:)
Hanging out at the cabin over the Thanksgiving break with the family and some (rare) time on my hands, I got inspired to draw this one panel gag by reading an old comic book by my favorite illustrator Ernie Bushmiller; I imagine if he were around today he might have had some interesting things to say about the times we live in.
Enjoy!
william
One consequence of the economic collapse of 2008 was the emptying out of some prime office space in lower Manhattan which had formerly played home to myriad tenants engaged in keeping the wheels of financial enterprise greased and turning.
Being opportunists, independent film productions have more recently taken advantage of the plethora of low-rent vacancies of this prime space, so our production office for "Disconnect" had a wonderful view of both the brass bull sculpture that is the symbol of Wall Street out our front door, and the New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty that symbolizes an earlier centuries view of American opportunity.
In an odd coincidence, the occupation of Zuccoti Park just a short block from our production offices started up on September 17th, just two days before we started principal photography of our movie, and was provocatively ended by the middle-of-the-night raid by the police only a few days after we finished shooting.
As a result, I only got down to the office and visited the park this last weekend with my brother-in-law Alex. It was a dense thicket with the outward appearance of a refugee camp, with the most surprising structure being a large library home to an extensive collection of progressive and revolutionary literature.
Knowing nothing of the raid and forced evacuation of Zucotti, I was surprised yesterday to walk outside the apartment I have been renting here during the shoot to find the movement, temporarily, encamped in another park, the large vacant lot on Canal Street between Varick and 6th.
With the usual circus of helicopters circling overhead, news vans and reporters parked on the perimeter, and a huge police presence, it seemed as if the new home of OWS might be right outside my front door. But when I returned from work a few hours later, the whole shebang had moved on once again; the vacant lot bore no trace of the lively scene that took place there all morning.
But you can't erase an idea, and the voices of protest against the massive corruption and inequity of the contemporary American politic will return and grow - a welcome development after a decade of seeming apathy in the face of wave after wave of assaults on the constitution, the rule of law, the elderly, the poor, the middle class, our children's education, our health, our environment, and the very idea of common good and a shared sense of society.
Enjoy!
william
"Tell it like it is, don't be ashamed, let your conscience be your guide"
Could any sentiment be further afield from the political discourse of our land as spoken by our elected officials, reported by our media, and consumed and echoed by our citizenry?
I don't usually write about politics and current events here, as there are endless more informed and better sources, and anyway who can stomach any more of it than is out there ad infinitum. But we can't look away from the train wreck today.
A blogger named Hunter is a guy I have read from time to time, who usually "tells it like it is" over at Daily Kos, and this is what he had to say yesterday:
SUN JUL 31, 2011 AT 02:45 PM PDT
by Hunter
This never happened before, because in the past even ideologues had enough basic decency to not, you know, actually take the entire American economy hostage and threaten to shoot it unless they got some perks. They took the entire government hostage, during the Gingrich years (he wants to be president now, I hear), but the whole of the economy? Nope, that's new.
Right now negotiations are coalescing around the idea of a "Super Congress." The Super Congress would be that wonderous thing that every elected official in Washington loves to propose, because it is a body that is tasked with Doing Their Own Fucking Job For Them, once it has been sufficiently proven that nobody else has any competence whatsoever to do it. I think the notion of "Super Congress" was not enshrined in the Constitution because the founders, who were no slouches themselves when it came to cynicism about basic human nature, still couldn't conceive of a situation in which the existing Congress would be so spectacularly dysfunctional as to need such a thing.
Now, the original compromise, the Grand Bargain that set all of this in motion, is the casual acceptance by all parties (Republicans, Democrats and the media) that "threatening to destroy our own nation's economy for partisan gain" was an even remotely acceptable notion, as opposed to something that would be referenced at trial just before a person was dragged from the courtroom, placed before a firing squad and shot. No, I think we are long past the point where anyone seriously considered "the good of the country" to be more important than a partisan squabble, and, after all, the terrorists are saying that they're doing it for our own good.
