R.I.P., Mildred Loving

You've probably all heard about this already, but Mildred Loving (of the famous Loving vs. Virginia Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage) died last Friday. Here's a snippet from a much-quoted recent statement by Ms. Loving, "Loving for All", made on the 40th anniversary of her landmark case:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Toon: A Few Reasons Why (We Need a Transgender Rights Bill)

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We need it NOW. Or yesterday, preferably.

Toon: The Joys of Tax Time!

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As you may recall, Masheka and I got married last year. So, as a married male/female couple, we had the experience of filing our taxes jointly this year, which made it much easier to account for our cartooning deductions and calculate everything and definitely saved us a heap of change.

But of course our bigoted laws don't allow same-sex couples (or domestic partners of any gender) to file joint returns or get all the benefits and protections that come with that legal status--even for couples married in Masschuestts who get those protections and benefits at the state level.

As a side note, I just felt like randomly drawing a really tiny kitten into this cartoon because kittens are fun to draw, much more fun to draw than politicians.

Toon: When Good Dates Go Bad

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This was my Valentine's Day offering.

Toon: Our Sexy President

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Obama's great on LGBT rights in general (and even speaks out specifically about gender identity and discrimination against transgender people), but he really sucks when it comes to marriage equality. Same with Hillary. Yes, I'm catching up and posting my cartoons from the last month or so.

Toon: Why It's Called the "Straight" Talk Express

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I don't get it. Why do so many liberals still love John McCain? He's anti-choice and anti-gay and a true conservative Republican in many other ways as well. Boo to John McCain!

Oh, and this robocall thing is real. Via Politico, here's the actual wording of those robocalls:

We care deeply about traditional values and protecting families. And we need someone who will not waver in the White House: Ending abortion, preserving the sanctity of marriage, stopping the trash on the airwaves and attempts to ban God from every corner of society. These issues are core to our being.

"Mitt Romney thinks he can fool us. He supported abortion on demand, even allowed a law mandating taxpayer-funding for abortion. He says he changed his mind, but he still hasn’t changed the law. He told gay organizers in Massachusetts he would be a stronger advocate for special rights than even Ted Kennedy. Now, it’s something different.

"Unfortunately, on issue after issue Mitt Romney has treated social issues voters as fools, thinking we won’t catch on. Sorry, Mitt, we know you aren’t trustworthy on the most important issue and you aren’t a conservative

"Paid for by John McCain 2008.

Warm & Fuzzy Holiday Moment #153

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Feel the ex-gay love. This was from December, of course.

New Toon: Mitt vs. Mike in Extreme Godmania Smackdown!

Mitt vs. Mike in Extreme Godmania Smackdown!
Originally uploaded by M1khaela

It's "Rowdy" Mitt Romney vs. Mike "The Minister" Huckabee!

This is a cartoon from December I hadn't gotten around to posting. Are you as scared of these dudes as I am?

Cover Girl: The Wedding (Equality) Party

Here's a year-end cover illustration I did for Bay Windows. The cover celebrates the people who furthered LGBT rights in Massachusetts in 2007, such as new governor Deval Patrick. Massachusetts is so much awesomer without Mitt Romney around--lets hope he totally fails in his presidential ambitions, too!

And here was my initial rough sketch:

Calendar Girl: Get Your 2008 Lambda Legal calendar featuring my cartoons!

June: the perfect time to learn about sodomy laws!

The awesome LGBT rights organization Lambda Legal has put together a beautiful 2008 calendar featuring the cartoons from the Life Without Fair Courts Series (most drawn by me, but also some by Greg Fox, Ted Rall, Matt Bors and others!). Learn about a different crucial Supreme Court victory each month--and what might have happened had it gone the wrong way. The money raised goes to Lambda Legal's vital work, of course.

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2007

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2007 Cartoon

November 20 is an annual day for remembering those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. See http://www.gender.org/remember for more information.

Toon: Barney Frank and the Slippery Split-ENDA Slope

Barney Frank and the Slippery Split-ENDA Slope

Regarding Rep. Barney Frank's divisive and disgusting decision to kick transgender people out of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Pelosi and Frank sell out transgender workers

What Ampersand said.

