Hup—
For we couldn’t leave her there, you see, to crumble into scale.
She’d saved our lives so many times, living though the gale.
And the laughing, drunken rats who left her to a sorry grave?
They won’t be laughing in another day…
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow,
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go,
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain,
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
Rise again, rise again
Though your heart it be broken
And life about to end
No matter what you’ve lost—be it a home, a love, a friend—
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
You’ll have to fend for yourselves a bit longer, I’m afraid. Pardon the dust. —Hey, could you hand me that allen wrench?
Placeholding.
Yeah, yeah. The day job, you know, and it’s acting up again, and I really ought to get an ointment or something for that, and I’m trying to get some other writing done, and we’re going to be at APE in just over a week, so if you’re in San Francisco the weekend of the eighth, well, hey, we’ll be in the same city, and over in Nemas Animæ we’re getting ready to do up a lexicon game about magical texts, so, you know, I’m somewhat distracted. Which is why I haven’t written much of anything here, I suppose it goes without saying. That, and the fact that there’s two entries I keep alluding to that I can’t seem to get written. So I won’t mention the third. Or the fourth.
So hey! Go read the Valve. I mean, god damn would you look at that masthead.
To Robbie Conal, “America’s foremost street artist” and staff caricaturist to the LA Weekly, on the publication of your profile of Portland᾿s own Mercury Studios (and guests) in Portland Monthly—
(A preface: this is long and self-indulgent, but since when is that new on the pier? It is, though, based on a piece that’s not online. So: no link that you can read and check for yourself. Pick up a copy if you’re in town, if you must; the strips they run along with it all rock. If you’d like a glimpse of Mercury Studios, this Oregonian article is much better, and the classy photos that put faces to names are over here.)
First: hey, thanks. There’s nothing so cool as seeing people you love and things you know through someone else’s eyes. Always a treat. And while some might knock the gonzo excess of your prose stylings, well, I’ve always been a fan of exuberance, myself. Give me a voice that knows what it wants and goes after it full-tilt: I might wince at the occasional typo and grammatical misstep, but at the end of the day I’m going to like it better and remember it longer than bog-standard A1 clarity. Just a word of advice: I know they made it look easy, those gonzo guys, like all you had to do was live through it and then sit down with some liquor and stimulants and, you know, type, but it’s hard, gonzo is. Harder than bog-standard A1 clarity. Injecting yourself into your journalism requires a delicate balancing act between self-indulgence and self-awareness, and just because you’re subjective as all get-out, that’s no excuse for slacking off on the underlying facts. (Just because bog-standard A1 is fucking up on that front these days is no excuse, either.) —Oh, hell, you’re tempted to tell yourself; they’ll get the gist of it, even if the facts aren’t all that. Any publicity’s good. Don’t listen: down that road lies the devil.
But we’ll get to that.
As for myself? Well, I’ve got no complaints with how I’m handled. “Build[s] databases for corporate lawsuits.” Pretty much. I might quibble at being called an “adult,” but that’s my hang-up, not yours. (On the other hand, while I’m hardly the best there is at staining and varnishing, I’d like to think our new front door looks slightly nicer than something you’d pick up at the Home Depot.) —But! I never met you, or spoke with you directly, and anyway, I’m only in the thing for a paragraph and a half. Which, granted, is more than Craig Thompson got. So I’m good as far as that goes.
The rest? —At least, the bits I can speak to authoritatively?
Well, first, it’s Dicebox. Not Dice Box. —A small thing, but the devil’s in the details, such as the title of the comic by your subject of the moment. Or the fact that it’s not available exclusively at dicebox.net (rather than jennworks.com—but hey, URLs, who reads ’em?). It’s also and one might even say primarily available at Girlamatic. And while the checks she gets from Girlamatic might only be enough for some beer and the occasional software upgrade, it’s still not entirely accurate to say that Dicebox is “not capitalized, at all.” There’s no action figures, granted; no T-shirts or posters or stickers or tchotchkes. Yet. (We’re still trying to get her to sell the notecards she does.) But Girlamatic does sell advertising on the site; and if your readers manage to make it there, they might well be unpleasantly surprised by the subscription fee they’ll have to pay to read the archives. (We will leave out the plans for eventual print publication; a distraction.)
I know, I know: this messes with the whole “heady Northwest Linux brew collides head-on with the soy-lentil-green-indie arts scene” riff, which I’m sure tested well in the bullpen. But sometimes we must kill our favorite children to make the overall piece.
