"Shushing the Baby Boomers."

I linked to this January 2007 NYT piece in the previous post, and I've linked to it before — here and here. Is Obama a Baby Boomer or not? If Obama the solution to the Baby Boomer problem or part of the problem? Obama's ambiguous generationality. Much to say there.

But I've just got to make a separate post to call attention to the historical artifact that is Robert Grossman's illustration depicting Barack Obama leaping over 6 little figures who represent the Baby Boomers:

"Reagan's Justice" — an ominous New York Review of Books article about Robert Bork.

I remembered the title of the scary piece (by Ronald Dworkin), which was published in 1984, and I remembered the uber-creepy David Levine caricature that accompanied it:



After Bork got borked, Dworkin got another piece in the NYRB — "What does Bork’s defeat mean? Did the American public reject Bork’s announced philosophy of original intention? If so, what alternative constitutional philosophy, if any, did the public endorse?" — and David Levine drew him again. Look how cute:



Now that he's not a threat, he's a lovable Santa Claus. That's art, baby!

AND: From high(ish) art to low, here's an old Letterman Top 10 list: "Top 10 Names for Robert Bork's Beard":

10. The Chin Slinky
 9. The Amish Outlaw
 8. The See-Through
 7. My Very First Beard - from Kenner!
 6. The Lunatic Fringe
 5. Senor Itchy
 4. The Radioactive Goat
 3. Salute to C. Everett Koop
 2. Gopher Butt
 1. The Babe Magnet

"One on One" — the New Yorker cover by Barry Blitt.

"This image seemed like a proper response to the first Presidential debate... but I’m not sure I realized how hard it is to caricature furniture.”

Remember Blitt's famous cover from the 2008 campaign.

"Should We Hire Even More Teachers, Cops, and Firemen?"

"Not if we want the economy to recover any time soon," says Nick Gillespie at Reason.com.

Unless you believe that the primary function of the public sector is to be a jobs program, there is no reason to sweat recent cuts to public-sector jobs, whose numbers, as Mickey Kaus has pointed out, have "been bloating since around 1980."...

As it happens, Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and many others (let's call them stimulatarians), seem to believe that a key function of government is precisely to employ lots of people who otherwise would look for work elsewhere....

And check out the caricature of Obama at the first link. All swirly hallucinogenic shapes and psychedelic colors. I showed it to Meade and said "That's the way I was always drawing when I was in high school," and he said he did too. (I'm class of 1969, and he's '72.)

"I'll agree not to mention your racist agenda if you'll agree not to mention my incompetence."

1 of 2 cartoons about Eric Holder and Fast and Furious (with 2 different views of who's guilty of playing racial politics).

Both cartoons do great — and different — caricatures of Holder.

"Caricature is the most evanescent and pedantic of the visual arts."

It's hard to look back.

"The Republican ideology is one of FOOLS and CLOWNS."

Don't miss Crack Skull Bob's rendition of last Sunday's talk show heads.

"Quite frankly, um..."

Sunday Morning Talking Heads, superbly, succinctly summarized.

"Lazy Protesters Straight Ahead"...

... says the sign stuck in the snow.

Straight ahead, at the protest, protesters chide the lazy voters...



"This is what happens when nobody votes." Who's she calling nobody? Well, the good people didn't vote, and look what the hell happened:



"Adolf Walker/Union Buster."

One of the main chants in the Capitol is: "This is what democracy looks like." And I've been asking protesters: Don't you think what happened last October was democracy? [ADDED: I mean November!]

Wisconsin people and their various signs... at the protest today.

A man hunches grimly over his drawing of a fist — with the slogan "Solidarity"...


(Enlarge.)

There's this...



I asked the woman if by "Dread Scott" — evoking the Dred Scott case — she meant to suggest a connection between Scott Walker and the era of slavery. She said "Of course."

And this...


(Enlarge.)

The message is "Dumb Puppet" and "F— F—" which means — I don't know — fuck face? I liked the graphic though. I told the woman it was my favorite of all the Walker caricatures I'd seen, and she said it was made by her son (who's in back with the x's on green glasses). [ADDED: Commenters are saying it's "F minus," written twice.]

And these kids...



I asked him if the point was that they liked that "Hide Your Kids" YouTube guy, and they said yes. (It seems charming, but if you understand the reference, it is portraying Walker as a rapist.)

Scott Walker likened to Stalin... and to the Wicked Witch of the West.

