Ted Rall on the State of Political Cartooning
Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson
January 20, 2015
Ted Rall on the State of Political Cartooning
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The Best Defense Against Ransomware
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Originally published at Breaking Modern:
Hackers are holding people’s files hostage by encrypting them until they fork over cash.
On Charlie Hebdo and the Real Free Speech Weenies
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Originally published at ANewDomain.net:
Not everyone believes in free speech.
I’m not talking about those on the authoritarian right. No one expects them to stand up for the right to dissent. They are ideologically consistent; for them, the rights of the individual always, a distant second to the prerogatives of the state and its incessant campaign to maintain the status quo that keeps them in power.
Today I’m pointing to those – liberals, progressives, left libertarians – who purport to support freedom of expression, and must be seen to do so in order to continue to identify as members of the antiauthoritarian left, but only state their defense of press and personal freedom with reservations.
As in: “Andres Serrano has the right to soak a crucifix in urine, but I would never do anything like that cuz I’m, like, awesomely sensitive.”
Secretary of State John Kerry condemned last week’s mass shooting at Charlie Hebdo‘s offices in Paris — yet found it necessary to introduce the qualifier “whatever you think of this magazine…”
What he or you or I think about the editorial cartoon content of Charlie Hebdo pre- or post-shooting ought to be irrelevant. Either you support freedom of expression, or you don’t.
Even when it is offensive.
Even when it is racist.
Even when it is gross.
Especially when it makes us uncomfortable. (For a recent example of something that triggers my censorship impulse, check out this reactionary response by an Australian cartoonist to the Paris massacre. Really gross. Australian police thought Islamists might think so too, because they turned up at the artist’s house to offer protection.)
Having been at the center of cartoon controversies, I am well familiar with the standard issue liberal “well, I wouldn’t draw anything that disgusting about our soldiers, firefighters, 9/11 widows, president, but Rall clearly has the legal right to do it – if he can get someone to print it” talking point. What these weak sisters conveniently forget is that, even while they’re kind of sort of defending free expression, death threats and dismissal letters are pouring in… and they are not kind of sort of.
Arthur Hsu’s essay in The Daily Beast is a classic entry in this oh-so-reasonable rhetorical tradition.
First comes the required condemnation of mass murder: “Shooting people is wrong. I want to get this out of the way. When twelve people are killed by violence, whoever they are, for whatever reason, that is a tragedy and a waste. To murder someone by violence is the greatest crime imaginable…”
Yeah yeah yeah, we get it.
Though it’s too late for Hsu to cut to the chase, he finally gets to the point: “Charlie Hebdo is also a crap publication and people need to stop celebrating it and making martyrs out of its staff.”
Why does Hsu think it’s a crap publication?
“Paging through translated cartoons from Charlie Hebdo’s past, the comparisons that kept coming to mind were to Mad magazine or pre-David Wong Cracked, but while the sophomoric level of humor fits—we’re talking single entendres on the level of this crappy joke about the Pope raping choirboys—none of those publications ever descended to quite the same depths as, say, making fun of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram by portraying them as pregnant welfare queens.
The best comparison here for an American audience is, well, Internet stuff. The stuff that ends up in censored form on Tosh.0—the kind of videos, images, and text memes you see linked from 4chan or Something Awful.”
As someone who speaks and reads French fluently, and has read more than my share of French cartoons and graphic novels, Hsu’s reliance on “translated cartoons” jumps out at me. The Charlie Hebdo cartoons are stripped of cultural and historical and political context when they are translated minus the extravagant puns, leftist orientation of the editor and artists, and literary and cultural references of the original. I’m about as French as you can be without living in France, and I don’t get half of this stuff.
I doubt Hsu gets 5%.
But never mind that.
Referencing the magazine’s cartoons about Muslims, who are a persecuted minority in France, Hsu writes: “The whole reason the concept of responsible satire has been summed up as ‘punch up, don’t punch down’ is to acknowledge that not all your targets of satire start out on an equal footing.”
Well, fine. I agree with him. But that’s because I’m American. Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted is the American way, especially for left-of-center American satirists. But the slaughtered cartoonists weren’t American. They come from a very different cultural tradition. It’s not possible for foreigners to judge these cartoons intelligently.
Cartoons like those in Charlie Hebdo make people like Hsu — and me — uncomfortable. They set off all sorts of triggers rooted in political correctness and identity politics, some, no doubt well-intentioned.
But that’s exactly the point.
