After an absence of three days, I expected to have to catch up with things this morning, but I didn’t expect to walk in on this
Juxtaposition Without Justification
I was too busy at the combined American/Canadian editorial cartoonists’ convention to keep up with the news the past few days, but I was aware of the outrage from North Carolina and federal officials from both parties about the lies that have been told about federal response to hurricane damage.
Some of it is absolute bat-guano nonsense, but an unacceptable amount even of that is coming from elected officials rather than barroom blowhards and your lunatic aunt.
Other parts of this misinformation barrage consist of deliberate partisan fakery, this example coming from Florida, which, BTW, is currently bracing for the next hurricane:
Rather than individually criticize the cartoonists who have either innocently fallen for this blitz of toxic misinformation or who made the conscious decision to be part of it, I’d prefer to point out that, if Andrews McMeel hadn’t disabled commentary for the political cartoons on GoComics, there would at least be a chorus of dissenting voices from readers citing the facts of the matter.
And, yes, other voices contradicting them. That’s why there are more flavors than vanilla and why democracies hold elections.
It’s why political cartoons exist.
The old saying is that a lie is halfway ’round the world while truth is still lacing up its boots, but when there is no venue for discussion, truth limps along unshod, and that’s true whether truth’s opponent is a deliberate lie or an innocent error.
I can’t, and won’t, ascribe intent to any of these cartoonists beyond pointing out that they got it wrong.
But, once again, Dear Leader has spread false information, and, as things stand, Robert Ariail — cartooning from South Carolina, where the current death count is 39 — seems like the voice of one crying in the wilderness, totally outnumbered by those who insist that FEMA has not responded, that Biden did not contact North Carolina’s governor, that FEMA money has been misspent, that it’s all the vice-president’s fault and that, yes, Marjorie, I’m sure you’re right: The dark forces of ee-vill are manipulating the weather, possibly with their Jewish Space Lasers.
To which I’ll add another overall comment, which is that I firmly believe political cartoonists should be journalists, not propagandists, opinionated certainly, but responsible.
Having been a reporter and editor as well as a critic of cartooning, it’s hard for me to reconcile the role of the cartoonist with that of print journalists because I’ve had to run a correction for misspelling someone’s name or making an arithmetic mistake in a trivial currency conversion, but I haven’t seen anyone draw a cartoon apologizing for having gotten an entire story wrong.
Though one of the conversations at the AAEC Convention this weekend included agreement that, if a cartoon with an error or an offensive concept gets into the paper, it’s as much the fault of the editor who approved it as it is of the cartoonist who drew it.
However faulty the accusations against federal hurricane relief may be, circulating them is a shared experience and a shared blame.
That just adds more names to the list; it doesn’t forgive those already on it.
So let’s go back to that old chestnut from Chicago’s City News Bureau: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
No matter who provides you with information, whether it’s Joe Biden or Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or JD Vance or Marjorie Taylor Greene or Neil DeGrasse Tyson or the Pope, get another source to confirm it.
And if, as Marshall Ramsay notes, your source is openly admitting that he will lie in order to advance his partisan interests, you’d better get two sources to confirm anything he tells you. And not two sources that he suggests; find your own.
Meanwhile, the death toll from Helene is up to 230 and we can assume more will be added as operations change from rescue to recovery.
And, yes, I looked for a second source, which gave me 232, while a third pegged it as “over 230,” so I’ll go with the most conservative number.
Which includes a pair of month-old twins and their mother.
In case you thought this was just an issue about cartoons and suchlike.
Old Business
I disagree with Rob Rogers that the standout information in Jack Smith’s re-filed motion amounts to an October Surprise, but he’s right that the response doesn’t.
We already knew, from testimony before the Jan 6 committee, that Trump had tracked the violence at the Capitol without alarm, including calls to “hang Mike Pence.”
“We” knew it, that is, where “we” equals people who bothered to watch, which covers the second panel in Rogers’ piece, because way too many people said “So what?” and didn’t pay attention to the hearings.
On my way to Montreal Thursday, I heard a chilling interview on NPR’s On Point with a Republican election worker from Nevada who said many of her friends assume the elections are rigged, despite knowing her personally.
Those who come to her office and volunteer for a day go away better informed, she said, but about half the people she knows remain profoundly ignorant of how it works, but convinced that it doesn’t.
I’m more inclined to go along with Ann Telnaes, who points out that “So what?” might as well be Trump’s motto, as it has summed up his style from Day One. He sees the Presidency of the United States like starring in The Apprentice or owning a USFL team, another platform from which to operate, and one that allows him to hawk sneakers, trading cards, watches and coins and other kitschy products.
