Friday, May 14, 2004

Sergio on TV

This is really just for folks in or around San Francisco. My partner, master cartoonist Sergio Aragonés will be interviewed on the local TV series, Latin Eyes, this coming Sunday, May 16. The show airs on KRON, Channel 4, twice that day...at 10 AM and again at Midnight. It's all themed to Latin American viewers but the telecast is in English. If anyone up there is willing to record it for Sergio, please let me know.

• Posted at 7:40 PM · LINK

Fair Warning

Whatever you do, if you value your sanity, do not click on this link.

• Posted at 2:45 PM · LINK

Working a Head

As you may know, comic strips are drawn well in advance of publication and the Sunday sections are drawn even farther ahead of the dailies. The Sunday sections are also usually printed well in advance. As a result, on Sunday, May 23, Doonesbury is in the unfortunate situation of having a strip that involves a severed head...done well before the Nick Berg incident. One suspects folks who don't know about lead times will be attacking Mr. Trudeau for exploiting the murder for his own purposes.

[UPDATE at 4:12 PM: Corrected the date of the Doonesbury strip in question. So sorry.]

• Posted at 12:21 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

I'm going to try to write one post about the Abu Ghraib/Nick Berg comparison, then put it all out of my mind for the rest of the day. I think whether you are for this war or against it, you have to put up with having things shoved in your face that seem to prove the incorrectness of your position. There are plenty for both sides, which is why the jury is still out, as far as I'm concerned, on whether it was a good idea to invade Iraq in the first place. The overriding answer for me — not that anyone's waiting breathlessly for me to decide — will have to do with the ultimate cost and what becomes of Iraq. Will it actually become a real democracy? Will life be better for Iraqis than if we'd left their nation alone? And what will the total price tag be for us in terms of lives ended or damaged, as well as dollars? I don't know how anyone can say we definitely should or should not have invaded without allowing that the final cost/gain ratio may contradict what they believed at the outset.

But whichever way you've made up your mind so far, there have been developments in the news that tell you it's wrong. The Abu Ghraib pix have cost us a large chunk of the moral ground on which we as a nation like to believe we always stand. The Berg video reminds us that there are people out there — and "people" is being charitable — who achieve orgasm at the thought of dead Americans. Both visuals exist and one does not cancel out the other.

If you believed in this war at the outset, you had some wonderful moments of triumph and vindication early on but lately, your faith has been battered. We were not "greeted with flowers," at least to the extent that some predicted, and the cost to us in lives and dollars is soaring well above what any pro-invasion voices predicted. There's also the little matter of Weapons of Mass Destruction that were absolutely, positively right where our intelligence forces claimed, ready to destroy America at any moment. You may not agree that invading Iraq was a mistake — or even that it was a noble cause that has been poorly handled — but it shouldn't surprise you that an increasing number of Americans think it wasn't worth it. Gallup says 54% feel that way against only 44% who feel it is worthwhile. (To me, the most surprising and suspicious aspect of this poll is that only 2% appear to be undecided.) At the same time, the Pew folks (same link) say 51% of Americans think the decision to use military force in Iraq was correct versus 42% who feel it was a mistake. Both polls could be correct and if so, they show that there are a lot of frustrated Americans out there.

What the Abu Ghraib and Nick Berg visuals do have in common is not just that they upset our worldviews and stomachs but that someone committed them to digital imagery. Prison tortures do occur and Americans are savagely murdered but in these particular cases, someone said, "Wait...let me get my camera!" The Berg murder was done for mass distribution on the Internet. It was intended to sicken. The Abu Ghraib photos (and apparently, forthcoming videos) were presumably not, though you have to wonder why they were taken at all. Did the person or persons holding the Nikon think, "Oh, Grandma back home will be so thrilled to get these"? I frankly don't understand why anyone, even if following orders, would apply electrodes to someone's genitals and I really, really don't understand why anyone would feel the moment needed to be recorded for posterity.

Whatever the purpose, we have those images and I'm not suggesting they're all equally bad. But they are equally here, to be joined soon by more disturbing imagery, I am sure. No matter how the politically-motivated folks try to spin such images to appeal to us as Democrats or Republicans, the first level on which we ought to process them is as human beings. And I'm sure going to try to not move beyond that...because anyone who clings to the notion that the war is 100% right or 100% wrong is going to have their precious percentage shattered by a lot more sickening imagery.

• Posted at 11:16 AM · LINK

WGA Info

If anyone would like to know how far apart the Writers Guild is from a deal with the Producers, here's a chart that shows the current offers on the table.

• Posted at 2:02 AM · LINK

Political Stuff

A number of folks have called my attention to this posting over on one of my favorite Internet stops, Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo. It may remind you a lot of...well, of the previous post on my site here.

One reader of this site recommended I read James S. Robbins on "Comparative Barbarism." I don't know that we need someone to explain to us that beheading Nick Berg is a more savage act than humiliating prisoners but it doesn't hurt to make that point. Robbins is wrong though that "No one has sought to justify these actions [the prison tortures], not even those who committed them." Take Senator James Inhofe, for instance.

I don't think most of America will buy the argument that some seem to be making that the Nick Berg video somehow minimizes or erases the torture pix. The lesser of two evils is still evil. If there really is a strategic justification for the torture practices, I'd love to hear it. At the moment, it seems like both a moral failing and a foolish thing to do in a land where we wanted to be "greeted as liberators." The fact that there are maniacs out there capable of worse doesn't change that. (As Jon Stewart notes, we can't possibly "out-psychopath Al-Qaida.")

Thanks to all of you who wrote about this issue. Unfortunately, I am so swamped with e-mail that wishes to engage me in one-on-one political debate that I can't answer much (if any) of it. I'm not quite in Deadline Hell at the moment but it is getting a little warm...

• Posted at 12:28 AM · LINK