I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week: An Arizona business group will fly 100 chief executives to Arizona to try to lure their companies into leaving California.
Oh Petraey, We Hardly Knew Ye
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I was listening to NPR’s “On the Media,” a favorite show that has never had me on despite my favorable review of Brooke Gladstone’s book in Columbia Journalism Review, and the Snarky Duo was going on about how the media universally admired General David Petraeus until his affair exposed him as having feet of clay. (Never mind running an organization dedicated to mass killing in the service of big oil.) Then I remembered this 2007 cartoon for the now-defunct website Iraq Slogger, which ran me for a time:
So not exactly everyone was above rolling their eyes and making fun of all the adulation. Of course, that’s a cartoonist’s job—to be skeptical of “universally acclaimed” heroes, and then join everyone else in being surprised when they fall.
Although, honestly, being outted as a slut is probably the best thing the general has ever done with his life. If nothing else, it might eventually lead to tighter email privacy laws.
Hamas’ “Indiscriminate” Missile Fire a Matter of Budget, Not Morals
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One of my favorite Israeli talking points about the conflict with Gaza/Hamas is that Israel holds the moral high ground because it can afford advanced weapons systems, many provided by the United States military.
Hamas, we are told, fires its rockets “indiscriminately” into Israel whereas Israel uses “targeted strikes” intended to reduce civilian casualties.
From Commentary magazine, for example: “Standing beside the UN secretary general yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted again that every rocket from Gaza is a double war crime, since each reflects: (1) an intentional indiscriminate attack on civilians, while (2) hiding behind a civilian population for protection.”
I have no doubt that Hamas would prefer to use Israel’s more-sophisticated (and expensive) targeted missiles and helicopter gunships against its enemies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Perhaps, to be fair, Israel or the U.S. would be willing to give them some?
I didn’t think so.
If the roles were reversed, and Hamas had better arms, who doubts that Israel would be forced to resort to the use of “dumb” missiles that “indiscriminately” targeted civilians? The use of indiscriminate bombing against the British, after all, led to the eventual establishment of the State of Israel.
If Hamas is evil, make a moral argument—not a tech one. By that standard, I’m morally superior to someone who uses a five-year-old Dell laptop because I’m typing this on a months-old MacBookPro.
P.S. “hiding behind a civilian population” is the standard talking point used by state actors against indigenous resistance organizations which hide among the people because they ARE the people. Israel should come up with a better line; this one is old and shopworn.
Video: Ted Rall Grouses About Clifford Winston’s NY Times Op/Ed About Airlines
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In which Ted Rall grouses about Clifford Winston’s op/ed in the New York Times stating that the only solution to the monopolization of the airline industry is to allow foreign carriers to compete domestically. There are other possible solutions—a national carrier, price controls, regulations that require U.S. carriers to serve small cities—but they’re not mentioned in the Paper of Record, which blocks all leftist voices, even though they are agreed with by 47% of the country.
Thoughts and Prayers, Again
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“The United States strongly condemns this terrorist attack [the bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv] and our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the people of Israel.” —Hillary Clinton, today
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Awaiting a Slut Moment
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Everybody Cheats. When Will We Admit It?
We need a Slut Moment.
As CIA director, David Petraeus led an organization that carries out extrajudicial assassinations, overthrows foreign heads of state and fires drone missiles at innocent civilians. For his performance as a leading state terrorist, General Petraeus received four stars, 28 motorcycle policemen to escort him to a girlfriend’s house, and nearly universal acclaim.
For cheating on his wife, he was forced to resign in disgrace. (Since his lover, a West Point graduate, was not a spy, national security was not at issue.)
What is wrong with our values?
I wouldn’t lay it on quite as thickly as John Prados, senior research fellow at the National Security Archive did in The Washington Post: “Because of an affair that had already ended, the nation this month lost the services of a highly skilled public servant. The hysterical reaction to the news of then-CIA Director David Petraeus’s liaison with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, has done more to harm national security than the affair itself.”
I’d hate to think that one man’s departure would hurt the CIA’s assassination and coup productivity.
Still, I agree with Prados’s broader point. What happened to Petraeus—and Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton and Larry Craig and John Edwards—was stupid.
Whether you’re a small-government conservative or a liberal libertine, one thing all Americans ought to agree upon is that we’re entitled to privacy in our sex lives.
As long as the sex is consensual, what happens in the bedroom—or the coffee room off the Oval Office or the Minneapolis airport men’s room—is nobody’s business but the two people involved. Or three. Or seven.
Maybe a mongoose. With verifiable consent.
Cheating on your spouse shouldn’t cost you your career. Especially when so many of us do it.