So what?
But of all the depressing cartoons in today’s overly-depressing array, the saddest surely is Frank Mariani’s version, which captures a population — I’m hesitant to call them an “electorate” — that sees it all as trivial and silly and responds by failing to engage, and that responds to the news with “So what?” and changes the channel.
When the next generation’s General Eisenhower insists they take a tour, they’ll weep and say “We didn’t know.”
Pity Phil Ochs is gone. His work is so relevant again nowadays.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.” -10-2-24
FWIW: Few places on the planet are as absent editorial diversity than a Canadian (or American) editorial cartoon convention.
I wonder if perhaps FEMA is attempting to get additional funding from Congress. Reality is the biggest enemy of MAGA.
Indeed they are. It’s one of the things that got left out of the stopgap funding measure. Thanks, Mike Johnson.
Oh, and setting someone up to fail and punishing them when they do is called Hard Place, and it is a bullying tactic and it’s one of the reasons I will never vote for a Republican
Mike Johnson has said that he won’t call the Hose back into session (to consider extra FEMA funds) until after the election. Considering that Florida is about to get hit by another major hurricane, this is a disaster.
We can both play that game, Mike: “”FEMA has enough money right now for immediate response and recovery needs. If you were affected by Helene, do not hesitate to apply for disaster assistance as there is a variety of help available for different needs.”
Which doesn’t explain why these Republicans, many of them from states that were then hit by Helene, voted against providing the needed funding to get past the bare minimum:
https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-voted-against-fema-funding-1963980
As for the $750, that’s an immediate payment to get people through until their applications can be processed. It’s no secret, you just have to look for that second source I suggested.
As for diversity at the convention, the only person keeping you away is a guy named Mike Lester.
Yesterday, I had a half-hour to kill before the Packers game and since Trump was appearing in Wisconsin, Spectrum 1 News carried his speech. In that half hour, I counted 25 separate lies before I lost count, many of which I’d never heard reported on MSNBC or anywhere else (lies about grossly inflated figures are especially abundant in his speeches; he claimed to have 100% of the police vote, for example). I then read the reporting on the speech in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and NOT ONE of the verifiable lies was reported, including the elephant dung about FEMA. I’m certain, had Harris said anything that could be even vaguely fact-checked, would have been. That’s how it goes for this election.
The fact that we have so many people in positions of power and influence who spread lies so frequently and so consistently that they need 24/7 fact-checkers who can “well, actually…” them is staggering.
Even worse are those who don’t bother to check at all. Far, far too many “journalists” are just regurgitating what’s being said without question.
That last point is a major issue with shrinking newsrooms, because reporters don’t develop beats where they know the game being played. I was editing a story about a bond issue for the airport and the main paragraph made no sense to me (and I’ve covered business and gov’t). I asked the reporter what it meant and she said, “That’s what he said.” I replied “Yes, but what does it mean?” Deer in the headlights.
You’re much, much kinder to that first batch of editorial cartoonists than I would be. Benson, Summers, Lester and Gorrell aren’t just wrong, they’re liars who are actively making a terrible situation worse. Friends of mine are both victims and responders to the situation in North Carolina, and to a person they report that this conspiracy theory bullshit is hurting them. It makes it harder to give aid, receive aid, and generally tosses a chaos grenade into a situation that’s already chaotic enough. Shame on them all.
I cannot express the incandescence of my rage, not only at politicians who make up these lies but on the media that promote them. Could they maybe try, just once, not spreading pain for political gain?
As a one-time large-scale disaster survivor myself, I’d tell Lester, Summers et al the $750 from FEMA can be a godsend. At a time when your credit cards are gone and you may not be able to access your bank account, it lets you buy clothes, food, lodging, and a few days of otherwise scraping by. For some people, that’s all they’ll ever need! If their house is still standing or well-insured and their bank reopens in a couple of days, financially they’ll be all right. That was more or less the case with my wife and me: after the first few days of craziness, we had the resources to get by, even with our house and everything in it gone. Other people will need assistance for days, weeks or months, and that’s available (with the usual bureaucratic red tape and screwups) for them.
And don’t knock that Little Caesar’s coupon. As I recently wrote elsewhere, one of the most useful things people gave us after our disaster were gift cards for big box stores and chain restaurants. We didn’t need second-hand clothes and teddy bears, we had nowhere to put them, but being able to walk into a Home Depot or Denny’s and buy a shovel or a stack of pancakes was a treasure.