Moving on: Anodyne is not a parallel project to Dicebox. Anodyne, in fact, died back in 1999; Dicebox took off in 2002. Nor is it entirely clear to your readers that Anodyne was a freely distributed local arts monthly, not a—well, I’m not sure what they’d think, coming out of that paragraph, but it reads like an editor’s blue pencil took a bad fall in the middle of one of the sentences and never recovered, so we’ll let it slide. (But: neutrinos? Mathematical constructs that conserve energy in the equations that describe half-life decay. No half-life themselves to speak of, much less a blisteringly fast one. —I know, I know, they’ll get the gist of it. Yes yes. Moving on.)
As to the aura Jenn that exudes—“blushing rose,” at one point, shading to “purple” when she says “It’s a public form of self-expression”—and her “Buddha-esque” stature as the “gravitational center in that ethereally radiating alternate reality that is so genuinely precious and fiercely protected in the sweet funky neighborhoods of Portland”? —Well, it’s hard to quibble with someone who says something so sweet. And her “transcendentally radiant, gently surreal inner sanctum” is pretty much spot-on, as anyone who’s seen her studio can attest. (Still: “Buddha-esque”?)
But! You’re being genuinely subjective, there, expressing what you saw, as you saw it. I’m not going to contest you on those grounds. It’s when you try to do the same thing through the supposedly objective means of quoting someone directly that we get, well, iffier:
Why stay on the Web? “Distributors! The comics industry is slowly collapsing on itself. Most retail comics stores in North America that want to carry popular comics deal with Diamond Comics Distribution. It has a virtual monopoly. It sells through its catalog, Previews. If a publisher wants its product to be listed in Previews, it has to pay for ads in the catalog—no problem for the majors, but small publishers can’t afford the extra costs. Now Diamond has a rule that it won’t list any comic that doesn’t sell 2,500 copies per month. I haven’t wanted to bother with it.”
Now, granted, I wasn’t there to hear what was actually said, or in what context, any more than I know what’s actually your writing and what was inserted or amended by an editor. So I don’t know how many of the inaccuracies in the above are due to your own misunderstanding of an abstruse and marginal business plan, granted, and how many are due to Jenn hazarding guesses at some placeholder stats in the service of a more fundamental point, but when your subject of the moment says “Don’t quote me on this,” and “You need to check that before you say anything about it” and goes to the trouble of warning your fact-checker, too, well.
Can I kick off a tangent here, just for a moment? It’s germane, honest. —See, I’ve never taken a course in journalistic ethics myself, but I have written my share of feature articles and personality sketches back in the day, and I always tried to keep in mind the case of Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc.
Jeffrey Masson was a psychoanalyst who, while serving as Project Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, grew disenchanted with the father of his art; Janet Malcolm wrote a profile of him for the New Yorker that proved less than flattering. A libel suit was filed. And, while she quoted him at length saying words she couldn’t prove with notes or tape recordings that he’d actually said, Masson lost the suit. —At one point, in fact, she says he described himself as an “intellectual gigolo” when the closest the court could find to that in his actual words was “much too junior within the hierarchy of analysis for these important . . . analysts to be caught dead with [him]”—and still, he lost.
So congratulations! As journalists, we’ve got great power: we can make shit up and stick it in other people’s mouths. (Specifically, “the common law of libel overlooks minor inaccuracies and concentrates upon substantial truth.” But that’s in America, bucko; don’t try it overseas.) —But as you should have realized the moment you set out to write about comics, with great power comes great responsibility. (It’s in the pamphlet they give you at the door.) The law sets forth the bare minimum: you can elide stuffily tedentious self-descriptors down to snappily inaccurate soundbites so long as you don’t violate substantial truth. Beyond that, well, we’ve got to call on ethics. (Do keep Malcom’s own snappy self-descriptor in mind: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”)
And at this point you’re asking yourself what the hell the fallout from a contentious multi-million dollar libel suit can teach us about a freelance puff piece on cartoonists in a $3.99 glossy ad-horse. Hell, you’re probably saying, I never elided anything! I didn’t make anything up at all! That’s what she said! I’m pretty sure! What gives?
Let’s step through it:
You’re interviewing someone about their webcomics publishing venture and you ask them, why the web? And they tell you there’s a lot of barriers to traditional print publishing. And you ask, like what? And maybe they say something like industry collapsing, Diamond monopoly, ads in the catalog, 2,500 copies. —And you do some research, and you find out that the industry has been through a rough patch, but sales in some quarters are showing signficant upticks; that Diamond in the mad bad days of the late ’90s pretty much had a virtual monopoly, yes, and it’s true that almost every direct-market comics shop in the country still has to deal with them, but there’s a number of competitors now, and new if untested markets cropping up all over, like manga in Borders and strips on, hey, the web; that no, you don’t have to buy ads in the catalog to get listed, just glancing at the thing will tell you that, though if you ask around you’ll hear dark mutterings from some quarters of preferential treatment for those who buy ads (then again, this is a business: what’s new?) and if you do more than glance at the thing you’ll note the listings are so small that it’s pretty much impossible to get noticed at all without buying some real estate to strut your stuff; that Diamond (it’s said) prefers sales of $1,000 a pop with a reliable growth curve over the first few issues, not so much a firm floor of 2,500 copies.
