DMZ America Podcast #127: GOP Debate, No Money for Ukraine or Israel, Pearl Harbor Day

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) discuss the week in politics, culture and current events. 

Four top contenders for the Republican nomination for president — Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis — met for the fourth GOP debate of the current cycle. What, if anything, was the point of this exercise when Donald Trump clearly has the nomination wrapped up, as Ted and Scott pointed out many months ago?

For the first time in memory, Congress voted no to a major military spending package, this one for aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. What does the failure of Congress to rubberstamp proxy warfare say about the current state of partisanship in Congress and militarism in general?

Today was the anniversary of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack as well as the beginning of the third month after the October 7th Hamas attack against Israel. Ted and Scott discuss the nature of surprise attacks and their ability to traumatize a society and debate the importance of such benchmarks.

Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:

DMZ America Podcast Ep 127 Sec 1: GOP Debate

DMZ America Podcast Ep 127 Sec 2: No Money for Ukraine or Israel

DMZ America Podcast Ep 127 Sec 3: Pearl Harbor Day

DMZ America Podcast #126: Gaza Left vs. Right, Alabama’s Universal Basic Income

Political cartoonist Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) discuss the week in politics and current events and culture. This week, the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Birmingham, Alabama’s experiment with a universal basic income.

In the first segment of this week’s DMZ America podcast, Ted and Scott dig deeper than ever before into the domestic and international implications of the war in Gaza. The two cartoonists delve into Israel’s right to exist, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in administrative detention, hostage exchanges, and whether there is a future two-state solution or whether a future single Republic of Palestine could reasonably accommodate members of all ethnic groups.

In the second part of the DMZ America podcast this week, Scott explains an experiment in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama in which single women are paid a universal basic income of $385 per month. The mayor says he wants to renew it because it’s doing well. Should a universal basic income be adopted by the United States? Ted and Scott talk about the economic and cultural risks and rewards of giving people a paycheck without having to work, with an emphasis on the fact that automation and artificial intelligence may make it so that society has no choice.

Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:

DMZ America Podcast Ep 126 Sec 1: Gaza — Left vs. Right

DMZ America Podcast Ep 126 Sec 2: Alabama’s Basic Universal Income

Cartoonist’s Dilemma

What’s better to draw about, something people care about? Or something people should care about it? Guess which one pays better.

The New York Times Called a Famous Cartoonist an Anti-Semite. Repeatedly. They Didn’t Ask Him for Comment.

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The cartoon by António Moreira Antunes that prompted the perpetual ban on political art in the New York Times.

            Earlier this year the Portuguese cartoonist António Moreira Antunes drew one of the most controversial political cartoons in history. His cartoon about U.S.-Israeli relations sparked so much controversy that The New York Times, whose international edition published it in April, decided to fire its two staff cartoonists, neither of whom had anything to do with it. Then the Times permanently banned all editorial cartooning.

            Antunes took the most flak from the Times itself, as it furiously backpedaled from its own editorial decision to publish his cartoon. In five news stories and editorials, the Newspaper of Record unreservedly described Antunes’ cartoon as anti-Semitic. American media outlets followed the Times’ lead.

            “I’m not anti-Semitic, I’m anti-Zionist,” Antunes told me. “In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I am in favor of two countries and I am against all annexations made by Israel.” The Times censored Antunes’ side of the story from its readers.

            Was Antunes’ cartoon, a metaphorical illustration depicting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog leading a blind President Trump, anti-Semitic? That question is both inherently subjective and eminently debatable. “The cartoon is not anti-Semitic, but many political and religious sectors classify any criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitic,” Antunes said in an interview.

            Pro-Israel groups disagreed. On the other hand, many cartoonists thought there was nothing wrong with it.

            But that’s not how the Times covered it. In article after article, Antunes’ cartoon was described as anti-Semitic. It was an objective truth. No one could doubt the cartoon’s anti-Semitism more than the fact that Washington is the capital of the United States.

            “Times Apologizes for Publishing Anti-Semitic Cartoon,” read the headline on April 28th.