If those cartoons hadn’t been outrageous, the cartoonists who drew them probably wouldn’t have gotten shot to death. (Similarly, my cartoons about 9/11 icons were over-the-top. That’s why they stirred a fuss.)
To believe in freedom of expression, to truly defend satire, we must stand up for it unequivocally, without reservation — not despite our distaste for the cartoons or standup routines or humorous essays or films drawing fire from critics and potential murderers, but because they make us uncomfortable.
If you can’t compartmentalize, if you can’t refrain from playing the critic even when the cartoons or whatever have gotten their creators blown away by automatic weapons, then you are not with us. You are with them.
[Corrected 1/23/15. “Piss Christ” was the work of Andres Serrano, not Robert Maplethorpe.Virtual War is Virtual Hell
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Originally published at Breaking Modern:
ISIS hackers successfully penetrated Central Command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts. Virtual war is virtual hell, isn’t it? Next they’re going to try to take Pinterest. But we’re ready.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: “Selma” and Hollywood’s Sleazy Perversion of History
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Movies are the historical record.
Americans experience the Vietnam War by watching “Apocalypse Now,” slavery in “12 Years a Slave,” and D-Day through “Saving Private Ryan.” A lot more Americans watch historical movies than read history books. Which, when done well, is not a bad thing. I’ve read countless books about the collapse of Nazi Germany, but the brilliantly-acted and directed reenactment of Hitler’s last days in his Berlin bunker depicted in the masterful 2004 German film “Downfall” can’t be beat.
When a film purports to depict a historical event, it becomes the only version of what most people believe really happened. So, as we move further into a post-literate society, misleading historical filmmaking isn’t just a waste of 2-1/2 hours.
It’s a crime against the truth.
The Ava DuVernay-directed film “Selma” is at the center of controversy, both due to its semi-snubbing by the Oscars – viewed as backtracking from last year’s relatively racially diverse choice of nominees – and accusations that it plays loose with history.
Former LBJ aide and Democratic Party stalwart Joe Califano fired the first shot with a Washington Post op-ed. “Selma,” wrote Califano, “falsely portrays President Lyndon B. Johnson as being at odds with Martin Luther King Jr. and even using the FBI to discredit him, as only reluctantly behind the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and as opposed to the Selma march itself.”
He’s right.
Robert Caro’s magisterial four-volume biography of Johnson portrays him as a deeply flawed man, but one whose passion to push for desegregation and an end to discrimination against blacks informed his political career throughout his life, though it wasn’t always obvious to his detractors.
It was only after JFK’s assassination brought him to power – actually, a movie portraying Kennedy as reluctant to support civil rights would have been accurate – that he had the chance to push through both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which he did aggressively and quickly, despite what he famously predicted would be the loss of the South to the Democratic Party for a generation or more.
Johnson gave J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI too much latitude, which Hoover used to harass King, but there’s no evidence that, as the movie depicts, it was LBJ who ordered Hoover to send audiotapes of King having sex with other women to his wife. And let’s be clear: every important conversation in the Oval Office was being taped. We have the transcripts. We would know if that had happened.
Califano takes his defense of his former boss too far when he says “[the march on] Selma was LBJ’s idea.” Otherwise, the facts are on his side: the LBJ in “Selma” is not the LBJ King knew.
Fans of the film argue that it doesn’t matter.
“Did ‘Selma’ cut some corners and perhaps tilt characters to suit the needs of the story? Why yes — just like almost every other Hollywood biopic and historical film that has been made,” the media writer David Carr writes in The New York Times.
Yes, in a movie the story is the thing. It’s hard to imagine “The Queen” — about the inner workings of the British monarchy and its relationship to then-Prime Minister Tony Blair in the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana — working without a lot of made-up dialogue between the principals. However, the great detail of these obviously private conversations signals to the audience that they don’t come out of a transcript, and that we must be witnessing a fictionalized account.
There comes a point, on the other hand, where so many corners get cut and so many characters get tilted that a film ceases to resemble history and enters the territory of complete fabulism and, in the case of “Selma” and LBJ, retroactive character assassination.
The clash between MLK and LBJ – King pushing, Johnson resisting – isn’t merely some extraneous detail of the script in “Selma.” It’s the main plot of the film.
It didn’t go down like that, yet thanks to this BS film, a generation of Americans will grow up thinking that it did.
Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Post repeatedly calls “Selma” “fiction.” As in: “film and other fiction.” To her, apparently, film is always fiction. But it’s not.