Given that you can make up whatever you like and stick it in their mouth, so long as you don’t violate substantial truth, what do you do?
Well. That all depends on what the substantial truth is, doesn’t it?
And this is why journalism is morally indefensible, and this is why ethics are paramount, at the end of the day. —Are you writing a drily witty, razor-keen hit piece? Well. What you’ll want to do is polish what was said until minor inaccuracies reflect the subject of the moment’s ostensible paranoia and aggrandizing sense of self-importance—conspiracies, projection, sour grapes. Ethically impeccable, morally indefensible, but hey, substantial truth, right?
Are you digging into something as an investigative reporter? Grilling a government spokesperson on the record? In that case, the substantial truth is what, precisely, was said, and when, and how; you won’t want to change a word. But you will want to hold what was said up against the actual facts—or at the very least present those facts, as if they were the other side of an argument. You know?
But if it’s a freelance puff piece on cartoonists for a $3.99 glossy ad-horse? Whose basic point is opening up a genuinely precious and fiercely protected demimonde to latte-sipping shoppers cruising the Pearl? —In that case, your subject of the moment is hardly a hostile witness. Your goals are in synch. The substantial truth is there are obstacles, yes. Your great power is to put words in their mouth. Your great responsibility is to make sure they get the job done.
So: you can change what was said to congrue with reality as you’ve found it. Don’t look at me like that. You can do this. It’s perfectly allowable. Granted, if you’re a mensch, you’re going to call them up before it goes to press and vet the quote with them, word for word, but time is short, and there are so few mensches left in this world. But that’s one thing you can do. Drop the bit about the monopoly; massage the sentence about ads until it says “to get noticed”; correct the number. Morally indefensible; ethically impeccable. Hey presto.
Granted, most writers are going to feel uncomfortable doing this. I’d balk at it myself: I’ve played fast and loose with quotes from time to time (you’ve never heard the fury hell hath none like until you’ve vernaculared the verb of a persnickety grammarian), but not with something so central to a point. In that case: well, they did say there were obstacles, right? Sin by omission: cut the quote there, drop out of their voice and into your own, lay down the facts as you’ve found them to be. —The substantial truth, after all.
(Is the substantial truth that they’ve got some particulars wrong, off the cuff like that? Is that what’s important to note? —Especially when they’ve told you “Don’t quote me on this” and “You need to check that before you say anything about it.” What morals are you trying to defend, again?
(Just be sure whatever you do that the truth you’re citing, in their words or yours, has some little substance. It does no good to say to yourself that the gist of the matter is there are obstacles and the facts merely illustrate this, accurate or not, when your readers take home a gist that says Diamond won’t list your comics unless you also buy an ad.)
But what you don’t do, and I realize I’ve blown through about 2500 words here and you’re probably getting tired of the sound of my voice on what is really a tiny problem in the grand scheme of things, but the devil is in the goddamn details, it’s all small stuff, so bear with me: what you don’t do is pretend that writing it down as if they’ve said it absolves you of the responsibility of finding out for yourself. Putting facts in other people’s mouths is a great way to humanize a story, but it’s also a cheap-ass way to dodge the bullet. “That’s wrong?” you say. “Well, gosh. It’s what they said. I can only write what they tell me.” That’s morally indefensible and ethically questionable, and what’s more, when people turn the page and read this:
The pop-culture industry has already thrown the first brick or two—and they’re gold, baby. There are 2,500 independent bookstores and 3,000 chain stores in the United States, and guess what: book sales are as flat as Nebraska—with the single exception of comics and graphic novels. How does $105 million in sales for 2003 sound?
Like a data point without context, but aside from that: who’s right? “The industry is collapsing,” or “Sales leaping buildings in a single bound”? I mean, I know how to square this particular circle, and Jenn knows, and everyone you talked to for the article knows, because we all know the shape of this thing we call comics. I can’t tell from this piece whether you do or not. But I do know that most of your readers don’t; and after finishing this thing, they still won’t.
They will have missed the gist, basically.
