The New Normal

How not to be a sexist jerk this election season

I swore I wasn’t going to do an election strip this week, but the alternative was a comic about excessive amounts of cellulose filler found in cans of grated Parmesan cheese. You can guess how well that went.

Let me say up front that I do not consider Bernie to be a sexist jerk, since I know that’s what many people are going to assume. To the contrary, I think he’s a feminist. He did, however, say something uncool that I felt needed calling out (in the same spirit, let’s say, that he publicly criticizes Obama when he disagrees with him). For those unfamiliar with the backstory, Bernie was defending a controversial comment made by the rapper Killer Mike (who was actually quoting a feminist scholar friend) about a uterus not qualifying one to be president. Setting aside the point that I think most Hillary supporters are factoring in more than just the uterus situation, Bernie’s claim that he would never ask voters to support him because he’s a man struck me as an odd case of false equivalence, the kind of context-free, ahistorical argument we tend to hear from right-wingers shooting down affirmative action or calls for greater workplace diversity. Of course he wouldn’t ask people to vote for him because he’s a man. There’s no need!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not particularly attached to either Hillary or Bernie, but I do think we need more women in politics. While gender certainly — obviously! — shouldn’t be the only factor, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a female president. And while I think the “Bernie Bro” phenomenon has been somewhat overstated, I’ve come to realize that a lot of otherwise well-meaning people just don’t quite take our nation’s glaring absence of a single female president or vice president very seriously. You don’t even have to support Hillary to acknowledge that solving the problem is important. Just as President Obama has provided a positive role model and sense of possibility to countless numbers of people, a woman in the Oval Office would have a powerful effect.

SCANDAL: President to nominate Supreme Court justice

If Scalia had died during the final year of the George W. Bush administration, can you imagine the GOP making the absurd claim that a successor must not be named in an election year? There is no debate to be had here. It’s Obama’s turn.

May this be the beginning of the end of a retrograde Supreme Court that has been so destructive to our democracy and civil rights, a court more interested in protecting the lives of coal companies than those of Earth’s seven billion human beings. Time for a new era.

Hillary and Bernie supporter smackdown

I usually hate it when pundits try to play peacemaker, lamenting divisiveness and partisanship when there may be very good reasons for such behaviors to exist. But when it comes to the Democratic primaries, which I’m observing with no particular sense of attachment, I think things have taken an unnecessarily ugly turn lately. Yes, supporters and surrogates of both candidates have said stupid things. Hillary would do herself a favor by avoiding going negative on Bernie and his supporters, which only backfires (as some of her more prominent defenders demonstrated spectacularly over the weekend). I question some aspects of Hillary’s record, but she doesn’t deserve the outright demonization coming from some quarters of the left.

Let’s not lose sight of the big picture. Ted Cruz is my senator, okay? We’re bickering over two pretty acceptable candidates while the political equivalent of the bubonic plague is threatening to descend on the United States.

The Trump-supporting union member

Well, Ted Cruz has won Iowa, an outcome I find no less gooseflesh-inducing than a Trump victory.  A few days ago, a disturbing report surfaced about Trump making inroads among union members. According to a study conducted by Working America, white working-class voters who support Trump cited his tendency to “speak his mind” as the quality they most admired. This attribute was more of a driving factor among his supporters than agreement with his policy positions.

Possibly the biggest blow to labor under a Trump or Cruz presidency would come in the form of extremist Supreme Court nominees. Trump has mentioned Clarence Thomas as his favorite justice. With unions already under assault at the state level, a Supreme Court tilted even more toward radical market fundamentalism and against worker rights would be absolutely devastating.

If Flint’s water problem happened to rich people

You would think the wealthiest nation on earth could do better than this. Of course, these public health disasters are what we can expect when basic government services get chipped away over the years by ideological zealots. Curiously, reports are surfacing that cost-cutting may not have been the primary reason for the water supply switch, raising the possibility that politics were somehow a factor. Whatever the case, it seems unlikely that a deep-pocketed GOP donor would have had to wait a year and a half to get Gov. Rick Snyder’s attention.

Behind the scenes at the Trump girl group tryouts

In case you haven’t seen the “Freedom Kids” performance at the Trump rally, proceed here. Have a stiff drink ready.

Do I detect a trendlet of little girls spouting wingnuttery on behalf of GOP candidates? There was that Ted Cruz ad starring his daughters a few weeks ago, and now this. Of course, when people make fun of these performances that are (ironically enough) practically Maoist in their ideological zeal, they are accused of picking on poor, defenseless children. So let me be clear: I am mocking the grownups who are using these kids as mouthpieces to spew belligerent, jingoistic twaddle the kids probably don’t even fully understand.

Unequal exposure: Sexy show names for male comedians

When I learned the name of Daily Show alum Samantha Bee’s new show recently, my heart sank a little. “Full Frontal?” Really?  Here’s my theory about why prominent comedy shows hosted by women have titillating names. From a studio exec’s point of view, having a female host is a risky proposition. Some viewers will simply assume that a show hosted by a woman is just “for women.” Also, to be a comedian is to be an authority figure, and some people just aren’t into watching a lady in that role. (Whenever I write about this, I get comments from guys protesting that they like female comedians, so let’s just agree I’m not talking about you.)  The solution, as far as the entertainment industry is concerned, is to go “Full Hooters” with the name, making the show appear non-threatening to the easily-emasculated.

Note for nitpickers: I’m well aware of the arguments behind reclaiming female sexuality and am fine with women being desnudas or whatever, but Sam Bee is a political humorist. The name seems gratuitous. It occurred to me that the title might have been inspired by Jessica Valenti’s book Full Frontal Feminism, but that’s using the concept in a very different context. My point here is not to pick on Bee, who I admire and who is probably under incredible pressure to make the show succeed, but to illustrate a double standard that’s hard not to see as a sad commentary on the state of women in comedy and the media.

Oregon militants: Patriots… or Owl Qaeda?

I’m fine with a little healthy civil disobedience, but once you add guns to the mix and threaten to use them against the powers that be, you’re no longer just a protester. You are, at the very least, a militant. As many others have rightly noted, the kid gloves treatment these extremists are getting would likely be denied to other groups attempting to occupy a government building with weapons. Not that I don’t support letting them slowly run out of Twinkies.

Did you know the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was established by Teddy Roosevelt and hosts over 320 bird species? Speaking as an occasional birdwatcher, it looks awesome. Hopefully those bozos will be gone in time for the Harney County Migratory Bird Festival to proceed in April as planned.

And yes, somebody actually had to write this for their website:

Cartoon Flashback: More things for Islamophobes to worry about

Here’s a comic from 2010 that seems extra-appropriate for current times. If only the me of the past knew how bad things would get in 2015.

Mr. and Mrs. Perkins go gift shopping, Star Wars edition (2015)

A holiday tradition returns, with Mr. and Mrs. Perkins once again searching for the perfect gift for Auntie Perkins. You can see the previous installment (from 2013) here.

The news has been so crazy lately, it feels a little strange not drawing an overtly political strip this week, but I think the degree to which Star Wars has permeated our consumer culture is political in its own right.