Some analogies are more heavy-handed than others:


(Enlarge.)

I talked to the man who combined "SS" and Stalin in his denouncement of Walker:



And to the young woman with the "Release the Flying Monkeys" sign:



(The photo and videos were done at about 11:40 this morning, at the Wisconsin State Capitol.)

More signs attacking Gov. Scott Walker — from today's demonstration at the Wisconsin State Capitol.

(Enlarge.)


(Enlarge.)

A legal discussion declines to "I'll see you in court!"

Keep going. It's Bob Wright and Mickey Kaus in the big 5th anniversary edition of Bloggingheads, which began with just Bob and Mickey. Great election week topics:

How Bob was won over by the Stewart/Colbert rally
Why Mickey is rooting for a Republican rout
Are Tea Partiers right about creeping socialism?
Is Obama’s biggest problem Obama?

ADDED: I love the Tom Toles caricatures. Funny that Bob and Mickey — men who don't look at all alike — both end up with pinched-together temples and eyes and exaggerated mouths. Their heads are both super-wide at the mouth level to accommodate their giant mouths. Both have tiny eyes. The main distinctions are: eyebrows (tiny and giant), eyes (bagged and tiny), and lips (frowny and smirky).

Caught in a rainstorm, ducking into a small-town libraray, I read the Utne Reader yesterday.

I used to subscribe back in the 80s, when I loved it. But what is it now? I found the cover pretty amusing:



I can't find a bigger picture of that at the site. Too bad! They should show it off. It's funny — Obama biting into a sloppy cheeseburger and cringing as the angry Michelle waves a bunch of carrots much like wives in old comic strips used to wield rolling pins. And you know what it means when a First Lady gets after the President to eat carrots.

Of course, the article inside isn't critical of Michelle Obama and her eat-your-vegetables shtick. It's critical of Obama, but not because he eats cheeseburgers, because he "loves up industrial agriculture." We're supposed to identify with the angry woman swinging her lo-cal phallic symbols at her man. (At least they aren't cut up phallic symbols like the ones Hillary famously foisted on Bill.) The cheeseburger Obama prefers — like the onion rings Bill Clinton preferred — is a symbol, a symbol of what he loves. In Obama's case, according to the article, it's agribusiness. He "loves up" agribusiness, that big sloppy, gooey cheeseburger.

It's Utne Reader, that magazine for aging lefties, and the article assumes you're into the anti-business agenda. The magazine assumes you'll identify with Michelle and her vegetables and is oblivious to the possible revulsion you might feel to the angry face they've given her. You're supposed to think:  Yes, Obama, come back to your lefty roots. (Note: Carrots are roots.) Your policies need to kick big business in the ass and embrace the local and sustainable and holistic.

But I didn't get that far into the magazine. The library was closing and the rainstorm was ending, and we needed to get back to the Glacial Drumlin Trail. I only had time to read: 1.  a letter from the editor by a subscriber who was sending back an issue of the magazine because it had Sarah Palin on the cover and she didn't want to look at that ever ever ever (though presumably the articles inside assailed the Alaskan), 2. "On Being Fat and Running: Abandoning insecurity for a full life," by Brenton Dickieson, from Geez, and "Sentenced to Life: A man ages in prison and outlives society’s fears," by Kenneth E. Hartman, from Notre Dame. But none of those things are accessible on line, so I can't send Utne Reader some traffic and set up some discussion about that here.

The Hartman article is a reprint, and — unlike the Geez reprint about running while fat — the original is on line, so you can read it.

Prison is a young man’s world, a world of physical violence and posturing, a world of brute strength and primal, unfocused rage. It is not a place to grow old, although more and more of us are doing just that: growing old in prison.

But Utne Reader is not a young man's world — or a young woman's world. It feels like an old person's place. I felt too young for it... and I'm old. Or it's for those other aging Americans... the lefties.  I see these people in Madison all the time. Do they feel left behind? Do you think the day will come when "lefty" will seem to mean left behind?

IN THE COMMENTS: lemondog has a way to get to an enlargement of the cover. Here's a closeup screen grab that shows Michelle's face:



The artist is Jason Seiler. Nice work. I notice the cigarette over the ear now. Ha.