Laws and social mores that don’t reflect the behavior of the vast majority of the population do more harm than good, corroding respect for government and society while turning too many people into criminals and pariahs. That’s why Prohibition failed: too many Americans drank. (One study found that alcohol consumption increased by 60% to 70% under Prohibition.) It doesn’t matter that booze causes problems. It’s just too popular to ban.
As Aharon Barak wrote, “When social reality changes, the law must change too.”
Like drinking, cheating is so popular and widespread that punishing people for sleeping with more than one officially recognized partner—enforcing an outdated monogamist “norm” through law and public slut-shaming—is counterproductive.
“Estimates today find married men cheating at rates between 25% and 72%,” writes Eric Anderson, author of The Monogamy Gap. For example: “In a 1991 study, sex researcher Shere Hite found that 70% of married women have cheated on their partners; a 1993 follow-up study found that 72% of married men have as well.”
When anywhere from a quarter to three-quarters of a population does something, it’s not a moral failing. It’s standard human behavior. And it shouldn’t be punished.
Yet the gap between reality and expectation is growing rather than shrinking. “More Americans today (80%) say infidelity is “always wrong” than in 1970 (70%). And a full 99% of Americans say they expect their spouse to be faithful. Monogamy, at least as an ideal, is stronger than ever in this country even as it slips elsewhere,” Bret Schulte wrote in U.S. News & World Report in 2008.
How do we stop this madness?
We need a Slut Moment—a public self-outing by a popular celebrity. Someone who stands up and tells the world: I am a slut. I enjoy sex with more than one partner.
America needs someone courageous like Magic Johnson, who called a press conference in 1991 to announce that he had HIV. Johnson made it OK to be HIV-positive. And, though he denies it, presumably bi. If a cool guy like Magic had guy-guy sex, gays couldn’t be all bad.
Ellen Degeneres’s 1997 statement that she was a lesbian was important for similar reasons: She was attractive, likeable and apparently “normal.”
Celebrity revelations do a lot of good. When Ronald Reagan released a 1994 statement saying he had Alzheimer’s Disease, the media and public response benefited millions of others. Michael J. Fox helped normalize public reaction to Parkinson’s in 1999, when he said he had the disease.
Imagine if, instead of denying that he had sex with “that woman, Monica Lewinsky,” Bill Clinton had looked straight into the camera and told the truth, not merely “coming clean” but unashamedly stating that yeah, he had had sex with a woman who was not his wife, and so what? He would have avoided impeachment and, more importantly, made the point that our sexual choices have nothing to do with our other roles in life. FDR cheated and JFK was a slut; both are considered to be great presidents. Nixon and Dubya, faithful hubbies both, were failures.
His military and government careers in ruins, General Petraeus missed an opportunity to make history. Rather than slink off with “I messed up” as his terse professional epitaph, Petraeus ought to have ditched the Scarlet Letter and stood tall.
The general’s surrogates have been ordered to say he’s “ashamed” and working on his marriage and sucking up to his betrayed wife.
Which is ridiculous. He certainly wasn’t ashamed while he was rolling around naked with Paula Broadwell—and rightly so. He was having some harmless fun—the same kind of fun enjoyed by up to three out of four Americans, few of whom dare to admit it. Or maybe he was in love. Whatever.
A few short decades ago, gays and lesbians were outlaws, hated, reviled, without rights. Now, partly due to brave souls like Magic Johnson and Ellen Degeneres, they can get married, adopt and serve openly in the military—and yet, civilization hasn’t collapsed!
Someday a famous slutty celebrity will liberate us from the shackles of phony BS monogamism, freeing us to reveal ourselves for who we really are: a nation of sluts.
May that day come soon.
No pun intended.
(Ted Rall‘s is the author of “The Book of Obama: How We Went From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt.” His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2012 TED RALL
LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: California’s Moribund State GOP
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I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week: The California electorate is changing in composition and creed. The GOP must change with it or become permanently powerless. Yet it is bogged down on the right and becoming weaker. It’s practically impossible to envision Californians electing a Republican governor in the future, certainly not in the next gubernatorial election, in 2014. Talk to GOP pros and none can suggest a realistic, credible challenger to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.
Cartoon Auction Returns
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I just posted a new cartoon auction. You choose the topic, keep the original artwork, and have the right to publish or donate the publishing rights one time!
SYNDICATED COLUMN: The Leftist Republican Party of the Future
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To Survive, GOP Should Out-Democrat the Democrats
Republicans, engaging in the traditional losing party’s post-election wound-licking, blame-flinging and anger-at-the-dumb-voters ritual, are facing the awful truth: The American people just aren’t into their gay-bashing, race-baiting, woman-hating, Eisenhower-era positions on social issues.
“It’s not that our message–we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong–didn’t get out. It did get out,” R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville told The New York Times. “It’s that the entire moral landscape has changed. An increasingly secularized America understands our positions, and has rejected them.”