New Toon: When Opposites Attract

When Opposites Attract
Originally uploaded by M1khaela.

Honestly, this wasn't really about fundamentalists or Reaganites, I just wanted to draw a cartoon with a freegan in it. And despite a recent violent and prolonged personal bout with food poisoning, I support freeganism--there's a lot of good, edible food that gets wasted--just not for myself and my delicate digestive system!

Regrettable Wedding Trends

Regrettable Wedding Trends
Originally uploaded by M1khaela.

I'm only half mocking. If I thought our cats could have handled ring bearing duties, I might have considered it. We didn't have any candles, but we did break a glass and get picked up in chairs, and it was super, super fun.

marriage equality victory

I've of course been silent here because Masheka and I are getting married in a few days myself, so I was SOOOOO excited to hear about Lambda Legal's successful case in Iowa. The Supreme Court in Iowa has ruled that a same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional.

Aside from that, have I mentioned I have FOOD POISONING? (my advice: stay AWAY from salad bars). But nothing's going to stop me from having some of the delicious wedding cake my mom is making.

You'll hear more from me in a few weeks!

Correction: It wasn't the Supreme Court--and I think it's been overruled somehow now. Sigh.

Mikhaela in the news: "Hitting the funny bone"

Ethan Jacobs has a cool piece in Bay Windows this week about the Life Without Fair Courts contest, with a good dabble of quotes from me. Here's one segment:

Reid said the five finalists took very different approaches to tackling the subject of fair courts. Rall, Fox and Bors all painted nightmarish visions of a world without a fair judicial system, with gay couples exiled to Antarctica and people thrown in jail for either engaging in or facilitating sodomy. By contrast, Johannsen and Cruté used a more personal perspective, showing how a lack of legal protections would impact their own lives as an M-to-F lesbian transwoman and a bisexual woman respectively. Reid said the contest is a great way to acquaint people with cartoonists like Johannsen and Cruté who do not yet have a large following.

And

Reid said that Lambda Legal selected her in part because much of her own work focused on similar themes as the Life Without Fair Courts campaign.

“I have a somewhat dystopian view in a lot of my cartoons of what the future looks like when we have people in charge who do not care about equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people,” said Reid.

Don't forget to cast YOUR vote!

New Toon: New York vs. Boston, the other rivalry

Forget Yankees vs. Red Sox: let's fight over who's more pro-gay!

Whenever New Yorkers ask me where I'm from, and I say "Massachusetts," many say something like "Oh, so you're a RED SOX fan" in the tone reserved for statements like "Oh, SO YOU'VE GOT A TERMINAL ILLNESS." Thing is, I'm not an anything fan. The only sports news items that even tangentially impinged on my world in recent memory were the homophobic comments of basketball player Tim Hardaway, the awesome activisim of newly out gay basketball player John Amaechi, and the coming out story of openly transsexual sportswriter Christine Daniels.

Still, this cartoon has been rattling around in my head for a while and finally decided to rattle its way out.

Come on, New York, step up your pro-LGBT game! Don't let jerks like New York Republican State Senate leader Joe Bruno squash marriage equality! It is Pride month, after all.

Kissing gay teens getting kicked off busses, out of yearbooks

What is up with this bigoted nonsense and this bigoted nonsense? Leave the gay and bisexual teens to kiss in peace like their straight peers, people!

If I were a parent in Portland, I'd be horrified that two 14-year-olds girls were kicked off a bus and stranded in the street by a bigoted bus driver. Even more crazy, the girls were on their way to the LGBT youth center. MESSED UP.

Spotlight on Astrid Lydia Johannsen: Perfectionist Cartoonist Claims I Inspired Her to Start Graphic Novel

Panels from an episode of "Absolutely True Tales of Lesbian" Drama in which Aziza tries to defend Astrid from a transphobic woman... click to see full comic on Lydia's site.

Do I ever have the warm fuzzies! I first discovered the cartoons of Astrid Lydia Johannsen back in 2003, when she was drawing AstroGirlX2, a comic about her coffee-drinking transsexual lipstick lesbian drag king cartoon alter-ego, Astrid. I was sad when she took a hiatus from drawing (apparently she was busy studying Unix and religion in Oregon) and much cheered when she began posting her current strip, "Absolutely True Tales of Lesbian Drama."