Using lemondog's method, I can get to that letter about Sarah Palin. If you page forward in the magazine, you'll find it. You can see the cover that upset the poor woman so. She complains:

When the media gives air space, page space, and cover space (albeit in jest or irony) to crazies such as Palin, they are complicit in her plan to lend credence to the climate of ignorance, sensationalism, and just downright muddled thinking that is passed off as a national discourse these days — and which she is one of the most visible muddlers.

Jeez, the mere image of Sarah Palin unleashes hysteria.

AND: The image of Michelle Obama drives other people nuts. Women's faces. They're so provocative.

Magazine cover.

"National Review's Wise Latina Caricature Inexplicably Asian."

Brian Beutler says the magazine's editors seem "flummoxed by the very idea of a 'wise Latina' — have caricaturized the Puerto Rican-descended Sonia Sotomayor as an Asian Buddhist."



What was the National Review thinking? Possibilities:

1. The Buddha in meditation is a quick visual representation of wisdom... and specifically the kind of wisdom that is inappropriate for a Supreme Court Justice, since the Buddha is not consulting texts but looking inward (or at nothing or whatever) and generating new wisdom. Even if she is wise, we don't want that wisdom. We want competence operating in the orthodox judicial mode of reading, analyzing, and interpreting the law as it is written.

2. Americans usually think of the Buddha as fat, and it's a way of calling her fat. Just a free-floating insult — to both Sotomayor and the Buddha.

3. The Buddha is a male, and it's a way of suggesting that Sotomayor is insufficiently feminine and perhaps even lesbian.

4. She's other and all those other groups may be blended together and viewed as threatening to the American way of life.

Let's hope it's #1.

"Rightbloggers: Blago, Richardson Prove Obama Corrupt, Dems Racist."

I always enjoy Roy Edroso's pithy, pissy roundup of opinion in the "Right-Wing Blogosphere" in The Village Voice — especially when he includes excellent quotes from me.

Here's my post on his first one, which had Tom Tomorrow caricatures of all of us on what I assumed was some kind of Rightblogger A-List. There's a Tom Tomorrow caricature on today's column, but it's not of anyone from that A-List. Who the hell is that guy supposed to be? Tomorrow has a spiffy graphic style, but he's not the best at capturing a likeness — kind of a liability for a caricaturist. Is that supposed to be the left-winger's vision of the generic right-winger — a balding white guy in a desert-camouflage T-shirt? Or is that some actual guy I should recognize from Tomorrow's feeble visual cues?

Obama caricatures.

Come on! You have to get a better likeness than that!

So here's the new New Yorker cover.

Get it?

Obama says:

"I have no response to that."

The campaign adds:

The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive.

And we agree.

The artist is Barry Blitt, and I have to say that I think the cover is a hilarious spoof of the fears and lies about Obama. Michelle and Barack are in the Oval Office, doing a celebratory fist bump. There's an Osama Bin Laden portrait on the wall and a burning flag in the fireplace. He's a Muslim and she's a revolutionary. Of course, Obama has to push it aside and can scarcely laugh about it.

Or, maybe, I don't know... maybe it would work to laugh. He's been awfully uptight about things lately. And laughing conveys the instant recognition that it's absurd. Why be surly about it? McCain's supposed to be the cranky guy...

IN THE COMMENTS: ricpic says:

Fears and lies my foot!

The dead on truth about these two America haters.

Congrats Blitt.

And congrats to the Hillary camp inside The New Yorker.

It's that last line that's making me frontpage this.

ADDED: Taylor Marsh asks whether The New Yorker would treat John McCain the same way:

Picture a drawing showing a very old man in a wheelchair, his hospital gown adorned with medals... babe of a wife pushing him, as his first wife wipes drool off of McCain's mouth... while Cindy McCain stops to open packages from Chanel. No, I didn't think so either.

Wait. Who's the "babe of a wife" if not Cindy? I don't get the specifics, but I see the point. I think it would be out of bounds because it would be so unappealing. The New Yorker doesn't put drooling disabled persons on the cover. And the Michelle and Barack image has a transgressive, radical chic edge to it, that I suspect excites the magazine's audience.

IN THE COMMENTS: Christopher Althouse Cohen said (about Obama):

He's always been dead serious about everything. Has he ever said anything funny?

Perhaps not. Did you notice how unamused he looked in that interview in which his daughters were so lighthearted? Remember when he got pissy about Maureen Dowd saying that his ears stick out? ("I just want to put you on notice... I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.") His supporters may picture him bringing a youthful spirit into the White House, but look at him. He's actually quite stodgy and censorious. Turn off that television.