Exasperated radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh asks:
“Condoleeza Rice…is a pinnacle of achievement, and intelligent, and well-spoken…You can’t find a more accomplished person. Marco Rubio. And really, speaking in street lingo, we’re not getting credit for it…Are these people perceived as tokens?”
Yes. Uncle Toms are easy to spot.
“In order to get the Hispanic or Latino vote, does that mean open the borders and embrace the illegals?”
Yes.
“If we’re not getting the female vote, do we become pro-choice?”
Yes.
Liberal pundits are helpfully offering advice to their Republican counterparts this week, arguing that if that if GOP officials and pundits make a few nips and tucks into their Neanderthal platform and tone, downplaying their unpopular stances on social issues, they may yet save their white male–dominated party from irrelevance.
Let’s set aside the obvious fact that no one does nor should listen to counsel offered by their enemies. And that even a devastating defeat–not that this one was–doesn’t always necessarily take long to recover from. Consider, for example, the post-2008 commentaries wondering whether there was a future for the GOP; by early 2010 the written-off-as-dead Republicans were riding high.
Nevertheless, Republicans might be more willing to listen to me than to other left-of-center columnists. After all, I love the GOP just as much as I care for the Democrats (not at all). Really, truly, I don’t give a rat’s ass which corporate party wins or loses.
The Republicans’ big problem is that they think they’re me.
I am a pundit. I am an idealist. The pay isn’t great, but I get to be pure, to stand up for what I think is right regardless of whether or not anybody else is willing to follow me. My job isn’t to be popular. It’s to be right.
If I were tapped to head a major political party like the Republicans, however, I wouldn’t have the luxury of being right at the price of being unpopular. Political parties are in the business of trying to win elections. To paraphrase the philosopher Don Rumsfeld, you run campaigns with the voters you have, not the ones you wish you had.
It’s one thing to push for changes that your ideological base believes in. God knows the Democrats should do that sometimes. It’s another to commit political hari-kari, trying to fight the tide by espousing points of view that are not only in the minority, but whose constituencies are consistently shrinking.
If Republicans want to win elections here in the United States, they need to set the stage for a transformational shift as dramatic as 1932, when FDR turned the Democrats into the party of liberalism and progressivism.
Republicans need not wonder why Obama got 71% of the Latino vote; if anything, the shocker is that that figure wasn’t higher. For decades, right-wing talk radio hosts and other Republican surrogates have been bashing illegal immigration (racist code for anti-Hispanic propaganda, particularly on the West Coast). Now that the Latino vote has become essential to win national races, the GOP can no longer afford its hardline stance on immigration, whether the reasons behind it are evilly nativist, benignly protectionist or law-and-order upright.
On every social issue of note, Americans are moving away from the Republican Party. We are becoming more tolerant of gays and their rights, more supportive of abortion rights, and more open to people of different backgrounds. Despite the terrible economy, Americans are less inclined to blame their troubles on competition from undocumented workers.
These trends toward a leftier country are long term and unlikely to reverse in the near future.
Beginning last summer, Republican strategists consciously decided to downplay Mitt Romney’s stances Republican Party platform’s takes on social issues. Now liberal commentators are joining them, strangely and cynically suggesting that Republicans need to change their emphasis of their messaging–but not the content of their policies.
Style isn’t enough. Republicans are doomed unless they radically change to social-issues policies that are not only in step with the country, but to its left–since the electorate will soon catch up. If the Party of Lincoln is adaptable and intelligent–which I seriously doubt–they will exploit the opportunity to move, not just left, but to the left of the center-right Democratic Party, which abdicated its traditional progressive stands on social issues when, for example, Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act and gutted welfare.
The GOP could make good on its long-standing assertion that it favors a legal path to immigration by proposing that we open our doors to a huge surge of legal immigration. That would be consistent with previous opinions, and outmaneuver the Democrats, who have been reluctant to favor much immigration at all, and who have deported record numbers of Hispanics over the last four years.
Yes, Mr. Limbaugh, the Republican Party must become unabashedly pro-choice if it wants to keep the women’s vote. The Republican Party claims to be the party of small government conservatism; why not say that this is a simple matter of keeping the government out of our bedrooms and out of women’s bodies? Same thing goes for gay marriage and other rights for people who are discriminated against due to their sexual orientation.
You can’t roll out a new and improved Republican Party social-issues platform overnight without alienating the crazy Christian fundamentalists and other unattractive sorts who currently form the basis of the Republican Party at present. But you can start a transition to a viable future in a methodical, gradual way that prepares the Republican Party for the huge demographic shifts that will drive the politics of the country as it moves further and further to the left.
(Ted Rall‘s is the author of “The Book of Obama: How We Went From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt.” His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2012 TED RALL