So that was the original compromise. Since then, they've led us by the nose the entire way. The next compromise was that even though we're supposedly in a deficit crisis (hint: the numbers say we're not), and even though we're in a time of what was once called "catastrophic" unemployment (before all the politicians decided it was in their better interests not to point that out anymore), we weren't going to be "allowed" to raise any new revenue. That's been off the table since day one, and hasn't changed since. Altering the U.S. Constitution to give the Republicans what they want, nowthat's been on the table. But not raising taxes on the wealthy back to Clinton-era or Reagan-era levels.
The next "compromise" after that is that we'd put Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on the block. Because while, say, altering private jet depreciation schedules is Right The Fuck Out, cutting grandma's ability to pay for food and medicine is damn bipartisan, and the sort of thing all of the well-to-dos in Washington can get behind. Never mind that Social Security isn't in trouble. Never mind that medical care issues in America don't have much to do with Medicare and Medicaid, which are two of the only medical programs in the nation that actually manage to work: they have been declared far too liberal and must go.
The subsequent "compromise" the GOP insisted on, and one that Democrats apparently are hellbent to deliver, is that they be allowed to keep the all the hostages for later as well. No simple debt ceiling increase, but a dizzying array of potential plots to make sure that the debt ceiling bomb stayed precisely where the Republicans want it, available for use all over again in a few months, if America didn't cave into their demands at those later dates as well. This has been a huge sticking point for the GOP.
All of these were previously declared showstoppers for both the White House and Republicans. All were then "compromised" in the Republican's favor.
So what "compromise" will be coming next? We have some ideas. But I've got a more pressing question: in exchange for all of these very-hard-right compromises, each one of them in and of itself expected to be damaging to the economy in some fashion, what have Democrats gotten in return?
What has the nation gotten in return, rather than a begrudging acceptance that maybe the incurred debts of the United States will not be defaulted on, as part of these incompetently partisan follies?
The most dangerous part of this game is the Grand Bargain we've already agreed to, which is that the very economy of the United States can be held hostage, successfully, in exchange for increasingly radical partisan concessions. The moment we started "compromising" rather than having the press, both parties, and the citizens calling that out as unacceptable, unpatriotic, and un-a-few-other-things, we allowed even it to be used as a hostage at every single point going forward, from now until doomsday.
That was stupid, and remains stupid. But we've bought into it now, and there seems no capability to undo it.
Nothing to "enjoy" today.
:(
william
I saw this drawing on a friend's Facebook page, and was immediately arrested by its almost Goya-like power to capture a moment of indelible horror in simple black and white lines on a page.
The executioners and the executed lined up in a row, and so close to each other you almost feel the gun barrels will touch their victims before the bullets do.
What fearful imagination guided this artist's hand to conjure such a timeless vision?
Linked to the drawing was an almost identical image, made by a man we must also consider an artist, using not pen and paper but the documentary tool of a camera to record photographically a real life firing squad in an act of mass execution, perhaps the inspiration for the sketch.
The story behind the photo is quite interesting.
Jahangir Razmi was an Iranian who bore witness to a massacre of Kurdish militants in Iran in 1979. His photo was published locally and then republished around the world, but the identity of the photographer was kept anonymous for fear of reprisal.
The picture went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, the only time the award was ever bestowed on an anonymous source. It was not until 2006 that Razmi felt free to come forward and claim credit for the shot.
Think about today and the thousands of anonymous cell phone photographers whose images documented the recent violence in Iran, and the fear of reprisal that continues to drive witnesses underground.
What's past is prologue, and the Tempest still rages.
william
Sometimes pictures just don't tell the story.
There was something just too adorable about the early morning sight of the parents and children at Natalie's elementary school gathered along Melrose Avenue with their homemade signs for what surely was the first civic protest of most of their young lives.
The smiling faces and infectious energy of youth added to the positive spirit of the event, but felt somehow too divorced from the grim reality of the LAUSD and our crumbling public education system; our mismanaged resources and our misplaced priorities as a society.
Like schools all across the state and country, Natalie's school is being hit hard by budget cuts. Four beloved teachers are getting pink slips and already overcrowded classrooms will bulge even further. Teacher to student ratios that would have been unheard of a generation ago are now the norm and getting worse.
Custodial staff, medical assistance, special needs classes, and of course any arts-based curriculum are all among the hardest hit and first to go in the new reality.