—Damn. I did go on a bit about a piece that’s mostly about other people, didn’t I? Chalk it up to youthful enthusiasm. (I’d sure like to.) And I’m not sure what might (or, granted, might not) be misspelled in Pete Woods’ curriculum vitæ, or out of synch in Matthew Clark’s résumé, but I can tell you that the Wendy-and-the-Lost-Boys riff you pull with Rebecca Woods is almost as old and inaccurate as the idea that cartoonists live out a delayed adolescence that escapes the rest of us benighted souls, but maybe another time. —I had a different point to make, and I hope I have: gonzo’s right, and objective journalism is a myth, yes yes: but this makes it all much harder, not easier. Far from absolving us from the responsibility of checking into the truth of what we’re living through, it goads us all the more into chasing something we’ll never reach—or it ought to, anyway. Only then can we make it all look like we popped the pills and drank the booze and just sat down to type. Easy as pie.
Even for a freelance puff piece. Even for a $3.99 glossy ad-horse, only picked up by power shoppers down from the West Hills. —If we don’t do the right thing, even in the least of what we do, who will?
(One last thing: not to snark overly, but you don’t even know who Craig Thompson is, do you. —No, wait, one more last thing: “Hey, sorry, we gotta refuel the fairy.” What?)
Where there’s soot-stained, coughing firefighters, there’s usually a fire...
Republicans! Conservatives! If yours is truly the best of all possible ways, closest to the American soul, favored by security moms and securities dads alike across our fruited plains, destined to eclipse us outmoded liberals and rule with a firm but benevolent hand all the rest of our days, then why on earth do you find yourselves lying and cheating and stealing whenever a ballot box is involved?
And then: cue the useful idiots. God, but it’s a wonder we can get anything done around here at all.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
—well, I’m weak:
America’s future has become an Orwellian nightmare of ultra-liberalism. Beginning with the Gore Presidency, the government has become increasingly dominated by liberal extremists. In 2004, Muslim terrorists stopped viewing the weakened American government as a threat; instead they set their sites on their true enemies, vocal American conservatives. Terrorist assassins have thinned the ranks of the vocal Right. The few conservatives that survived attempts on their lives have been forced underground by the oppressive “Coulter Laws” of 2007. In order to further their cause, they have joined forces and formed a powerful covert conservative organization called “The Freedom of Information League”, aka F.O.I.L.
The New York City faction of F.O.I.L. is lead by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North, each uniquely endowed with special abilities devised by a biomechanical engineer affectionately named “Oscar”. F.O.I.L. is soon to be joined by a young man named Reagan McGee. Reagan was born on September 11th, 2001. Reagan has grown to manhood in an ultra-liberal educational system: being told, not asked, what to think. With personal determination, which alienates him from his contemporaries, he has chosen the path less traveled…the path to the Right.
Two decades of negotiation with the U.N., and America’s administration of 2021 (President Chelsea Clinton and Vice President Michael Moore), has culminated in a truce with fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, or so America is told. The honorable ambassador from Afghanistan has come to NYC to address the U.N., his name is Usama Bin Laden.
Although, Ambassador Bin Laden has announced that he will publicly apologize for the “misunderstanding” of the events of 9/11. In actuality, he intends on detonating a tactical nuke that is contained in his private diplomatic briefcase. It is a race against the clock to save NYC from a nuclear holocaust and the world from liberal domination. Only with F.O.I.L.’s help, can “Liberality For All” once again become “Liberty For All!”
—via Fanboy Rampage, which I have got to start reading more often. Original’s over here, at Byrne Robotics. But seriously, folks: Mike Mackey’s dream is to publish “the world’s first conservative comic.” Will no one help him buck the liberal media to realize it?
I don’t mean to insult Gore or those that voted for him (although that is an unfortunate result of the series), In my storyline, he is only one of many more liberals follow him. (think more John Kerry here)
Do you really believe that if UBL were to make an appeal to the U.N. promising an end to world terrorism, That Kofi would not leap at the offer? (At any costs.)
But I think you make my point. Yes, the republicans are in power, but had to fight against the overwhelming mainstream liberal media to do it, and still the Republicans won; this proves a strong conservative base in America. So by now you would think some one would have at least recognized the interest in a book with an extremely conservative message.
Shame.
It’s one of the things we’re trying to get at, with our koans and our agitprop: to shame the ruling powers when we have no power of our own. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Ok.) has something he really ought to feel ashamed of. He is, after all, a doctor, and in July of 1998, he said this:
[In] an interview after [Coburn]’s panel appearance, he conceded the issue of caring for a terminally ill patient brings with it complex questions and is not always simple. For example, under certain circumstances when there is no hope of recovery, he said physicians should have the option of withholding nutrients and water from a dying patient. Coburn said he has done that in the past. “If somebody does not want a feeding tube, I won’t put a feeding tube down,” he said.
