Cartoonist Pat Oliphant is a brilliant caricaturist and political cartoonist. But this is downright sexist. It takes Senator John Edwards' criticism of Senator Clinton's emotional moment (as I will keep saying, she didn't actually cry, she got verklempft) to an even worse level. As much as I support Edwards over Clinton -- in fact, because I worry more that Clinton is a hawk is dovish costume -- I object to the caricature of Clinton as a "weepy, weak female" (to put a stereotype in irony quotes) who can't be "tough" (ditto) on the international stage. Indeed, it is such sexist stereotyping that Clinton has consistently sought to overcome in her public persona and that may have motivated her (and her Democratic male colleagues) to take such cynical positions granting war powers authorization against Iraq and supporting Kyl-Leiberman on Iran.

My good friend Barry Deutsch has taken me to task on a cartoon I did a couple months ago portraying Clinton as weeping into her husband's arms following criticism she received during the October 30th debate. Remember, "politics of pile-on"? Kate Phillips provided further context for the controversy, and indeed it is that context, as well as Clinton's cynical attempts at foreign policy "toughness," that inspired the cartoon. In my view, Clinton's defensive use of gender identity in response to legitimate criticisms from her political rivals was not an instance of her being a "weepy, weak female" but of being a (more gender-neutral) "cry baby." Instead of handling the criticism directly, she tried to make it seem that she was the target of a "boy's club." Put together, such defensiveness, cynical use of gender politics, and bringing in her husband to defend her against "those boys" created the impression that she was not the feminist ground-breaker she claims to be.

That's where I was coming from. But what an artist intends and what the art does on its own can be two different things. Barry is probably right that the final panel of my cartoon plays into sexist stereotyping, no matter what I intended. That experience has made me a bit more cautious (and I think I'm pretty cautious as it is) in how my artistic responses to political events and politicians' behavior reinforce stereotypes, cant and other moronic assumptions. Had Bill Clinton been the candidate responding in a similar fashion (minus gender politics), my portrayal of him as "cry baby" would have been more clear, at least by not being clouded by cultural attitudes toward gender. Yet had I portrayed him weeping into his wife's arms, would it have implied that he was "emasculated" or "less than a man"? Possibly yes.

In conversation (in person, not online) Barry had asked me if I thought Elizabeth Edwards' defense of her husband against Ann Coulter's "faggot" remarks were any different from Bill Clinton's defense of his wife. I would say, yes, given the context: Coulter's criticisms were indefensible, whereas the criticisms from Hillary Clinton's rivals were reasonable responses to contradictions she had made in a debate; and, again, Bill's "those boys" comment followed on the heels of Hillary's "boy's club" comment and her campaign's "pile-on" YouTube video. That said, my cartoon should have been more explicit in criticizing these tactics and clarifying that context. To some extent I was trying to do too much at once. The image itself - Clinton sobbing in the arms of her husband - resonates far beyond my own intentions and serves to subvert my criticism. 

In this latest installment, Dr. Knott continues to probe the inner recesses of Sheldon's mind.

Part of this page was drawn with actual crayon. It was fun to go outside the digital box. And into the Crayola box.

On to other things: In a NY Times Book Review of Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy, Shibley Telhami describes the focus by the authors on political cartoons that have appeared following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001:

The cartoons show violent, oversexed males, oppressed females, deceptive foreigners. The cartoonists, the authors argue, frequently conflate terrorist groups or the Taliban with Muslims or Arabs in general. One example shows the Taliban in Arab headdresses. “The underlying presumption is that Pashtun Muslims dress as all Muslims dress — as the stereotyped Arab.” (They don’t.) Another cartoon, they say, suggests that “Islamic beliefs inflamed Arab hatred of the United States.”
Still, it’s hard to tell how representative these examples are, since we can’t compare them with other cartoons that may have been more balanced. It’s also hard to measure their impact on public opinion.

As someone drawing political cartoons since before 9/11, I have been observing the work of my peers in the mainstream and alternative presses as well. The latter crowd have been pretty careful in their representations of Muslims, recognizing that there are geographical, historical ethnic and sectarian divisions within a religion comprising over a billion people throughout the world. Personally speaking, I took pains to examine news photos of the specific people whose countries we were bombing or threatening to bomb, noted common modes of dress, ethnic characteristics and gender signifiers. I wanted to get the details right, because I was attempting to portray people I have little personal contact with yet who suffer at the weapons of my government. I'm not tooting some sanctimonious horn here; it's what a responsible artist does.

The mainstream folks are more spotty; some cartoonists are more conscious than others, and some are just total hacks. Prior to 9/11 newspaper editorial cartoonists, with few exceptions and regardless of political leanings, portrayed Arabs mostly as fat sheiks with "OPEC" branded on their bellies or headdresses; only the Palestinians warranted different costumes, mostly militant and violent. It should be noted here that "Muslim" and "Arab" and "Palestinian" were frequently conflated concepts. Whether or not such cartoons had direct "impact on public opinion" they were symptomatic of a larger cultural ignorance that, once attacked by the more extreme elements from a part of the world hitherto ignored, kicked into paranoiac and viciously racist overdrive.

I think it's appropriate to use political cartoons in the mainstream press as indicators of a society's tropes of fear, ignorance and anger, especially in a critique of American cultural responses to unprecedented terrorist attacks on American soil. Editors choose and pay for political cartoons because they concisely express a viewpoint reflecting popular discourse on a topic. This discourse is framed by various interests, of course, not least of which is the publisher's, an increasingly faceless entity as newspapers are consumed within the larger matrices of corporate properties. One instance of an Islamophobic cartoon - or even a handful of such - is a likely aberration; but we're talking about a frequently occurring set of negative stereotypes that are widespread and run deep historically. Indeed what troubles me is that these stereotypes are so ingrained they can be produced effortlessly with no conscious malice on the part of the offending cartoonist. After 9/11 and into the present day the tactics of our warmongering political class have exploited these stereotypes to keep the fear, anger and ignorance alive, overwhelming rational dissenting criticism of policies that threaten to establish a police state at home and a perpetual war abroad. Cartoonists should never allow themselves to be so used. 

Here is a cartoon by nationally syndicated political cartoonist Mike Lester:



Here is what Pacman Jones looks like:





The real solution to this discrepancy is that Lester needs to learn (or to remember) how to draw people period. Then he needs to remember that caricature exaggerates recognizable features of the subject. For example, Hillary Clinton has apple cheeks and heavy lidded eyes, so most caricatures of her focus on those features. Barak Obama has a long neck and big ears. Pacman Jones has dreds. He does NOT have big lips. Unless the only people Lester knows are tight-lipped WASPs, he should realize the Jones' lips are about average for a human being, regardless of race, ethnicity or sex. They are clearly not his most recognizable feature. At best I would focus more on set of his mouth, a kind of ironic smirk that befits his bad boy image. It would still not take up half his head.

Do political cartoonists have seminars on this stuff?