Lydia is an amazingly talented illustrator and cartoonist whose lush color vector drawings inspire fits of jealous rage. But she has a problem common to many artists: insane perfectionism. I was getting really sick of her posting beautiful drawings and then commenting that they looked like crap, so I electronically browbeat her into entering Lambda Legal's Life Without Fair Courts Contest--in which she was named one of five finalists!

Well, now Lydia says being a finalist has given her a boot in the ass to start her graphic novel! But she says she's still worried about perfectionism, to which I say, hogwash! Go show Lydia some love by leaving nice comments in her blog. Tell her perfectionism is silly--you just have to draw your cartoons, and not worry if they're perfect, cause you can always draw another cartoon tomorrow.

New Toon: Alberto Gonzales's Civil Rights Lite: Taking the "Justice" Out of Justice Department!

Taste the new "Justice" Department's Civil Rights Division Lite! Now with 99% less: hate crimes prosecution, voting rights enforcement and police brutality investigations! Super-Action-Packed with Loyal Bushies, Wiretapping and Religious Extremists! It's a Yum-Tastic Justice Department makeover!

The Bush administration has laid waste to the Justice Department on a large scale, as the scandals over the replacement of high-performing federal prosecutors with "loyal Bushies" and that whole warrantless wiretapping nastiness have shown.

The Bush makeover of the Civil Rights Division is similarly extreme. The pre-Bush Justice Department Civil Rights Division was founded in 1957. The Division protected voting rights and enforced anti-discrimination laws, with a particular focus on discrimination based on race and national origin. From the Division website:

The Division enforces the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1968; the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended through 1992; the Equal Credit Opportunity Act; the Americans with Disabilities Act; the National Voter Registration Act; the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act; the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act; and additional civil rights provisions contained in other laws and regulations. These laws prohibit discrimination in education, employment, credit, housing, public accommodations and facilities, voting, and certain federally funded and conducted programs.

Or do they? Under Bush and Gonzales, Justice has shifting funding, focus and resources to more Dubyafied priorities. As the New York Times reported this week ("Justice Dept. Reshapes Its Civil Rights Mission"):

In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government’s role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.

Read the whole article, but here are some particular horrors:

DISCRIMINATION

The old Civil Rights Division (Civil Rights Clasic, if you will) fought discrimination in hiring. The Civil Rights Lite Division defends the right of religious groups like the Salvation Army to discriminate (see "Charity Cites Bush Help in Fight Against Hiring Gays" and "Court OKs Religious Hiring Bias by Federally Backed Charities").

HATE CRIMES

Civil Rights Classic lent federal enforcement weight to the prosecution of hate crimes cases: KKK attacks, lynchings, and more. Civil Rights Lite has diverted that funding to a pet cause of the Christian Right. Again from the NYT, the Civil Rites Lite Division is...

Taking on far fewer hate crimes and cases in which local law enforcement officers may have violated someone’s civil rights. The resources for these traditional cases have instead been used to investigate trafficking cases, typically involving foreign women used in the sex trade, a favored issue of the religious right.

Certainly trafficking cases deserve funding--but not at the expense of victims of racism, hate crimes and police brutality. Trafficking cases used to and should be handled elsewhere.

VOTING RIGHTS

Civil Rights Classic defended the voting rights of people of color. Civil Rites Lite suppresses the voting rights people of color through new voter ID requirements and baseless "voter fraud" case--and has even pursued its first claim of voter intimidation against white people. As John Nichols writes in The Nation ("Curing the Rot at Justice"):

The Brennan Center for Justice and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law have uncovered evidence of what they describe as "a much broader strategy on the part of the Administration to use federal agencies charged with protecting voting rights to promote voter suppression and influence election rules so as to gain partisan advantage in battleground states." There is now a compelling case that the White House used the Justice Department's Civil Rights and Criminal divisions and the Election Assistance Commission to create a false perception of widespread voter fraud to justify initiatives--stringent voter identification laws, crackdowns on voter registration drives and pre-election purges of eligible voters from the rolls--designed to disenfranchise the poor, minorities, students and seniors.