Perfectly in keeping with morality and ethics as we understood them in 1998, but at that point Michael Schiavo had only just given up his heart-breaking quest to rehabilitate Terri Schiavo. In 2005, in this ghastly season of the martyr, things are a wee bit different:
Among them was Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma and a family practice doctor, who said in an interview, “I don’t think you have to examine her. All you have to do is look at her on TV. Any doctor with any conscience can look at her and know that she does not have a terminal disease and know that she has some function.”
The other doctor in the Senate, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), disagrees slightly with Coburn’s newfound understanding of the moral and ethical landscape. Terri Schiavo must be examined. (He has yet to wholly abandon his Hippocratic oath, it seems.) —Luckily, examining her is simplicity itself: all you have to do is look at her, on TV, as a doctor with any conscience:
In a speech last week on the Senate floor, Frist said that “speaking more as a physician than as a U.S. senator,” he believed there was “insufficient information to conclude that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state.”
Frist—who as a surgeon performed more than 150 heart and lung transplants—said his conclusion was based on a review of footage of the brain-damaged Florida woman whose parents are seeking to reconnect her feeding tube.
Now, I realize it may seem silly to speak about shame in an age when pundits have no qualms about accusing a sitting judge of plotting murder solely because they disagree with his interpretation of the law and a notedly lousy con artist is called with a straight face to give his own shameless diagnosis, but darn it, we’ve got to try. Let’s follow Michael Bassik’s suggestion and help Dr. Frist launch his post-Senate career as the world’s only video-consulting physician!
Are you sick? Injured? Worried about a medical problem, but can’t afford a physician? Well, worry no longer! Because Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD, doesn’t even need to see you to make a diagnosis and prescribe care.
Bassik says, “Take a digital picture or video of your medical problem—tennis elbow, acne, runny nose, hemorrhoids, or whatever ails you—and send it to the doctor in charge of the US Senate and your health care.”
And here’s the Flickr archive thus far. Upload and tag your own. —Hell, it’s cheaper than universal health care.
And I did not speak up, because I was not Tina Fey.
Sat next to Ann Coulter and Catherine Crier (they were dining with unidentified gentleman) during brunch at La Goulue on Sunday, March 20th. Catherine Crier’s face looked like a burn victim! She was pulled tight and had obviously had LOTS of work done. But, I can only comment on Ann’s “blonde” locks as she sat with her back towards me. While eavesdropping on Ann and Catherine’s conversation, heard a little snippet about their dislike of Tina Fey and “Saturday Night Live.” They believe that Tina is “un-American” and she shouldn’t be on television…which my friend and I found VERY ironic!
Witnessed an axis of evil power lunch on palm Sunday at la goulue – anne coulter and catherine crier ripping tina fey APART at the next table for the previous nights snl weekend update—crier actually pounding the table and saying shes vile and evil and cant stand her. Crier looks a lot like joan rivers surgically. fey and pohler rule.
—“Gawker Stalker,” 22 March 2005
Upon hearing once more the serial bangs and muffled thuds of our crack circular firing squad, the words of—I believe it was Kissinger?—are called to mind.
The stakes are so small precisely because the politics are so vicious.
—No, wait, that’s not quite it.
The stakes are so vicious precisely because the politics are so small.
Fudge. That’s not it, either. Bear with me. I’m sure I’ll get it in a minute.
Bumrush the MSM.
Sic, of course. —Digby says:
By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient’s family’s wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother’s wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.
Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.
Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo’s care thus far.
Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo’s because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.
And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.
Those who don’t read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is “stepping in to save Terry Schiavo” mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.
Do what you can about it. Copy this and paste it into the TO field of an email message:
360@cnn.com, 48hours@cbsnews.com, am@cnn.com, Colmes@foxnews.com, comments@foxnews.com, crossfire@cnn.com, dateline@nbc.com, daybreak@cnn.com, earlyshow@cbs.com, evening@cbsnews.com, Foxreport@foxnews.com, insidepolitics@cnn.com, inthemoney@cnn.com, live@cnn.com, livefrom@cnn.com, newsnight@cnn.com, nightline@abcnews.com, nightly@nbc.com, rrhodes@airamericaradio.com, today@nbc.com, wam@cnn.com, wolf@cnn.com, world@msnbc.com, wsj.ltrs@wsj.com, letters@nytimes.com, public@nytimes.com, netaudr@abc.com
Add what you can to the list. Show them the pieces of the story they aren’t telling the rest of the country. Ask them to do their jobs.