            Not “allegedly anti-Semitic.”

            Not “cartoon criticized as anti-Semitic.”

            In an April 30th editorial, the paper called Antunes’ work “an appalling political cartoon” and “an obviously bigoted cartoon.” It explained: “The cartoon was chosen from a syndication service by a production editor who did not recognize its anti-Semitism.” Not “its possible anti-Semitism.”

            Two more articles on the subject appeared on May 1st: “Times Disciplines Editor and Cancels Cartoon Contract Over Anti-Semitic Drawing” (we don’t know what that discipline entailed, but unlike the cartoonist, the editor wasn’t fired) and “After the Publication of an Anti-Semitic Cartoon, Our Publisher Says We’re Committed to Making Changes.” The text of both pieces described the cartoon as self-evidently anti-Semitic.

            On June 10th a Times article announced the end of political cartooning in the Gray Lady. Antunes’ cartoon, the Times stated flatly, contained “anti-Semitic imagery.”

            Accusing a political cartoonist of anti-Semitism is as serious as it gets. So something jumped out at me as I read the Times’ repeated characterizations of Antunes’ cartoon as anti-Semitic, so devoid of mitigating language: where was his response?

            “The New York Times never contacted me at any time,” Antunes now says.

            I reached out to the Times about this; I asked why they didn’t talk to him and how the paper made the determination that Antunes’ cartoon was anti-Semitic. James Bennet, the editorial page editor who banned cartoons and presumably wrote the editorials, did not reply to my repeated queries. (I gave him nearly a week to do so.) Neither did two reporters who authored pieces about Antunes.

            I did hear back from Stacy Cowley, who wrote the April 28th piece. “I dug around online and was unable to find any contact information for Mr. Antunes,” Cowley explained. “He has no publicly posted contact information that I could find, and as of the date I wrote my article, he had not publicly commented to any other news outlets about his cartoon. (Had he done so, I would have linked to and quoted his comments.)” Cowley said she tried to reach the editors of Antunes’ home paper in Portugal. She noted that she was working on a tight deadline.

            I reached Antunes via Facebook; he replied via email.

            Contacting the subject of a news story for comment is Journalism 101, a basic ethos taught to students at high school newspapers. That goes double when the article is critical.

            “Few writers need to be reminded that we seek and publish a response from anyone criticized in our pages,” the Times says in its Guidelines on Integrity. “But when the criticism is serious, we have a special obligation to describe the scope of the accusation and let the subject respond in detail. No subject should be taken by surprise when the paper appears, or feel that there was no chance to respond.” Given the gravity of the criticism leveled against Antunes, the Times appears to have fallen woefully short of its own standards.

            OK, Cowley was on deadline. What about the other articles? They appeared days later. One ran six weeks later. Antunes isn’t a recluse—he’s one of the most prominent cartoonists in Europe. I found him. So did other newspapers.

            The Times could have contacted the New York-based syndicate from which it bought Antunes’ cartoon; the syndicate has his contact information, as they do of all their contributors.

            Though scarred by his experience, Antunes says that he has not lost business. “The U.S. media” he says, “are prisoners of political correctness, right-wing turning [sic] and social media.” Europe, he says, is more tolerant.

            What’s clear is that the Times threw its cartoonist under the bus in a shockingly cavalier fashion—a practice that has become so common that it’s contributing to the imminent extinction of political cartooning.

            The Times owes Antunes an apology. They owe the two fired cartoonists their jobs back, along with back pay. Political cartoons should resume their rightful place in the paper.

            Finally, the Times owes its readers an assurance that they will never again succumb to the siren call of “fake news” as part of an ethically-challenged witch hunt.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Francis: The People’s Pope.” You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

I Want to be a Drone President

It’s easy to criticize President Obama for continuing and radically expanding President Bush’s program of targeted assassinations using unmanned drone planes. But let’s face it. Everyone knows what they would do with those drones if they got the job.

Patience

President Obama is urging people to be patient on the economy. The problem is, our creditors keep sending their bills, month after month, while our wages stagnate and disappear.

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