimes committed by our government, because we have elections and vote for our leaders. This was his justification for killing American civilians.
The last election in Gaza was over 17 years ago, before most of the current population were born.
Apatoff - On a purely (as purely as is possible) technical level, it's certainly possible, if the audience immediately recognizes the person / organization being caricaturized, to consider the cartoon a success on your terms. If the audience does not, though, and instead simply reads the figure as a symbolic manifestation of Evil as per North American Manichaeism, it fails. In the latter case, the cartoon functions less a take and more as a primer, a problematic propaganda piece.
Non surprisingly, this went from "sympathetic to the victims" to "it's just war", to "they deserve it". We literally have people arguing that the cartoon kids tied to the villain are guilty for voting him in like 20 years ago, and actually deserve to be killed.
Pointing others monsters to cultivate your own... What a lame use for art, Goya would be ashamed.
Here go the leftists again. Always trying to control who gets talked about, who gets sympathy.
Not only the October 7th atrocities against Jews get minimized, they just won’t talk about the horrors, keeping focus only on the response but also all the other violence by Hamas and before with the PLO against Jews gets the silence treatment. That’s the commie left, time after time, ignoring all violence against Israel back to 1948. And before that all the anti Jewish riots, and before that the Jews as tortured Dhimmis under the Ottoman Empire.
They just keep repeating their talking points like good little evil sheep. And ignoring or just ever so briefly acknowledging a counter point in a brief sentence before getting back on message. Oh it’s ‘problematic’, problematic! think of the children , the cartoon is ‘othering’ them, it’s a concentration camp, You’re a racist for putting up the cartoon. You’re evil and mean for not adopting our dogma.
Then the condescending “you sound very emotional about this, sounds like you really love Israel.” Truly sickening.
This IS the propaganda war. These awful ‘intellectuals’ who only quote leftist talking points and then say ‘but I’m no leftist, I’m just like you a normal person!”
The leftist anti Semitic lying, propaganda and manipulation NEVER stops.FYI.
Here we go again.
Here go the left!es again. Always trying to control who gets talked about, who gets sympathy. Always trying to turn people against Jews.
The Oct. 7 atrocit!es against Jews get minimized, they just won’t talk about the horrors, keeping changing focus back to Israel’s response. Over and over.
Also always ignore all the other violence by Hamas (and before with the PLO) against Jews, ignore that Hamas’ charter is genocidal... it all gets the silent treatment. That’s the comm!e left, time after time, ignoring all violence against Israel back to 1948. And before that all the anti Jewish riots, and before that the Jews as tortured Dhimmis under the Ottoman Empire.
They just keep repeating their talking points like good little evi! sheep. Programmed and trying to spread that programming. And ignoring or just ever so briefly acknowledging a counter point in a brief sentence before getting back on message. Oh it’s ‘problematic’, problematic! (Buzz word) think of the children , the cartoon is ‘othering’ (buzz word) them, it’s a concentrat!on camp, You’re a rac!st for putting up the cartoon. You’re evi! and mean for not adopting our dogma.
Then the condescending “you sound very emotional about this, sounds like you really love Isr@el.” Ha.
This IS the propaganda war. These awful ‘intellectuals’ who have suddenly appeared and who only quote leftist talking points and then say ‘but I’m no leftist, I’m just like you a normal person!”
FYI, the left!st anti Semit!c ly!ng, propaganda and manipulation NEVER stops. Expect more. Forever.
JSL
xopxe-- Getting back to Ramirez's drawing, regardless of what commenters may have written, can we agree that this drawing never says "it's just war" or "they deserve it"? He never suggests that "the cartoon kids tied to the villain are guilty for voting him in like 20 years ago, and actually deserve to be killed." As I interpret this cartoon, he says the exact opposite, that the women and children are totally innocent and don't deserve to be caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas. He blames Hamas for their hypocrisy, but that seems to be a totally different point.
So when you say, "What a lame use for art," I hope you're not criticizing Ramirez for some of the arguments that other people unrelated to Ramirez or this drawing have made.