Like books, film is a medium.
Film can be nonfiction.
Film can be fiction.
“Califano’s approach,” she writes, “besides setting a [sic] odd standard for how fiction ought to work…suggests that we should check fiction for inaccuracies.”
As usual, the crux of the debate boils down to an inability to agree on definitions of terms. For those like Rosenberg who believe that everyone knows movies are just for fun, it doesn’t matter that “Schindler’s List” depicts showers at Auschwitz spraying water rather than Zyklon B — even though that never happened, and thus serves to understate one of the horrors of the Holocaust. To the all-movies-are-fiction crowd, “Zero Dark Forty” is cool despite its completely false claim that torture led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
“This is art; this is a movie; this is a film,” director DuVernay told PBS. “I’m not a historian. I’m not a documentarian.”
That’s sleazy. Truth is, her film is being marketed as fact, as she knew it would be. And it’s doing better because of it.
Audiences need a ratings system to separate films that purport to recount actual historical events from those like “Selma,” which are fictional tales using historical figures as hand puppets.
I suggest that the MPAA institute the following ratings:
Rated H for Historical: a film that makes a good faith effort to recount history accurately.
Rated S-H for Semi-Historical: a film that relies on devices like made-up dialogue and encounters, but whose basic plot line reflects history to the best of our knowledge.
Rated H-F for Historical Fiction: a film in which anything, including the basic plot line, can be made up out of whole cloth.
If the movies are going to lie to me, I deserve to know before shelling out my $12.50.
(Ted Rall, syndicated writer and cartoonist, is the author of the new critically-acclaimed book “After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back As Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan.” Subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)
COPYRIGHT 2015 TED RALL, DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
A Cartoonist’s Take On Charlie Hebdo
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A Cartoonist’s Take On Charlie Hebdo
Writers Voice Podcast
with Francesca Rheannon
January 2015
LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: The MonkeyParking app could turn us into monsters
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Originally published at The Los Angeles Times:
San Francisco kicked them out of Baghdad by the Bay. Now the controversial app MonkeyParking may face a similar fate in Santa Monica and Los Angeles.
Got a good parking space? You could sell it with the MonkeyParking app
Bay Area TV station KRON explains how the app works: “If you launch the free MonkeyParking app on your phone and click request a spot, monkey faces pop up. Those are street parking spots near you that other MonkeyParking app users currently have their car parked in but they are willing to sell. You can offer them $5, $10, $15 or $20 for that spot. If they accept, the two of you switch out your cars in the parking spot.”
Not since Los Angeles and other cities announced that they would install sensors in on-street parking spaces that would reset the meter to zero when a car pulls out — depriving the next motorist of the occasional extra few minutes left, and transferring the “extra” cash into city coffers — has a parking story made my blood boil more.
Some members of L.A. City Council seem to agree with me.
They’ve proposed a ban on MonkeyParking and similar apps.
As The Times reported last week, “Councilman Mike Bonin, who asked for the legislation, likened [the MonkeyParking app] to ‘pimping out public parking spots.’
“‘This is not the sharing economy, it’s the stealing economy,’ Bonin said. ‘They are taking a public asset and effectively privatizing it.’”
To paraphrase Elvis Costello, I can’t decide whether to be disgusted or amused. On one level, you have to admire the ingenuity of people who figure out a way to use technology to further separate society into haves and have-nots in order to skim a profit. They sure are smart. Like a mad scientist.
On the other hand, there are certain things that, if you come up with them, you should decide not to invent. Atomic bombs. New forms of torture. How to monetize public space for private gain.
As far as I can tell, no one has brought this up yet, but I foresee a public safety threat if this app is allowed to proliferate. I’m a gentle, nonviolent guy, but even I couldn’t guarantee my reaction if I pulled up to a parking space where a dude is sitting in an idling car, clearly ready to leave but refusing to go until his $20 parking app appointment shows up and swoops in ahead of me.
This is especially true if he tries to explain it.
Me: “Who’s this guy? I’ve been waiting for your space.”
Idling driver: “This is part of the new ‘sharing economy.’ Like Airbnb and Lyft. This guy either needed the space more than you or is able to afford it more than you, because he was willing to pay $20 for it. I’m very sorry you’re going to miss your job interview or your pitch meeting or your audition or your last chance to visit your dying mother. Life is tough, but $20 is $20.”
But this is a big world and a big city, and there are lots of people who just had a very bad day. Some of them are big and some of them have guns. This can’t be a good idea.
