Now I'll Eat Anything
I’ve deleted this post.
P.S. Wow, I should make clear that I don’t endorse the sentiments included in the cartoon. My politics are pretty different from Kreider’s. The humor is crude, and it was unwise of me to point readers in this direction. I weighed deleting this post, but I thought that would be dishonest of me — I should take responsibility for having put it up in haste.
Briefly, my sense is that the cartoon was written from a pro-Obama perspective. The conceit is that the demands of the campaign will lead Obama to take steps many of his most ardent left-wing supporters will find worse than distasteful. Kreider’s mini-cartoons present a couple of absurdist scenarios, at least one of which really is obscene. I should have thought better of it.
I’m not as incensed as nichevo, but I had the same thought. Osama eating Palestinian babies is playing to an anti-Jewish slur (hopefully unintentionally, but maybe just to be edgey.) I can’t think of any parallel – maybe a cartoon where Hillary ate chicken and waffles and drank malt liquor to appeal to the ethnic vote?
— J Mann · Jun 5, 08:08 PM · #
nichevo: How do you know Richard? At present, you have the advantage of me.
— Noah Millman · Jun 5, 08:27 PM · #
I am an Obama supporter, and I’m not one for fits of rage. But that’s pretty close to the blood libel there, Reihan. Why exactly would I appreciate that?
— southpaw · Jun 5, 10:40 PM · #
Glad to see you’ve taken it down. Thank you.
— southpaw · Jun 5, 10:53 PM · #
Thank you for the link Rheihan.
I hadn’t ever read The Pain, and i am in the process of devouring the whole site.
It is teh awesome.
And the rest of you incipient censors and crypto-fascists, if I could please remind you of what Kyle said….
“Either everything is OK to make fun of, or nothing is.”
— matoko_chan · Jun 6, 02:44 AM · #
Ok, I don’t know quite what was written here, as it was deleted before I read my daily Reihan, but I would like to make it clear for the record that: a) I did not draw this cartoon, b) I did not have any input into this cartoon other than forwarding the quote to the cartoonist and (fruitlessly) suggesting that the final panel feature Obama being rolled onto the inaugural podium a la Violet Beauregarde, c) I think the quote itself is considerably funnier than the panel in question, d) I reject and denounce cannibalism in general and blood libel in specific, and e) Before I forward links to friends with blogs without little disclaimers to not post it on their blog, I resolve to keep in mind that not everyone’s sense of beyond-the-pale-offensiveness was calibrated by childhood immersion in the magical world of R. Crumb. I still do adore that Obama quote, though, and plan to use it at every vaguely appropriate occasion.
P.S. So long as I’m publicly picking on Tim’s work:
1) The third panel of the cartoon should be entitled “Fourthmeal™”. This is more au courant, and it keeps the parallelism on track—especially important if you’re going to flip to a syntatically-parallel-but-semantically-idiomatic expression for the punchline.
2) The final panel should have a little flag on Obama’s desk with 30 stars and, like, six or seven fat stripes.
P.P.S. In Tim’s quasi-defense, and contra nichevo’s assertion that he’d never draw the parallel, there are these (post-Denmark) doodles:
(1)
(2)
(3)
— Jesse Fuchs · Jun 6, 03:44 AM · #
zactly jesse
if nichevo makes reihan delete an “offensive” cartoon, where does that leave us vis a vis the islamic fundies rioting and bombing embassies over the muhammed cartoons?
if i could draw i’d make a cartoon of nichevo as a whited sepulchre.
i lurvs kreider, hes mad funnie in total southpark style, blasphemous, obscene and irreverant.
stellar linkage.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jun 6, 04:14 AM · #
“And the rest of you incipient censors and crypto-fascists, if I could please remind you of what Kyle said….
“Either everything is OK to make fun of, or nothing is.” “
We’re all blog commenters here, not state actors. I would defend to the death that cartoonist’s right to draw and publish his Obama-eats-Palestinian-babies cartoon, that doesn’t mean I have to find it funny or cute or representative of my own feelings as an Obama supporter.
With respect to the Cartoon Wars episodes, if you go back and watch again I think you will find that they actually are about state censorship not individuals using discretion about what they popularize and approvingly link to.
Now, I’ll grant that the Danish cartoon story was a little more complex than that because what you had there was state action at the prompting of a foreign mob.
But this is not that. This is Reihan deciding what he puts his name to, and the rest of us responding to it in a way that doesn’t alter anyone’s rights. So take it easy on the cries of fascism. Jonah Goldberg might sue you for copyright infringement.
— southpaw · Jun 6, 05:06 AM · #
if nichevo makes reihan delete an “offensive” cartoon, where does that leave us vis a vis the islamic fundies rioting and bombing embassies over the muhammed cartoons?