David, I contend that the way Ramirez's art is used is Ramirez's responsibility. We're in a world where there is a rich government with rich government-level resources going on a murder spree. And if you listen to them, that is what they say: it is a murder spree. Then we have other people around who do not care or to whom to care is a difficult choice, and who are very happy to be given a rationale for doing nothing but being sad (and finance the murder spree). And peddlers of this whitewashing include the US government, so Ramirez is not a lone voice in this.
And the rationale is the one you outlined: "they are caught in the crossfire between Israel and hamas". But they are not, that's no crossfire. Almost the 70% of the killed are women and children. Over 5000 children. They're just being crushed in their homes as the buildings cave in under bombardment not aimed at hamas *at all*. The intentional blindness to this fact is what I find obscene. Oh, and there's another manifestation of this erasing of the victims: I suppose you have heard someone claim "a cease-fire would only benefit hamas". Just mind-bogglingly cruel.
And Ramirez's work lineups so precisely in this gaslighting, so for me is part of it.
Sorry to intrude,
My early comment in this thread where, in conversation with Richard, I linked to caricatures of Howard Cosell by Levine and Hirshfeld... has disappeared.
Editorial cartoons are meant to be provocative otherwise they are just cartoons. Pretty sure that when Thomas Nast’s cartoons brought down Tammany Hall he faced much criticism from those pols who supported Tammany. To our eyes now they mean very little we praise their draftmanship but it does not evoke much if any emotion. I fear the closeness and immediacy of what Ramirez has created blinds some of us to his craft.
I think it’s fair to judge the editorial in the editorial cartoon. A well-drawn cartoon of a pernicious opinion is like an eloquent speech advocating for a terrible policy. In a way, it is worse than an incompetent effort because it lends credibility and persuasiveness to falsehoods.
Kev Ferrara-- I don't know how that possibly could have happened. As Blogger explains it, the only two people who have the ability to remove a comment are the commenter and me, and I never remove anything. That is very troubling.
Also, a commenter with the initials "JSL" tells me that someone has been submitting comments using his initials. (This latter problem is easier to understand because technically, anyone can submit an anonymous comment and sign "JSL" to it, but it is troubling that we've finally reached a topic so enraging that someone would do that.)
Kev, you recall we had trouble a while ago with Blogger's new level of bots blocking comments they wrongly thought might violate blogger's policy, but your Cosell comments were completely inoffensive and besides were already cleared. I apologize and All I can do is turn back to the same "helpful" blogger AI to try to find out what happened.
Kev Ferrara-- Your comment on Cosell and two others were retroactively put in the spam category by blogger's ever vigilant thought police. I don't know how they can do that after the comments had already been published; it may be that the number of comments attracted attention. Anyway, they are now back where they belong. Sorry about that.
> A well-drawn cartoon of a pernicious opinion is like an eloquent speech advocating for a terrible policy.
In a community about rhetoric, where aficionados of the art of rhetoric meet, I would not be surprised to hear speeches by Stalin described as some of the greatest ever written.
If the only thing you had to say about a speech by Stalin is that he's a murderous villain, and you could find nothing to say about his rhetorical art or lack thereof, then you'd be kind of irrelevant to a community about the rhetorical arts -- no?
The great thing about this community is that, despite having very different politics, we try very hard to stay on topic about the art of art. We have celebrated great works of art selling Tobacco to kids, and lambasted works celebrating the greatest moral/ethical goals and sentiments.
Thanks David. (You don't need to apologize. I know it's not you censoring or policing)
I think through all history it was understood that the only sensible reason to create and maintain a platform for speech was to control; to push one's own viewpoint and to get people's attention in order to mold what other people believe and think. The result being the platform-wielder accrues and amasses his audience's power, loose change, and influence. (And then he sells ads too.)
We have lived through a brief period of anomalous altruism, where - in this new online wild west world - platforms were created to be democratized, and anybody was allowed to say (or sell) what they pleased.
This disaggregation of power and influence so weakened the ability of traditional power-centers to control thought, that they are now panicking at all stations. As it turns out, the control of thought is absolutely essential to the maintenance of power.
One expects hypocrisy from government and business. But it turns out, for the most part, the 'Libertarian ethos' of Silicon Valley was just as much a public pose as any other power-garnering piety.
> the 'Libertarian ethos' of Silicon Valley was just as much a public pose as any other power-garnering piety.