Al Qaeda claims credit for Charlie Hebdo attacks
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Al Qaeda claims credit for Charlie Hebdo attacks
All in with Chris Hayes
MSNBC TV
January 14, 2015
CES 2015: What’s the Internet of Things without the Internet?
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Originally published at Breaking Modern:
No technology is 100 percent reliable, but many come close: Landline telephones, electricity, automobiles. Newer technological infrastructures, though essential to many people’s lives, tend to be somewhat less reliable. Cellular telephones drop calls and emails mysteriously disappear.
Now, we are being told, the long-awaited Internet of Things is ready for primetime. This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015) in Las Vegas is all about the IoT.
“The Internet of Things is ‘ready to go,’ Samsung Electronics CEO BK Yoon said in his keynote address to CES 2015. ‘It’s not science fiction anymore — it is science fact … I would argue that the age of the Internet of Things has already started.’ “
Yoon predicts that 90 percent of Samsung products will be IoT devices by 2017.
Personally, I’m looking forward to a lot of these devices. The app that locks and unlocks the door to your home while monitoring who shows up while you’re gone. That same app allows you to email a temporary “key” to house guests for a limited period of time and that seems wicked cool. The lock itself is expensive, but we all know the high price tag will come down. Smart thermostats that adjust the temperature in each room of your home based on your presence maximize your comfort while minimizing your power bill — that’s really cool, too. If I were in organized crime, I’d get the smartwatch app that lets you unlock your car doors and start the engine remotely. It’s hard to get blown up in your car if you aren’t in it! Robert DeNiro in Casino or Julia’s Roberts’ professor in The Pelican Brief could have avoided a wee spot of trouble for themselves had they had this app.
What’s the Internet of Things Without the Internet?
But there’s a catch: All of this stuff depends on sturdy access to the Internet.
The car-start app unveiled by Hyundai at CES promises to guide you right to your car if you lose it in some massive parking lot — but what if you don’t have a signal? Using your phone to unlock your front door is a nifty trick, but what if your Wi-Fi is down or the signal from your router just doesn’t reach there?
What if your phone runs out of juice? My iPhone 5S rarely makes it through one day.
The assumption here is that the Internet, whether through cellular 3G, LTE, 4G networks or via Wi-Fi, is everywhere. But it’s not.
About 15 percent of Americans currently have no access to broadband Internet. And three percent still use dial-up! Even for those of us who are supposedly on the fast lane of the information superhighway (as they used to call it), Internet access is hardly ubiquitous.
I have to drive at least three-quarters of a mile from my home to get the two-bar minimum necessary to place a cell phone call. This isn’t just a problem in rural areas — there are a lot of cell phone dead zones in New York City and Los Angeles.
My house is wired, but it’s large enough to require a system of signal extenders — and even that doesn’t bring the Internet everywhere I would like it, such as the front door of the house. So much for that cool door lock.
I suspect that many Americans share my concurrent interest in the Internet of Things and also share my skepticism that it’s completely ready for primetime.
I’m constantly reminded of the fragility of Internet connections. Though the cables are buried underground, the signal is disrupted every few months by rainy weather. After a particularly bad tropical storm a few years ago, it took six weeks to get back online. Even when it works, it’s less than 100 percent. Streaming services like HBOGo and Netflix are impressive as far as it goes, but it often doesn’t go at all — so I don’t give up my old DVD player or cable TV subscription.
I’m not imagining this. Even the big players have trouble with streaming: Apple’s debut of the new iPhone 6 and Apple Watch last September was plagued by reports that people couldn’t watch it remotely.
Also, 81 percent of Americans have security concerns about IoT technology. And who can blame them? It wouldn’t be too much fun to have some Russian hacker start your car and drive it to a chop shop before you even get up in the morning. But I suspect that concerns over connectivity will trump those over security in the short run.
That said, I have little doubt that wireless Internet infrastructure will expand beyond 3G/LTE/4G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to accommodate the demand for IoT gadgetry that will radically transform our everyday lives. At 51, I’m old enough to remember landline telephone calls that didn’t always go through and electricity that seemed to go out at the first sign of a thunderstorm. Those problems were basically resolved to the point that we have forgotten that they ever existed in the first place. Sooner rather than later — but perhaps not as soon as we are being told right now — the current issues with Internet access will have to be fixed.
Until then the Internet of Things, for me, remains part sci-fi, part reality.
