Ruben Bolling weighs in on Daily Kos censorship

My friend and fellow cartoonist Ruben Bolling (“Tom the Dancing Bug”), whose work appears at Daily Kos, has issued a statement about the site administrator’s decision to censor my work.

I believe that any site or publication has the right to refuse to publish any cartoonist or writer that they don’t want in thier pages. But to refuse publication specifically on these unwarranted grounds at the very least requires my vocal objection. I’m standing up to say that I believe that Ted’s depiction of Barack Obama is no way racist.

More here.

9 Comments.

  • This is “The Trouble with Diversity” (see book of this title, Walter Benn Michaels).

    You don’t like Imperial Wars? Then let a Black man (or Woman) run them so dissenters can be tarred with being racist or misogynist.

    Don’t like the Banks tearing the lives of working people apart? Then put a Jew at the head of the bank so your dissent becomes anti-Semitism.

    Have trouble with the militarization of culture? Then put Gays in the military so criticism becomes homophobia.

    Want the Upstairs/Downstairs economic divide to be off the table for discussion? Let the little people claw at each other over alleged hatreds while the privileged watch untouched from safety.

    This is the job of the Democratic Party: the liberal avoidance of issues of unspeakable inequality under the law that touch the lives of most people.

    • alex_the_tired
      December 1, 2013 8:32 PM

      Glenn,
      Don’t forget how the president’s children are off limits (as per the president’s request) and how thrilled the Dems are about it.

      I’ve always wanted to see a journalist (if one could be found) ask the president: “Mr. Obama. You have children. And you’ve ordered air strikes that have killed other people’s children, 6,000 miles away. If the situation was reversed and it was your children who had been blown into little bloody pieces by someone 6,000 miles away, how would you feel about it and what would you say to the person who had given the order that had killed your children in such a horrific manner?”

    • Good points. Also, you don’t like women gaining power? Insist they accept male transgenders and “male feminists” as allies and leaders, and call us transphobic and divisive for wanting our own activist groups.

      • These are all actually rough analogies, but what they all have in common is milking public sympathy for members of oppressed groups in order to interfere with political action on the part of, or behalf of, other oppressed groups, by inhibiting criticism. They all involve false identifications and they all engender a lot of time-wasting and destructive internal conflicts.

  • cybervigilante
    December 1, 2013 12:10 AM

    No surprise there. Despite doing actual work for the Democratic party, and directly fighting crooked corporations, not just writing emails, I got kicked off Democratic Underground without explanation or appeal, because I wasn’t PC enough, by some nazi-like San Francisco yuppies of the type who have just about destroyed the Democratic Party with their febrile stupidity. The Republicans run rings about them because they don’t know how to fight, where and when and what to fight about, or even realize it is a fight. They’re probably too young to know that there were actual unions once. Real ones. All over the country (except the South, of course ;’)

    Right now the “Democratic” Senate is gearing up for another cut in food stamps, as Obama toys with chained-CPI, and this party will Never suggest raising the miserable minimum wage. I call them the Deadocratic Party.

  • alex_the_tired
    December 1, 2013 5:42 PM

    Ted,

    I just went to the DK comments. Some of them. I just don’t have the insufficiency of brain cells that would be necessary to read them all. Have you read any of them?
    Most of the comments are non-topic; I’d estimate about 90% of what’s being “discussed” isn’t about your cartoons or even racism, it’s just a bunch of people gossiping back and forth.

    It reminds me very much of the conversations I’ve had with people with ADD.

  • I would argue that it’s tacky to trash the children of politicians, but that using them for contrast is perfectably acceptable. Ted’s recent piece using the Obama quote about how he found it easy to kill people, with his children rushing to him, is a good example.

    • I’ve seen commenters on Daily Kos take potshots at Palin’s kids without repercussions. Apparently it’s okay to sink that low when it’s the other guy’s kids…I always saw them as victims, myself, though obviously as they come of age they have to take responsibility for their actions. But trashing some teenage girl for being pregnant out of wedlock is…so Democratic? Ick.

  • I also got blacklisted from DU when i commented that if your wanted to get Obama’s attention you should tell him you were a Republican – at which point he would roll over and pee all over himself.

    No sense of humor.

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