I don't think it was a pose, I have a much more optimistic reading of recent events in Silicon Valley.
I believe that what happened is that the Silicon Valleyites realized that the very corporate structure and technical underpinnings of their products and companies were inherently anti-freedom, and that to try to fix them from inside was putting lipstick on a pig.
So long as Twitter has a physical address, the FBI can come knocking. So long as they have a giant centralized server, the FBI can force them to expose client data, block specific opinions, etc. So long as they have investors, those investors will demand revenue, even if it means selling customer data to criminals and totalitarians.
So, they decided that rather than try to keep these leviathan companies from doing evil, they were better off spending their energies making inherently-democratic replacements for the Leviathans based on the underlying logic of blockchain networks like Tor and BitTorrent.
See, for example, that while Jack Dorsey was CEO of Twitter, he used Twitter's resources to finance the development of an open-source decentralized Twitter clone (Bluesky). He made sure to spin it out of Twitter's control before leaving. And since leaving Twitter he has spent most of his time financing and pushing forward other decentralized, encrypted, non-censorable alternatives to most of the major social media and information platforms available today.
Peter Thiel invented PayPal, was a major early angel investor in Facebook, and still gets rich off of those kinds of Web2.0 businesses, but he's also the largest financier of the Urbit project to create a totally new decentralized internet outside of the hands of corporate powers.
Zuckerberg made all his money on Web 2.0, and yet announced that Threads will connect to the decentralized ActivityPub network. This KILLS his own business. It's a suicide pill for Threads, and for Meta.
This is a common story across Silicon Valley.
Tech billionaires are using their Web2.0 resources to finance and develop the open-source Web3 technologies which will, eventually, kill their own babies.
If Wall Street investors understood what financing Web3 technologies meant, heads would be rolling across SV. Instead, these tech billionaires continue to quietly develop the technologies which will destroy the centralized internet as we know it.
I believe the future is pretty optimistic, and that there's a lot more good guys working quietly behind the scenes than you might guess.
Thanks Richard,
That's an interesting take. (I also liked your comment above that about the denizens of this board being able to appreciate rhetoric as rhetoric, rather than reacting to it directly.)
However, creating decentralized platforms outside of corporate power does not necessarily get them outside the rule of self-serving or duplicitous government actors, thus out of reach of corporate and ideological power hoarders and brokers (given how compromised government is). I'm just as horrified by ideologues as corporatists, and even more antipathetic towards the combination; the maoists/fascists. I trust 'altruistic' billionaires with my sovereign rights like I trust Chinese websites with my data.
Mass media technology, after all, is the one true ring. Nobody gives up Precious without a flat out drag-down fist fight. All out war against true free speech on behalf of corrupt and self-serving information control has already begun, as far as I can see.
Meanwhile, telecommunications technology is so embedded within the government's framework and purview, and mass media is so dependent on telecommunications technology, it is hard to see how decentralized spinoffs escape the gravity of existing centralized power. Even if you build your own satellite systems, you still need to broadcast through sovereign airspace, which can easily be characterized as a national security risk.
We are already at the point that government goons will simply use their media mouthpieces to declare a hoax crisis in misinformation to pass laws to clamp down on truth tellers (that have been bundled together strategically with known liars and loons in their affiliated press and by their social media troll armies). We already have the abuses of the 'patriot act' and its revision of FISA. If you think the power centralizers aren't already working on either capturing blockchain or outlawing it, we're not really on the same page regarding just what is at stake here and what kind of people are involved.
As far as the personages involved, I don't trust Zuckerberg. I know somebody who works at Meta and I don't like the technology they are working on (although some of it will be great ultimately for those with severe disabilities). And I think Dorsey is pusillanimous and abstracted. These semi-autistic nerds seem inherently - maybe necessarily - naive about power in the real world. Whether bookish or codish, it is the same type. Only a small handful of people (ever) have the gravitas and stones and moral fortitude to stand toe to toe against real power when it bangs on the door. And every one of those guys in Silicon Valley already has a red laser sight pointed at their forehead. Which is surely why we still don't know who 'Satoshi Nakamoto' is.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
~ kev
If you think the power centralizers aren't already working on either capturing blockchain or outlawing it, we're not really on the same page regarding just what is at stake here and what kind of people are involved.