The New York Times reports on this as well. Civil Rights Lite is:

Sharply reducing the complex lawsuits that challenge voting plans that might dilute the strength of black voters. The department initiated only one such case through the early part of this year, compared with eight in a comparable period in the Clinton administration.

Trouble is, only the federal government has the resources to deal with these voting dilution cases. Oh well--it's not like black voters get disenfranchised anymore, right? Too bad, but they've got a new kind of case to focus on:

The civil rights division also brought the first case ever on behalf of white voters, alleging in 2005 that a black political leader in Noxubee County, Miss., was intimidating whites at the polls.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM TRUMPS ALL OTHER FREEDOMS

But back to the Salvation Army. If you visit the Justice Department website, you'll read very little about racist discrimination and the ongoing disenfranchisement of voters of color. Instead, you read about this exciting "special initiative" from Alberto "Geneva Conventions Are Quaint" Gonzales, "The First Freedom Project":

Religious liberty is often referred to as the "First Freedom" because the Framers placed it first in the Bill of Rights. Yet it is not merely first in order: it is a fundamental freedom on which so many of our other freedoms rest.

Forget freedom of speech, forget freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, and most especially freedom from unreasonable search and seizure: the first and most important freedom is the freedom of religious organizations to receive government funding for firing gay people.

Some of the other evidence of Civil Rights Lite cited by the New York Times:

Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.

Conservative religious groups who love the taste of Civil Rights Lite say that the weight of the federal government is no longer needed to combat racism and discrimination--silly stuff like that can be left up to local authorities. Of course, local authorities often lack the resources, will or perspective to fight racism. Historically, local authorities in the South often deliberately turned their backs on racist attacks and civil rights violations, and I'm not so sure those days are totally behind us. And that whole federal ignoring of civil rights and the issues of black people worked out great during Katrina, didn't it?

HIRING LOYAL BUSHIES

Oh, and then there's the hiring thing. We all remember sweet little Monica "I crossed the line" Goodling, trying so hard to make everything harmonious at Justice by hiring only "loyal Bushies". The NYT analyzed department statistics and found that Civil Rights Classic hired lawyers with impressive backgrounds and qualifications. Civil Rights Lite hires lawyers from religious law schools (like Pat Robertson's academically questionable Regent Law) who play up their conservative and religious credentials as much as possible.

Finally, while we're on the topic of Civil Rights, I figured I'd close with Bush channeling his role model Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Cross-posted at Search and Destroy.

P.S. Have you bought Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela! Cartoons by Mikhaela B. Reid (with foreword by Ted Rall) yet? Why not?

Morning gay-hate mail

From my inbox this morning, Lisa Labowski has this charming contribution:

Gays only have THREE rights: 1. the right to STAY IN THE CLOSET!!!, 2. the right to SHUT THE @#$$ UP, and 3. the right to BURN IN HELL!!!!

Show your bigot pride, sister!

Take That, Bigots! Massachusetts Defeats Anti-Gay Amendment 45-151!

My home state kicks ass! From Bay Windows:

In the June 14 constitutional convention, state lawmakers defeated the proposed amendment to the constitution that would have taken away the civil right to marry from same-sex couples. The final tally on the measure was 45 in favor and 151 against. The amendment needed just 50 votes to pass. The vote came just five months after the first vote by lawmakers on the amendment in which 62 lawmakers backed it.

The Democratic presidential candidates may be too wimpy to stand for marriage equality, but Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and House Speaker DiMasi aren't! I heart Patrick and DiMasi! From the Boston Globe:

The vote came without debate after House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, Senate President Therese Murray, and Governor Deval Patrick conferred this morning and concluded that they have the votes to kill the proposal.

"Today's vote was not just a victory for marriage equality, it was a victory for equality itself," Patrick told reporters as cheers echoed in the State House. "Whenever we affirm the equality of anyone, we affirm the equality of everyone."

The three leaders - along with gay rights activists - spent the last several days intensely lobbying a dozen or more state representatives and state senators who had previously supported the amendment but signaled that they were open to changing their positions.

Legacies, or Some Day, They're Really Going to Feel Like Fools

Cross-posted at Search and Destroy: The Rallblog

Marriage equality: yet another arena in which the Democrats are missing a spine.