It was nice to see a community pull together and organize and speak out in protest, but without any media attention and only the encouraging honks of passing cars to demonstrate solidarity with our cause, it felt insufficient to even begin to stem the tide of losses that are affecting the real lives and futures of both teachers and students.
There is so much money in this economy - how is it possible that we spend trillions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bail out banks so they can dole out mega-bonuses, and can't afford to pay the meager salary of a second grade teacher.
Should education only be a privilege for those who can afford it?
Shame on us!
william
P.S. I know I promised one of Natalie's original picture books in my last post, but I had to get this online now to get the message out. The "bookmaker" will return with her creation on Friday!
I was sickened and angry this morning to wake up to this news report regarding the harsh sentence imposed by the Iranian courts on the brilliant Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi ("The White Balloon", "The Circle", "Crimson Gold", "Offside").
Having followed this story since his incarceration last Spring and his subsequent hunger strike and temporary release, it is nonetheless shocking to see how they've "thrown the book" at him with not only a lengthy jail sentence but a mandate to stop writing and directing films for 20 years!
Iran jails helmer Panahi for 6 years
Opposition filmmaker Rasulov also sentenced
Panahi
One of the two, filmmaker and opposition supporter Jafar Panahi, has won awards at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals. Several of his films have been banned in Iran.
He has also been banned from shooting films or scriptwriting for 20 years, said his lawyer, Farideh Qeirat, who added that she will appeal the unusually heavy sentence.
"Panahi has been sentenced to six years in jail on charges of conspiring against the (ruling) system and is denied his professional rights including shooting films and scriptwriting," the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Qeirat as saying.
"He has also been barred from leaving the country for 20 years and from doing any interviews with domestic or foreign media during this period," she added.
Berlin Film Festival director Dieter Kosslick had invited Panahi to join the 2011 competition jury in February.
He was among industryites including Robert Redford, Steven Spielberg, Michael Moore and Oliver Stone, who expressed outrage over Panahi's arrest on March 1.
In May the Cannes fest drew further attention to Panahi's plight, who was then on hunger strike in jail, by inviting him to sit on its jury. He was freed on bail later that month.
Mohammad Rasulov, another opposition filmmaker, received a six-year jail term, said his lawyer, Iman Mirzazadeh. Mirzazadeh said he will also appeal the sentence.
Both supported the opposition in Iran's disputed presidential election last June. Reformists say opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi was the rightful winner and that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won through vote fraud.
I met Panahi briefly in Tehran in 2009, prior to the disputed elections there. Even then he was aggrieved and rueful about his status - celebrated abroad and persecuted at home - a man who loved his country and didn't want to leave it but found himself in exile at home and wondering if he would ever be able to work again.
Please join your voice to the chorus worldwide that cannot stand silent in the face of this outrageous injustice. If there is a vehicle to coordinate this protest, please send us the link so we can promote it here.
william
In lieu of a post today I thought this old polaroid I found of a washed-up broken down democratically-decorated business storefront called "Victory", which used to be on Milwaukee Avenue near Grand Avenue in Chicago before that whole neighborhood was gentrified and turned into "River West", was the perfect picture-worth-a-thousand-words for this post-election morning-after hangover.
:(
william
I found it interesting and thought I would share it with you here, in my own paraphrased form.
There are three children and one flute. Each child thinks that they deserve the flute over the others.
The first child makes the case that he has nothing, while the others come from wealth and have loads of other toys to play with. This flute would mean much more to him than to the others, and they should recognize that they have much and he has none, and decide to let him have the flute.
The second child is sensitive to the argument of the first child, but responds that she knows how to play the flute, while the other two do not. Surely the flute should be given to her, as she will be able to make beautiful music on it, while the others would just sputter and blow. If she is given the flute, all three will benefit as they will enjoy the sounds of her playing it.
Finally, the third child speaks up. He appreciates her talent, and is sorry for the first child's need. But his argument is simple. I made the flute, therefore it is mine. It is my right to keep it, or to bestow it on either of you two, or anyone else of my choosing.
The first child is making the case for Equity.
The second child is making the case for Utility.
The third child is making the case for Entitlement.
All three would seem to have valid claims.
Who deserves the Flute? Is there a right answer?
What do you think?
william