Again I think we're in luck in this case, because the powers that be are more interested in what decentralization does to our adversaries than they are concerned what it does to us.
We saw this same game played out previously with encryption. Initially, the US Government classified all strong encryption as TS-SCI. They tried to slow down encryption technologies, sneaking backdoors into various algorithms, putting spies into university comp sci labs, etc. for fear that broad adoption of encryption would reduce the US's ability to perform SIGINT into our adversaries and domestic terrorists.
But in the long run, they decided that widespread adoption of encryption was more damaging to our adversaries in China, Iran, etc. than it is to us, and their strategy went from blocking encryption, to actively advancing encryption. Now, they finance encryption, and pay out rewards to security researchers for improving encryption.
I see a decentralized internet playing out similarly.
Yes, a decentralized internet would be damaging to the "deep state's" ability to control the narrative domestically. But I suspect the calculus is that, a decentralized internet would be more of an existential threat to the likes of China, who rely on micromanaging allowable thought to an absurd degree.
If the internet moves towards decentralization, China is left to either:
1. Be entirely left behind, unable to participate in the global commons.
OR
2. Allow their citizenship access to a type of internet that they fundamentally can't control.
Either way, this is strategically great. Is it worth the cost of losing some control of the narrative in the US? Sure. And anyway, they can always fall back on Netflix, Hollywood, the University System, Journalism, NGOs, ad infinitum to keep pushing their POV.
Mass media technology, after all, is the one true ring. Nobody gives up Precious without a flat out drag-down fist fight.
Well, they're walking it towards Mordor. I don't have a good alternative explanation why. It seems as if they intend to throw it into mount doom.
Richard,
I think the kind of thinking you are describing is happening, but I don't think it is more than a fraction of the story. Just on the China question, I think our fundamental difference comes here: You seem to indicate a belief that our government takes China to be our great adversary now and going forward. My view (fwiw) is that there are major forces within our government (often tied to global corporations including Silicon Valley's finest) that not only rightly consider China to be a best friend and necessary partner in their businesses, but view China as more congenial - even more familial - to their ideological and global-oriented power-based interests than the other half of the American electorate. I believe there is a complicated ongoing civil war in our government and the Washington D.C. establishment right now, which is a source of a great deal of the weirdness and inconsistency we are seeing in everything from monetary policy to 'ufo revelations'.
Richard: The great thing about this community is that, despite having very different politics, we try very hard to stay on topic about the art of art. We have celebrated great works of art selling Tobacco to kids, and lambasted works celebrating the greatest moral/ethical goals and sentiments.
David Apatoff: ....the brilliant and biting humor of Ramirez....
What would we say about 'the brilliant and biting humor of Ramirez' if our study of the Israel-Palestine issue has led us to conclude that the use of human shields is a myth?
The example is far from merely theoretical: There are Jews, including Israeli Jews, that conclude that that is how things stand, and NOT for want of study.
Is there a basic, simple reason to dismiss their conclusion without reservation?
The issue is additionally complicated because science, i.e. rigorous study, and definitely settled answers are mutual strangers ... though a rigorous study might disprove that! :)))
How then to qualify the art of this cartoon by Ramirez?
Is it right that it be celebrated by people faithfully focused on the art itself?
The issue may be additionally illuminated if we imagine facing a cartoon that mocks Allied soldiers in WW2, or Jews, especially under Nazi Germany, and its technical artistry is first-class. Would it be preferable that we feel twitches about praising its artistic side, or that we celebrate it wholeheartedly because we're faithfully focused on the art itself?
Your blog is a true treasure trove of knowledge, and I'm grateful for it.
wow- David---you bit off more than i would want to chew with this one! Good on you. Good points made. Ramirez is a BRILLIANT artist................... so much can be gleaned by studying his shapes, compositions, humor, caricatures........ the speed in which he does these is mind boggling............ personally i bristle at his never-trumper stances---but i understand, people hate on '45'...................................... he's the best in category tho! has been for decades........... his style is consistent--and is unique to him........ the elephnats and donkeys are fun and consistent and fully awesome to look at. i hope he lives forever doing this great service to history.
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