40 years ago yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled in Loving vs. Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional. The Loving decision invalidated the "Racial Integrity Act" that allowed Virginia cops to bust into the bedroom of Richard and Mildred Loving, arrest them for "illegal cohabitation" and sentence them to a year in jail.

Can you imagine the leading Democratic candidates getting up at a campaign stop today and hemming and hawing out the following nonsense?

I believe in full equality of benefits, nothing left out...From my perspective there is a greater likelihood of us getting to that point in interracial civil unions or domestic partnerships and that is my very considered assessment.

or

It's a jump for me to get to interracial marriage. I haven't yet got across that bridge.

or how about

I would not support the Defense of Racial Integrity Act today, if there were a vote today. But the part I agree with is the states should not be required to recognize interracial marriages from other states.

Those are all paraphrases of actual statements on gay marriage from Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Obama has similar views. (found via Pam's House Blend, an excellent LGBT issues blog that regularly checks in on all the candidate's positions on marriage equality).

Some folks say the Democrats have no choice but to tone down their support of gay rights to appeal to religious voters or values voters. But is that the kind of visionary progressive leadership we want to promote?

Decades from now, the people who were too afraid to support full equality for gay Americans are going to look like spineless sheep, and rightly so. I can see the history books now "The Democrats bravely passed non-binding resolutions, courageously voted to fund an illicit war they claimed to oppose, did nothing of any note to remove an Attorney General with a serious torture fetish and tentatively supported domestic partnership benefits while opposing real marriage equality." Now that's a legacy we can all be proud of! As Susan Ryan-Vollmar wrote in her Bay Windows editorial last week (regarding a possible constitutional ban on gay marriage in Massachusetts):

Twenty years from now, when their time in office has long since ended, those lawmakers who back the anti-gay amendment June 14 will still be asked about their vote by their grandchildren, their neighbors and even reporters writing anniversary pieces. Trying to explain that they supported marriage equality but believed the civil marriage rights of same-sex couples should be decided by popular vote will sound even more disingenuous several decades from now than it does today.

Loving v. Virginia toon for Lambda Legal + Vote in Illustration Contest

OK, technically the 40th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision on interracial marriage was yesterday, but still, happy Loving Day! Here's the Loving toon I did for Lambda Legal's Life Without Fair Courts cartoon series (click to enlarge and read more about the case): And here are some more of my latest cartoons from the series:
Life Without the Right to Counsel: Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25 (1972)
Life Without Equal Educational Opportunities: United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996)
Life Without Peaceful Protests: Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229 (1963)
Life Without Access to Contraceptives: Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972)

Finally, there's a cool Life Without Fair Courts illustration contest going on that needs your vote! Check out the awesome entries by the five finalists (Greg Fox, Matt Bors, Jennifer Cruté, Ted Rall and Astrid Lydia Johanssen) and cast your vote today!

New Toon: The Afterlife Adventures of Jerry Falwell

I thought long and hard about this. But, like Reagan and Strom Thurmond, this dude was just way too evil and hateful to deserve any respect. He spent his life fighting for segregation and the dismantling of public education in favor of fundamentalist religious education, and fighting against gay rights and women's rights. He was a first-class hate spewer. I don't actually believe in ghosts or Hell, but if there were a Hell...

Anyway, everything in this cartoon is true. Yes, Falwell is primarily known as a gay-hater and anti-feminist, but he got his start in pro-segregationist racism (see The Southern Poverty Law Center):

Falwell was plain enough about his views; in 1964, he told a local paper that the Civil Rights Act had been misnamed: "It should be considered civil wrongs rather than civil rights."

Falwell was later forced to change his stance on segregation, but if anything, he became more virulently anti-gay as time went on. One of his main goals was to completely replace the U.S. public school system with private Christian schools. And he did indeed blame 9/11 on feminists, gays, "secularists", and the ACLU (for which he technically apologized, but it hardly seemed sincere).

Gay-hater Jerry Falwell dead at 73

Just heard the news. "Moral Majority" founder Falwell took public gay-blaming and gay-bashing to whole new levels of magnitude. I'm so tempted to draw him in Hell wondering where all the gay people are (or maybe he accidentally gets let into Heaven and would rather be in Hell because there are too many gay people around cramping his gaybashing style). Somewhere, Tinky Winky is laughing. From 365gay:

Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority and Liberty University, had a long history of opposing gay rights. In 1976 he, along with Anita Bryant, led the charge against gay adoption in Florida leading to the most repressive anti-gay adoption law in the US. Following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in 2001 Falwell declared that gays and pro choice advocates were to blame.

