It's 3 A.M. and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the white house.
Man: It's the economy. It sounds angry.
Man 2: Is he alive?
Michelle Obama: I can never tell.
Regarding this being racist. (Youur blog won’t let me post there as registration is moderated so I’ll post here)I know you are not inteding to draw in a racist way because I’m very familiar with your work (10 years?) But if I really look at it visually instead of reading the politics like I normally do – I notice that Obama looks quite like a hairy monkey. The hair and your weird squishy face way of drawing does it… Mostly it’s the large Homer Simpsonesque mouth and lower face. But then, using the same fresh eyes I notice all of your faces look pretty monkey like, just not usually as hairy, and more often than not – pinker.I could see how someone shown a bunch of racist right wing images where Obama is shown as a monkey – then shown this – would group the images together and label it blatently racist. However, that is not having the cartoon ‘stand on its own’ either – that is comparing it blindly to a bunch of images that it superficiailly but not politically resembles… which isn’t fair or very likely to happen. On its own it doesn’t look racist. Compared to your body of work you know that it’s not racist. Compared to a bunch of racist images it looks like it might be the same thing.Humour is always defined by context. That makes humour very powerful but also fleeting and in a way weak. You can’t control context on the internet. That’s one reason why it can’t be the revolutionary social force we wish it was – it just doesn’t actually connect people in so many important ways. C’est la vie.
Regarding this being racist. (Youur blog won’t let me post there as registration is moderated so I’ll post here)I know you are not inteding to draw in a racist way because I’m very familiar with your work (10 years?) But if I really look at it visually instead of reading the politics like I normally do – I notice that Obama looks quite like a hairy monkey. The hair and your weird squishy face way of drawing does it… Mostly it’s the large Homer Simpsonesque mouth and lower face. But then, using the same fresh eyes I notice all of your faces look pretty monkey like, just not usually as hairy, and more often than not – pinker.I could see how someone shown a bunch of racist right wing images where Obama is shown as a monkey – then shown this – would group the images together and label it blatently racist. However, that is not having the cartoon ‘stand on its own’ either – that is comparing it blindly to a bunch of images that it superficiailly but not politically resembles… which isn’t fair or very likely to happen. On its own it doesn’t look racist. Compared to your body of work you know that it’s not racist. Compared to a bunch of racist images it looks like it might be the same thing.Humour is always defined by context. That makes humour very powerful but also fleeting and in a way weak. You can’t control context on the internet. That’s one reason why it can’t be the revolutionary social force we wish it was – it just doesn’t actually connect people in so many important ways. C’est la vie.