Again, the inability to distinguish between what you have the right to do and what you ought to do is annoying. Those cartoons shouldn’t be censored. But they’re not funny, they’re not well drawn, and they really aren’t clever or meaningful. The same here.
— Lifafa Das · Jun 6, 05:09 AM · #
southpaw
“that doesn’t mean I have to find it funny or cute or representative of my own feelings”
Neither does it mean that you or nichevo or anyone else should expect Reihan to pull it.
quit evocating about state actors.
Either it is all OK to make fun of, or none of it is.
What don’t you understand about that?
— matoko_chan · Jun 6, 05:13 AM · #
Lifafa, I know conservo bloggers that thought the Muhammed cartoons were hilarious.
I think the Pain cartoon Reihan linked is mad funnie.
And very well drawn.
— matoko_chan · Jun 6, 05:18 AM · #
southpaw, perhaps you could delineate a no-go area for me, cartoonwise?
is reverse-blood-libel and blood-libel a no-go?
is anything to do with Jews a no-go? Like say the 5 jew bankers that rule the world on SeaLab2021?
is cannabalism a no-go?
Reihan, did you put it up because you thought it was funnie and wicked clever?
And then get shamed into pulling it?
I thought it was funnie and wicked clever.
But then, I really like South Park and Adult Swim.
— matoko_chan · Jun 6, 05:27 AM · #
Well, for one thing, I didn’t expect Reihan to pull it. And while I can’t speak for nichevo, I don’t see where he calls for Reihan to take it down either. I was pleasantly surprised when he did, but it was all his choice.
In any case, I encourage you to read the history of the blood libel (start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel_against_Jews). I suspect when you see the results this little jest has had through the years, you may temper your view of how it’s all in good fun.
And why do you want to censor my comments? Like you said, either it’s all okay or none of it is. If it’s really that simple, then you can’t very well have a problem with anything I write.
— southpaw · Jun 6, 05:41 AM · #
nichevo, i don’t need a history lesson.
im perfectly aware of how offensive the bloodlibel calumny is.
im also perfectly sure i could get some imam or shayyk to give YOU a history lesson on why it is obscene to draw the Prophet with a bomb in his turban.
it is exactly the same thing.
it just depends on whose ox is being gored.
A question for Reihan, then, did you think it was funnie, intitally?
And peer pressure recalled your better nature?
it
— matoko_chan · Jun 6, 12:51 PM · #
Or just your better judgement?
— matoko_chan · Jun 6, 01:18 PM · #
Matoko, I’m the guy who forwarded the link to Reihan, and even I don’t think he should have posted it; frankly, I was a bit stunned when I saw the name of the post, and clicked the link with soon-to-be-well-justified trepidation. I also agree with his decision to take it down. This isn’t censorship—there’s a time and a place, and a semi-serious political/culture blog is not the correct one for Zap Comix/South Park-style envelope-pushing obscenity, no matter what flavor of baby is being eaten. In the context of Tim’s own ecumenically obscene website/an email to the virtually unoffendable Mr. Salam, however, this barely caused that lobe of my brain to percolate—hence the email that began all this shall we say tsuris.
I sincerely regret this. As someone who suspects a substantial portion of America is literally psychotic for enjoying the Saw movies and their ilk, as someone who is still mentally scarred by a 15-second portion of “Hellraiser III” I had the misfortune of walking in when I was 19, and as someone who would exact Cask-of-Amontillado-style revenge on anyone who tried to 2Girls1Cup me, I in general support people’s right to not be ambushed by material they find offensive. In fact, as Daniel Dennett has pointed out repeatedly (his TED talk is a good place to start, if you haven’t heard the spiel) this is one of more salient and defensible beefs Islamic cultures (and, for that matter, fundamentalist Christians) have with the secular West: while our saturation in quasi-pornographic titillation makes the real deal the meme-y equivalent of a common cold—annoying, perhaps debilitating, but not brain-wrecking—for an observant Muslim it’s more like mental Ebola. That mimetic asymmetry is a genuine dilemma, and this all seems like yet another facet of it.
P.S. However, Matoko, I’m glad Tim’s made another fan, and recommend buying his first book, which is generally apolitical but even more wildly obscene, and features laudatory pull quotes from both David Foster Wallace and NJ Northern State Inmate #297337—a good field to run—as well as some cartoons so stupendously obscene I can’t even quote their titles here. Which, in the context of books published by Fantagraphics, is maybe 80th percentile—40th if you count the Eros line and ignore the Peanuts reprints. If you like Tim, South Park, and Adult Swim, I’m guessing you’d probably cotton to Al Columbia and especially Ivan Brunetti, who makes The Pain look like Beetle Bailey. Not that Mort Walker hasn’t drawn his share of stunningly offensive strips, as anyone who’s read “Backstage at the Strips” knows. But I digress.