Update: Matt Bors is so all over this already, with a little something he calls "Too Soon Comics." Meanwhile I have postponed my decision to draw about Falwell to next week. Me=wimp.

New Toon: Here Comes the Overpriced Dress... (Same-Sex Marriage Cartoon)

Here Comes the Overpriced Dress... (Same-Sex Marriage Cartoon)
Originally uploaded by M1khaela.

Inspired by:
• New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's commendable attempt to get marriage equality legislation passed in New York State
• Ariel Levy's awesome piece in New York magazine about her lesbian wedding/"Party About Love." I loved her story and her amazing dress, but I can't imagine paying that much, which brings me to...
• My experience wedding dress shopping with my mom. Sticker shock overload! We went to a store that sold USED and SAMPLE wedding dresses, many of which were stained, torn, worn or needed alterations, but still cost at least $1,200 each. So I got a white lacy 50s-style knee-length cocktail dress for $100 on eBay.

Oh, and here's the amusing photo reference I used for this image, from an unsuccessful solo trip I took to David's Bridal.

By the way, my point in this cartoon isn't that LGBT weddings aren't worth spending money on, far from it. Just that:
• The whole wedding industry, especially in New York, is a scam in which cakes and dresses suddenly cost 100 times their normal value and...
• Same-sex marriage needs to be legal, NOW.

----- © 2007 Mikhaela B. Reid. All rights reserved. If you'd like to run one of my cartoons on your website or in print, please email me at toons@mikhaela.net for rates and information. See my website www.mikhaela.net for more. My first book collection, Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela!, goes on sale in just a few short weeks!

When cartoons come true: Giuliani gay-bashing edition

Giuliani has continued his Romney-style "evolution" on gay issues to the point where he now opposes civil unions (via Pam's House Blend). I hate it when my cartoons come true. Not that there weren't plenty of reasons to despise Giuliani to begin with, but there was always the "well, at least the dude has gay friends" thing going for him.

I also hear he's now into the Confederate flag, not to mention claiming a Democratic president would cause another 9/11. (Didn't 9/11 happen with a Republican president?)

New Toons: Operation Solar Freedom, Imus/Coulter, plus some thoughts on Imus

Bush no longer asks for war funding, he asks for "funding to protect our troops in harm's way." Otherwise known as "funding to KEEP our troops getting killed for no damn reason." War is peace, freedom is slavery, my head is spinning. I drew this several days ago, when it just looked like Imus would get a two-week suspension. His attempt to apologize on the Al Sharpton radio show was ridiculous, including the lovely phrase "you people." And yes, a while back he referred to black journalist Gwen Ifill as a "cleaning lady" (see her excellent Times Op-Ed on the matter). Some thoughts, in no particular order.