You are getting agitated again.
Some questions:
Why did you let Sun Hudson die? Why are you drastically cutting Medicaid even though it insures that more families must face the horrific consequences of George W. Bush’s Texas Futile Care Law? Why are you encouraging others to threaten the lives of Michael Schiavo and Judge George Greer? Why do you persist in this hideous farce, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the country wants you to sit down, shut up, and stop showboating on the back of someone else’s pain?
The only answer that makes any sense at all:
Because Terry Schiavo’s case lets us weaken states’ rights and spit on the constitution.
Babykillers.
Oh, do let’s ignore nuance on this one. —Go here, to Tom DeLay’s “Majority Leader” webpage—since folks who don’t live in the 22nd can’t email him from his own page without some chicanery.
Fill out the contact information as you like.
In the comments box, write this:
Why did you let Sun Hudson die?
Pass it on.
The baby wore a cute blue outfit with a teddy bear covering his bottom. The 17-pound, nearly 6-month-old boy wiggled with eyes open, his mother said, and smacked his lips. Then at 2 p.m. Tuesday, a medical staffer at Texas Children’s Hospital gently removed the breathing tube that had kept Sun Hudson alive since his birth Sept. 25. Cradled by his mother, he took a few breaths, and died . . . Sun’s death marks the first time a US judge has allowed a hospital to discontinue an infant’s life-sustaining care against a parent’s wishes, according to bioethical experts.
—“Baby dies after hospital removes breathing tube,”
Houston Chronicle, 16 March 2005
It is now one o’clock on the East Coast, the time preordained by a Florida state judge to allow for denial of food and water to Terri Schiavo. This act of barbarism can be, and must be, prevented. The Senate has before it the Protection of Incapacitated Persons Act of 2005. This bill is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, they have chosen to adjourn rather than pass it.
Those senators responsible for blocking the bill yesterday afternoon, Senators Boxer, Wyden, and Levin, have put Mrs. Schiavo’s life at risk to prove a point—an unprecedented profile in cowardice. The American people are not interested in squabbles between Republicans and Democrats, or between the House and Senate. They care, and we care, about saving Terri Schiavo’s life.
—“Terri Schiavo is Alive—This Fight Is Not Over;
House Continues to Work to Save Terri Schiavo,”
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sugarland), 18 March 2005
ABC News obtained talking points circulated among Senate Republicans explaining why they should vote to intervene in the Schiavo case. Among them, that it is an important moral issue and the “pro-life base will be excited,” and that it is a “great political issue—this is a tough issue for Democrats.”
—“Republicans Seek to Take Schiavo Battle to Supreme Court;
Husband Calls It a ‘Mockery’,” ABC News, 19 March 2005
o.H.M.y.
Y’all remember Tatu? Taty? t.A.T.y?
(Take your time. I’ll wait.)
Okay. I haven’t been following the news all that much, because, y’know, you load one fauxsapphic lolitapop eurochirp album onto your iPod, how many more do you need, and anyway, the pop-culture buzz only lasts so long. —Somewhere in intervening time, it seems, Yulia and Lena wised up to the exploitative nature of their predicament and cut out one of the middlemen by dropping their Svengali, Ivan Shapovalov. And promptly fell off the cult stud radar. There was apparently a reality show, framed around the recording of their new album? Which was supposed to drop on 14 March? Anybody?
Ah, but what about said ex-Svengali?
“I don’t care if she is Russian or not,” says Shapovalov. “This is a girl from the Internet. I can’t even determine the exact style of her music. She sings in Tadjik, Georgian and Pharsi languages. Her songs are about love, about life.”
Ladies and gentlemen: n.A.T.o.
“It’s my first concert, and anything can happen. But everything is going to be fine!” The CNN commentary fades slowly into a steady techno beat, soon joined by live drums and a heavy guitar riff opens up. As Nato lifts the microphone to her lips and starts to sing, the audience strains to hear her voice over the noise. But no matter how they crane their necks, they can see nothing of her face, hidden behind a black veil that shows only her eyes. The lyrics, too, are a bit of a mystery, as Nato doesn’t sing in Russian, but in Chechen and Georgian. One thing is clear: Nato’s outfitted to look like one of the infamous “Black Widows,” the female Chechen suicide bombers.
Confidential to Kriston Capps, to whom many thanks: Russian culture qua culture tends neither to be deaf nor immune; rather, it takes inordinate pride in the world’s deadest pan:
As a finale, Nato performs “Chor Javon,” a catchy song with clear hit potential that’s going to be released as her first single. As soon as she puts down the microphone, the guards jump on stage and fire paintballs into the crowd with their fake Kalashnikovs. Alexy, a 24 year-old concert-goer, gives the whole thing a tired smile. “I’d imagined this would be way more radical,” he says. “Machine guns, the whole silent guard routine—you’re really not going to shock anyone with that kind of thing these days.”
