As ever, it comes from rage. Rage, in this case, at the introduction of a new snoop machine at work that records our entry into the building. This in a university? Rage at colleagues who just don’t get it that this is wrong, another assault on us as citizens and as scholars, but this time launched at us not from the NSA or our cell phone carrier, but (as far as I can tell) just because the university cops decided to.
Recommended reading http://privacysos.org/
Well, friends, sometimes you have to eat your words. I said I stay away from charges of anti-antisemitism. I’ll make an exception for Oliphant’s cartoon today. I’m not the only one who thinks so.
This is a tale of two “tarps”. But it is also a tale of two collaborators, Colleen and myself. The Nelson line is unmistakable and very strong. But what makes it a tale of two artists is that I think we see it in very different ways. If I understand Colleen right, she sees it as a tale of people who suffer and of people who are greedy, callous and oblivious in the face of that suffering. So far, so good. No doubt about that. (Well, maybe there is. Angela?) Does that mean that if we had better people running banks it would be different? I think this is where we diverge. To me, this is a tale of how the gears run in the machine we call our society. Banks and the making of money have very high leverage in this machine. Hunger, disease, poverty, not so much. Some 80 or 90 years ago, W.E.B. DuBois pointed out that since the early 1800′s we have had the knowledge and installed industrial capacity to feed, clothe and house everybody. (With population growth, that now hangs in the balance.) At some point, that has to become the central problem — not “Why don’t we do it?”, but “How can we re-order the machine so we do?”
Well, that’s art. Lotta different views.
Jim’s comment reminds me…
Free Market is the name of the North American Fertility Goddess. She beguiles many with her promises of new and unimaginable pleasures. She is very vain, and regularly demands to be worshiped with human sacrifice.
We’re having a special Buy any two Senators and get a free Congressman.
Know your government!
Let’s see if I understand this. With all the honk and jive about passing health care reform, with the disaster in Massachusetts, with the evil supreme court decision kissing the corporate ass, with the official unemployment rate at 10% and no slowdown in home foreclosures, what does Obama pull out the stops to lobby for? Making sure Bernanke is re-appointed to the Fed.
Oh, did I mention? They actually came out and said, “We’ve got 50 people we can’t try, so we’re just going to keep them locked up without trial.”
Krassimir reports from Eastern Europe:
Guess who won.
Okay. Chuck likes the line version. Lucky likes the color version. I was pretty finely balanced between the two, so here is the other version. As some other cartoonist once said, “Indecision is a terrible thing.”