• So yeah, nasty hate speech. Totally disgusting, worthy of outrage and protest and probation. But I don't know about firing, and not because I'm worried about Imus' right to get paid $10 million a year for hate speech. I'm worried about the right of left-wingers and progressives and feminists and anti-racists and LGBT people and humanists to push the envelope on the other side without being accused of, say "anti-Catholic" or "anti-Christian" bigotry.
• I'm not crying for Imus, or for Ann Coulter for losing newspapers whose editors should have had the good judgment never to run her column. My concern is about these kind of instant massive firing mobilizations in general, which I worry can make it dangerous for left-wingers and progressives to try to make a living pushing the envelope in over-the-top art/comedy/commentary/satire without worrying the rightwing attack dogs will take some out-of-context comment or image they made and turn it into a “destroy him/her!” campaign. By using these same tactics, I think we might be justifying them. And provoking the righties into going after leftwing commentators for “revenge."
• Sure we can clearly see the distinction between Imus’s hate speech and, for example, the firing of Bill Maher after 9/11 for making a comment that didn't fit the gung-ho patriotic Bush-can-do-no-wrong atmosphere at the time. But the rightwing attack dogs are all about playing the “gotcha” game, and they are happy to cry “hate speech” and “bigotry” at anyone who expresses anti-religious or “anti-Christian” views, for example. Or to cry “treason” at anyone expressing anti-Bush views. Think of the way rightwing Catholic groups launched a major smear campaign against the two feminist Edwards bloggers for their supposed history of “anti-Catholic bigotry” (i.e. feminist prochoice commentary), or the many campaigns that have been leveled against cartoonist Ted Rall. Many people who make a living from left-wing commentary and cartooning have been in fear for their livelihood due to massive campaigns of outrage based on words or images taken completely out of context or misinterpreted.
• I completely support censuring the haters and raising voices against hate speech and making it loud and clear that it’s not acceptable. In fact, that's pretty much what I've dedicated my entire cartooning career to.
• But there needs to be room for radical dissent and controversial content... and it'd be hypocritical of me to say that privilege only belongs to speech I agree with or don't find hateful or offensive.
• Not that there isn't a line somewhere, or that people shouldn't be fired for being openly bigoted assholes, and not that Imus shouldn't have been fired. When Trent Lott revealed that he wanted to see a segregationist United States Strom Thurmond KKK style, he should have been out on his ass. Instead he's now Senate Minority Whip.
• Sharpton said he wasn't trying to bring down Imus, he was trying to "lift decency up." But is emphasizing that all we want from our media is cleanliness and decency the way to make it more progressive? Or is just going to encourage editors to choose content based primarily on safety?
• The market and advertisers played a big role in this, and I'm not going to celebrate that (scroll down for reference). These same market forces don't make supporting or backing marginal progressive forces or voices a priority and they haven't squat to diversify who gets precious TV and radio airtime and audience: the same old bunch of white guys. They were happy to support Imus for years of similar comments, and only bailed when it became a PR problem. Would these same advertisers bail from a gay program if targeted on a massive scale by rightwing Christian activists?
• All that said, what I really want to see in the media is real race/gender diversity and some strong progressive voices, instead of a wall of hatemongers like Imus/Lou Dobbs/Limbaugh/Glenn Beck/Hannity/O’Reilly and a bunch of meaningless centrists.
• Obviously Imus's departure hardly marks the End of All Things Sexist and Racist on the Radio. But do we really want to get out big scrubby erasers and start making lists of who needs to go? And why didn’t Media Matters mention Lou Dobbs on their list of other racist commenters still on the air? His crazed xenophobic rants about Mexican immigrants trying to destroy the white middle class certainly qualify as topnotch racism. I still hold that he is an Evil Martian Overlord.
• End disorganized bundle of thoughts.
• What do you think?

P.S. Join my weekly mailing list by sending a blank message to newtoons-subscribe@mikhaela.net!

Bay Windows Interview With Ted Rall about Ann Coulter

Bay Windows (my longest-run newspaper comics home!) has an excellent interview with my good buddy and fellow Cartoonist With Attitude Ted Rall about why he disagrees with the HRC campaign to get Ann Coulter's column dropped over her use of the word "faggot" in a recent speech. (Remember: Ted despises Coulter and even considered suing her for lies she told about him in a previous speech. But he has also been the target of successful right-wing campaigns flooding editors with fake "I'm going to cancel my subscription unless you drop that evil Ted Rall" letters).

Three new toons: Trans workplace discrimination, NYPD spies & predatory credit-card lenders

My goodness, I don't know what I was thinking but I did three this week (four if you count one for Lambda Legal that will be up soon)! Yikes! Here we go:

This cartoon was inspired by the recent re-firing of longtime Largo, Florida City Manager Steve Stanton after Stanton announced he planned to transition to life as a woman and change his name to Susan. (I only say "he" because Stanton is, as I understand it, still using that pronoun for now.) I say "re-firing" because the Largo City Commission held a hearing after its initial discriminatory decision to fire Stanton, and made the same bad decision again despite testimony in his favor.

Stanton's firing is far from unusual, so I decided to make the cartoon about anti-transgender workplace discrimination in general, rather than focus on that case. I'm not sure how many people realize that in most places in this country, employers are legally permitted to fire transgender and gay employees on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation. We need a national ENDA (employment non-discrimination act) and now!