Alas!
Alas, a blog is back from database hell.
Old skool.
I may be getting paddled by the Happy Tutor elsewhere, but never let it be said I said he couldn’t turn a phrase on a dime and kick a white-hot nickel back in change:
You are not watching a play. My friend, you are on stage, as a member of the Chorus. The play is a tragedy, with comic or satiric interludes. What makes it tragic is that time and power are slipping away from the moderate. The tragedy is about how, through the failure of the Chorus to speak up, democracy in Athens was lost. The play ends with a Peter Karoff, or one of so many other such moderate, wise figure’s tragic recognition that it is too late for protest. They, the ones who come to their recognition too late, or express it too late, are not hauled off. Theirs is a worse fate, to live for the rest of their lives, in what had been a democracy, with the urbane shrug that was the tipping point, forced to repeat that shrug under conditons that become increasingly bleak, and to pass on to their heirs that legacy of self-subjugation.
Turbulent Velvet, meanwhile, wants to remind you of what Kenneth Burke said about satire and burlesque, and you need more than I want to paste here, so go. —As for me, all this on top of re-reading Wicked is proving a rich, rich diet:
“Animals in pens have lots of time to develop theories,” said the Cow. “I’ve heard more than one clever creature draw a connection between the rise of tiktokism and the erosion of traditional Animal labor. We weren’t beasts of burden, but we were good reliable laborers. If we were made redundant in the workforce, it was only a matter of time before we’d be socially redundant, too. Anyway, that’s one theory. My own feeling is that there is real evil abroad in the land. The Wizard sets the standard for it, and the society follows suit like a bunch of sheep. Forgive the slanderous reference,” she said, nodding to her companions in the pen. “It was a slip.”
Elphaba threw open the gate of the pen. “Come on, you’re free,” she said. “What you make of it is your own affair. If you turn it down, it’s on your own heads.”
“It’s on our own heads if we walk out, too. Do you think a Witch who would charm an axe to dismember a human being would pause over a couple of Sheep and an annoying old Cow?”
“But this might be your only chance!” Elphaba cried.
The Cow moved out, and the Sheep followed. “We’ll be back,” she said. “This is an exercise in your education, not ours. Mark my words, my rump’ll be served up rare on your finest Dixxi House porcelain dinner plates before the year is out.” She mooed a last remark—“I hope you choke”—and, tail swishing the flies, she meandered away.
Too rich, perhaps. I need to get back to the more comfortable ground of the Unheimlichsenke. I did have one more thing to say, at least.
Eisners, and a drunken eagle—
Maybe they don’t go all that well together. I’ve been juxtaposing too much, lately. Let’s set them to one side, and the other. First, the Eisner Awards, named for comics giant Will Eisner: the Oscars,™ see, are sort of the Eisners of the movie industry. Heidi MacDonald over at the Beat has some paradigm-shaking news—
Eisner Awards Accepting Webcomics Submissions
The judges for the 2005 Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards are accepting submissions for a possible Best Digital Comic category.
Criteria:
Any professionally produced long-form comics work posted online or distributed via other digital media is eligible. The majority of the work must have been published in 2004. Audio elements and animation can be part of the work but must be minimal. Web comics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form.
Submission:
For webcomics: Send URL and any necessary access information to the Eisner Awards administrator, Jackie Estrada.
For CD or DVD comics: Send disc to Eisner Awards, 4657 Cajon Way, San Diego, CA 92115.
Deadline: March 25, 2005 (but sooner is much preferred)
Things are moving fast: the first webcomic to be nominated at all for any sort of Eisner was Nowhere Girl, back in 2003. At this rate, we’ll have only four or five years of the best webcomics being ghettoized in the Best Digital Comic category and locked out of all the others (since they’ve already got an award of their own, you know). —I kid! Heidi says that somewhere, Scott McCloud is smiling, and I have no doubt he is, so I went to see for myself, and tripped over a link to this good Columbia Journalism Review article on comics journalism, which
reminds us all (you didn’t forget, did you?) of Brought to Light:
Something of that æsthetic range is represented by the two main pieces in the 1989 book Brought to Light. In one half of the volume, Joyce Brabner and Thomas Yeates tell of the 1984 bombing at a press conference in La Penca, Nicaragua, which killed eight people and injured twenty-eight others. The presentation is straightforward, using plain language and realistic illustrations, and drawing on the accounts of witnesses and the evidence presented in the Christic Institute’s lawsuit alleging CIA involvement in the bombing.