P.P.S. Incidentally, here is my own favorite cartoon of Tim’s, which hopefully reveals where my ultimate aesthetic/political allegiances lie:
(1)
Come to think of it, I’m still annoyed that this was never actually continued.
— Jesse Fuchs · Jun 6, 02:51 PM · #
thank you for your thoughtful response Jesse, and i certainly will buy his book.
i just think people are too easily offended.
i regularily get called a racist for citing the bell curve, a genocidaire for advocating dispensing condoms and birth control pills along with African aid, and a mengele for advocating the dispersal (at gun point if neccessary) of the Presidents Council on “bioethics”.
I’m sure that if I told anyone I laughed at Kreiber’s cartoon i’ll be damned as an anti-semite.
I just thought it was really funnie, wicked clever, perfectly apt.
— matoko_chan · Jun 6, 07:19 PM · #
btw, don’t the “beaners” and “wexicans” have a legitimate gripe about the 3rd frame?
that is the last redeeming virtue left to the Right.
that they never needed to be PC.
since they now are out-democrating the democrats, i guess they must out-PC them as well.
/sniff
— matoko_chan · Jun 6, 07:33 PM · #
also, i will illuminate this for you Jesse.
As someone who suspects a substantial portion of America is literally psychotic for enjoying the Saw movies and their ilk
the Saw movies are popular because they are all about revenge.
revenge is actually healthy for homosapiens sapiens.
like laughter.
— matoko_chan · Jun 7, 01:47 AM · #
Yes, why would a man attempting to kill Dracula possibly be carrying a hammer and spike, unless he is a closet Communist? Truly a question to ponder for the ages.
My point was that my ultimate aesthetic/political allegiances lie, of course, with unbridled batshit insanity that makes me laugh out loud. Which I was why I’m fond of both Reihan and Tim, despite my almost parodically bland center-left politics not particularly resembling those of either of them.
P.S. You are correct, the bears are already doomed; this adds to the poignancy of Cap’s mission.
— Jesse · Jun 9, 12:24 AM · #
I’m 99% certain you’re just Rorschaching it up here, and despite having this cartoon tacked to my wall for a few months had never made this connection, but I’ll ask Tim the next time I see him. I will then return here and attempt to translate the withering “What are you, some kind of retard?” look I have most likely received in lieu of an actual response into ASCII characters.
My guess is that they are depicted this way because it helps clarify what the objects are, given the highly foreshortened angle. Also, crossed things look kind of bad-ass—which is probably why the Commies went with it, too.
P.S. Since we’re on the subject, here’s Tim’s Feiffer Interview.
— Jesse · Jun 9, 02:00 PM · #
(Rereading this thread, I can’t believe I wrote Osama instead of Obama. Just for the record, it was accidental.)
Jesse, the Captain America strip is 7 kinds of awesome.
Nichevo, I don’t think Tim is saying that the US is totalitarian – I think he is saying that the US is the last greatest hope for the workers of the world. Or maybe that it would be cool if Captain America staked Space Dracula to save a Teddy Bear picnic on the Moon, I can’t decide.
— J Mann · Jun 9, 09:50 PM · #
Jesse forwarded me a link to this thread, and I thought I might at least clarify my intentions—not that intentions necessarily matter, or that clarifications ever help much.
Just F.Y.I., the allusion to the whole baby-eating calumny was inadvertent; baby-eating as satiric trope goes back to Swift, at least. This was, admittedly, a boneheaded oversight on my part, but I think it’s less a symptom of some shamefully sheltered ignorance or insensitivity than just a consequence of having grown up in America in the late twentieth century, when such rumors were not exactly rampant among my grade-school classmates in the suburban Maryland. They were at best kind of a vague story about stuff people used to believe in the Middle Ages, along with bodily humors and basilisks. I am aware that these absurd beliefs had ghastly real-world consequences for innocent people in the past, but it seems to me that to refrain from drawing a cartoon like this for the reason that there is an actual history of hysterias about Jews allegedly committing infanticide and cannibalism would be, in a sense, to give those accusations more credibility, or take them more seriously, than they deserve—kind of like refraining from drawing cartoons about the Devil lest people become frightened that their departed loved ones might be spending eternity being tortured by a guy with red skin and horns and cloven hooves and a barbed tail.
I just don’t think I’d better comment on the Captain America/Soviet Flag revelations at all.
[From the editors (in this case, Matt F.): this seems like a good enough place to end the thread. Thanks, all.]
— Tim Kreider · Jun 9, 11:21 PM · #