Now, this will constitute the "turning the page" that people seem to want so badly, since George Bush likes to joke around. The George Bush page was pushing the envelope. (Is that a mixed metaphor?) I still can't get my mind around the picture of him saying "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" and then "punch[ing] the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock."

Victoria writes:

[Obama] doesn't poke fun at himself, doesn't use a light touch in his speeches, doesn't seem relaxed at the podium EVER.

It's gotten so that I wonder how he will acquit himself at the annual Smith Dinner....

I can't imagine, simply cannot for a second imagine Obama making fun of his background, his race, or mention his pastor and his rants during the Al Smith dinner.

What a dour, touchy time we will have, if he's elected.

Blake said:

Nah. He'll be the Margaret Dumont to our Marx Brothers.

He'll have a terrible time, tho'.

Good point! He'll be great fun for the comedians. He's a perfect straight man.

Paco Wové said:

When I saw it, I rolled my eyes and thought, Oh, God, it's the New Yorker trying to be all transgressive again....

Oh, yeah, remember all the mileage they got out of this:



From an interview with Spiegelman:

Q: [O]nyour controversial 1993 Valentine's Day New Yorker cover in which, during the conflict between Hasidim and African Americans in Brooklyn, you portray a Hasidic man and a black woman embracing. Values and worlds colliding, meeting.

AS: It didn't come as a shock to me that this got people to sit up and take notice. I'm interested in visual signs...

Q: How does that apply to the New Yorker cover?

AS: The signs are highly recognizable. The sign for Hasid is clear and unavoidable, without the usual anti-Semitic physiognomy that goes with it. The sign for African-American woman is equally unavoidable, without entering into Aunt Jemima stereotypes or anything of the kind. Then there's this other sign that has to do with the Valentine's Card-the kiss, the field of red with the lacy decoration around it, all of it weaving together separate meanings. The irony is you have these two groups that are at each other's throats at each other's lips instead. That's supposed to conjure up carnality and yet Valentine's Day, the image of Valentine's Day, isn't about carnality but a kind of benign romantic love. All those things course through this image and the impossibility of it is what's so entertaining for me. What got people most upset that week was not other magazines with the usual S&M imagery-chains and whips, leather and hurt-but something quite benign on the surface, playing with signs. Reverend Dougherty, a representative of the black community in Crown Heights, was very upset I used a black woman: one more time, he said, a white man was oppressing a black woman. Why didn't I have a black man and a Hasidic woman, he asked on the radio. Maybe he's a good reverend, I don't know, but he's a rotten art director. A Hasidic man is a lot easier to recognize than a woman with a handkerchief on her head. In terms of visual signs you've got one thing that works and one thing that doesn't. Even more important, I answered him, if I had used a black man and Hasidic woman, you'd be complaining I was once again showing the black man as a rapist and defiler of white woman. This shows me the problem has nothing to do with the signs being shown but the reverberation of those signs in people's heads. The same thing happened in op-ed articles. There was an op-ed in the New York Times in which a woman who was very upset about the New Yorker cover writes about the Jew's lascivious lips. Another person, equally upset in the Washington Post, described the Jew's prim lips. Now you know I can't draw lips that are simultaneously lascivious and prim; I'm limited.

Q: Sure you can.

AS: I did. I just drew lips.

Speaking of reading the signs, and back to the comments, George says:

He's wearing a dress.

She's in pants.

And if you hold the cover up to a mirror, it reads 'Rekroy Wen' which means "Kill Whitey" in Tshivenda, the language of Barack's homeland.

The cover date "July 21" is the anniversary of the founding the KIPRP, the Kenyan Islamic People's Revolutionary Party.

He's also crushing the throat of a bald eagle.

Wake up, America!!

Caricature and handwritten notes from the 7th Circuit conference.

Last Monday, at 3 in the afternoon, at the 7th Circuit conference in Milwaukee, Professor Geoffrey R. Stone and Judge Richard A. Posner had a debate on the subject constitutional rights and the War on Terror. I'm sure Simon is writing up his elaborate notes and that he will tell you what they said in precise detail, but I was in an impressionistic mode -- it must have been that glass of wine at lunch -- and I alternated between scribbling words and caricatures. From my first page of notes, I got both Stone and Posner:



Later pages focused on Posner, who, in proportion to the rights he was describing...



... kept getting tinier and tinier.