Flip the book over, and you find a story with similar themes told in a very different manner. The celebrated comics innovators Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz present a fable-like retelling of CIA history, narrated by a lonely, alcoholic eagle wearing an ugly checkered sports coat. Sometimes painterly, sometimes cartoonish, in places using techniques of collage, the piece outlines a record of atrocities culminating in the Iran-contra affair. The tone wavers between the confessional and the bombastic, and the imagery employs heavy symbolism, with human chess pieces, sprinting swastikas, and swimming pools full of blood.
But the facts are there, and the nightmarish surrealism seems to fit the subject matter. Indeed, the reader is forced to question the propriety of the standard journalistic conceits—the calm recitation of facts, the carefully hedged allegations, the measured tone. A drunken eagle swimming in blood may actually come closer to the point.
And yeah, I’m saying to myself, yeah: it’s stuff I know, a beat I’ve heard before, hell, I’ve played it, but the CJR slicks it up nice. Comics are an incredibly personal medium—what you’re reading was hand-drawn, handwritten, just for you by the cartoonist (or at least, they look that way) (or at least, they can look that way, they mostly look that way, it’s an effort to look any other way), and that’s a powerful jolt right there of what it was the gonzo folks brought to the table, a jolt we sadly need again. And it’s not just surrealism and naturalism: comics are capable of extremes of pointed emotion and perplexing ambiguity, sometimes in the same dam’ drawing. —But circling in on the point: we know how to read a news article any which way we want to, now. They know how to write ’em any which way they want to, too. But the moves and techniques of comics are still new to a lot of people; we’re still figuring out how they work, ourselves. We haven’t taught ourselves to ignore them, read around them, we haven’t figured out how to innocculate ourselves against them, not yet, not anywhere near to the same degree. And that’s why Joe Sacco’s sad sack rendition of himself and that shrieking, sotted eagle are able to do what they did (do!) so well.
Well, that and talent. And technique, honed over years of backbreaking, unrewarded work. —But aside from that.
And I was going to say something about blogging taking a tip and epiphanies and such but I’m not because why bother. I’m just going to
remind myself that the Eisners are checking out the webcomics. Excuse me; I have some folks I need to pester about getting their stuff ready to submit.
Pretty good.
Roy posted a link to a searching analysis of the Cedar Revolution in pictures, by Michael Totten and his Swaggering Commenteers:
What you see is the difference b between pure hearts and evil ones. The smile on an evil face can never be as refreshing ad one one a good face. Evil betrays itself for all to see.
...coercive people are almost always mean, angry, repressive, and they think it’s all for the greater good…
Look at the faces in each group…A picture tells a thousand stories.
One group looks happy and free,
*******while the other,*********
with their faces covered, looks dark and violent, (why?)...
It almost looks like Men and Elves vs. Orcs from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, doesn’t it? Too bad that in many ways it is. Let’s hope the outcome is the same, albeit with a lot less bloodshed.
...I’ll go out on a limb and say the Syrian thugs look a heckuva lot like the anarchist punks who riot in the streets of San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, all the way down to the flag-burning and masks.
And I’ll allow as how we can get a wee bit pissed-off up here in Little Beirut when cops pepper-spray infants—a patch, perhaps, on the complex political dynamics currently being played out in Lebanon, but a wise if intemperate person once said something to the effect that unhappiness is relative, and depends solely on one’s circumstances. But that aside, there’s a wee bit of a problem with this pretty-good, ugly-evil analysis that’s au courant. Think a moment, I’m sure you’ll get it…
What a refreshing smile. So happy and free. Beatific, even. No anarchist punk, he.
A former Nazi who fled to South America and became the charismatic leader of a religious sect has been arrested in Argentina on charges of child abuse and torture.
Paul Schaefer, 83, was seized in the town of Tortuguitas, 18 miles west of Buenos Aires, along with six people described as his security team, Argentine police said.
He has been hiding for eight years, ever since a warrant for his arrest on paedophile charges was issued in Chile in August 1996.
Fish in a barrel, but what are you gonna do? And it’s not like Totten really believes that pretty is good, good pretty, and that’s all on earth ye need to know. Right? It’s just, y’know, he’s saying whatever pops into his pretty little head that he thinks might help his cause. One of the strengths of the blogosphere, that soapbox extemporizing. Along with the, the whaddayacallit. Self-correcting thingummy. That.
Oh, and conspiracy-mongering. That, too. An easy thing to fall into, you gaze for long enough into a pretty, pretty smile like Schaefer’s.
