racism

Why Political Memes Suck; And Yet Another Social Media Jackass Award goes to…

…Envelope please…The People’s Party of Canada! With shout outs to Rob Lussier, and Mark Friesen.

The story was posted last week by the Saskatchewan regional office of the CBC, under the headline “2 PPC candidates tweet cartoon of Jagmeet Singh wearing turban with bomb on it“. Naturally, it evoked memories of the Danish cartoon controversy, and without seeing the cartoon I wondered, who the heck would draw that? 

From left to right is a facial depiction of Jagmeet Singh by Theo Moudakis, altered to show a bomb in his turban, my caricature face of Justin Trudeau, John Fewings caricature of Andrew Scheer, and then another drawn by me of Maxime Bernier. I’ve linked my drawings to their original cartoons.

Turns out to be one of those Photo-chopped amalgams of various unauthorized repurposings to create what has increasing become acceptable in online political discourse: the meme. 

Those who follow this blog know that we in the editorial cartooning world don’t take kindly to the strange behaviour that compels people to make and share their efforts to create these ugly renderings. I have written much over the years against this practice over and over.

While the source of the above is unknown, two candidates running for the PPC, Rob Lussier (Brandon-Souris), and Mark Friesen (Saskatoon-Grasswood) chose to retweet an inflammatory message linking Singh to terrorism, and continue to stand by them as an appropriate line to supporters.  Obviously, the xenophobic tactic of spreading fear about Sikhs or Muslims or anybody that happens to wear a turban being aligned to terrorism is a racist one. The unauthorized use of the work of others is a secondary offence to a more serious one of spreading hate.

Alas, this is the peril of posting work on the Internet. When satire is turned around for partisan gain, or worse, used to spread hate. Be they chopped up editorial cartoons or photographs, memes are unsigned, repurposed imagery cluttering the online world. Yet, they’ve become a subject of study as they become permanently part of the election cycle (practically perpetual outside of the usual 6 week campaign period.) So when my local paper posts an article under the headline Why political memes matter to this federal election reporting scientific exploration, it gives credence to the concept of memes.

Over the past few years write-ups have suggested that memes have become the political cartoon of the era and that the work editorial cartoons draw face an ‘existential threat’ from advertisers and memes.  

The Condescending Willy Wonka Meme

Amongst the chatter within the tiny group of people who still draw editorial cartoons for a living there is universal disdain for these perspectives. While memes are generally frowned upon there are, admittedly, some pretty hilarious memes, non-political memes that is, which are quite effective in getting a point across, quick and dirty, with a wide audience. Which is, ironically, the basic goal of an editorial cartoonist in drawing a cartoon.

The difference, however, when it comes to political memes, is that they’re used for ideological or partisan purposes, as opposed to satire. The top rendering is a case in point, and indeed all of the other repurposed photo-cropping of editorial cartoons I’ve awarded Jackass awards to are partisan regurgitations. Meme creators are anonymous, the images they use are ripoffs, and only a fraction of time is spent whipping up memes as opposed to editorial cartoons.

Editorial Cartoonists are mistakenly regarded by some as being partisans. We’re supposed to skewer the people with power, to punch up, no matter what political party happens to be in charge of the levers of government. At the same time, we shouldn’t necessarily work as agent provocateurs for the opposition. I think editorial cartoonists are expected to satirize and draw out folly along all sides of the legislature.  To shoot editorial cartoon barbs from a constant point of the political spectrum and align oneself to a particular party, is in effect being partisan, creating propaganda, as opposed to satire. One need only look through a editorial cartoonist’s body of work to differentiate a satirist from a propagandist. Take this so & so as a prime example. Those of the latter group might as well call themselves political meme creators.

Political memes will never take over editorial cartoons, because propaganda will never replace satire. Can we just stop making the comparisons?

Friday September 20, 2019

September 20, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday September 20, 2019

Justin Trudeau — a self-appointed moral steward in blackface

January 15, 2019

It is almost too obvious now to point out the rank hypocrisy of the Trudeau brand: one that has zero tolerance for inappropriate touching, except for his own; one that preaches respect for Indigenous Canadians, except when you can get a cheap laugh at a Liberal fundraiser.

One that claims to run government differently, but uses the same old tactics to get its way; one that lectures about standing up to oppression, except oppression in certain ridings.

One that insists it is working in the interests of the average Canadian, but tries to curry favour with the above-average Canadian in private. One that renounces the politics of fear and division, except when the politics of fear and division can be politically advantageous.  

And one that has spent its entire political existence proselytizing about tolerance, inclusivity, sensitivity and acceptance, all the while knowing — and hiding — a past that includes multiple instances of dressing up in blackface.

TIME magazine

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau made one good point while delivering his apology Wednesday, after Time magazine published a 2001 photo of him wearing brownface as a 29-year-old teacher at an Arabian Nights-themed school party.

“If everyone who is going to be standing for office needs to demonstrate they’ve been perfect every step of their lives,” Trudeau said, “there is going to be a shortage of people running for office.”

February 22, 2018

Putting aside the enormous chasm between being “perfect” and wearing blackface three times, Trudeau makes a valid point about the need for a political machine that makes allowances for human flaws. If we don’t allow people to grow and change, we end up with slates of sanitized candidates who planned their political careers from birth and wore suits to middle school, which is, without a doubt, a most hellish version of politics.

But Trudeau’s argument would carry more weight had his war room not spent the week prior furiously digging up reasons why his opponents should be disqualified — reasons that include what they once said, once advocated for, or with whom they previously associated.

None of those claims were close to as bad as a grown man wearing blackface on multiple occasions. Had Trudeau been a regular candidate of any party, including the Liberals, he would’ve been closing up his campaign office by now.

Earlier this year, the United States was grappling with a political blackface scandal of its own: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was accused of wearing blackface in a 1984 yearbook photo.

May 7, 2019

That was the time, if ever, for Trudeau to own his actions, instead of being cornered into acknowledging them, as he has been now.

Instead, Trudeau carried on as if — to borrow his own words — he had been perfect every step of his life, with the Liberals then launching a co-ordinated attack on the Conservatives, accusing them of being soft on white supremacy.

Knowing what we know now, if you imagine Trudeau wearing black makeup and singing Day O while accusing Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer of refusing to take racism seriously, the attack loses its potency. (CBC) 

 

Friday July 19, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday July 19, 2019

Chastising Trump isn’t Justin Trudeau’s job. Leave that to the American voters

In his strangely phrased denunciation of the Nixonian “America: Love it or Leave It” vulgarity that U.S. President Donald Trump customized last Sunday in the style of a racist jibe, it would be unfair to say that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was dangerously foolish, or ill-advised, or even that he made a deliberate decision to strike out into the howling wilderness of American politics on Monday.

A kind of etiquette is involved in this, and there is a heightened expectation that one should express one’s disgust with the boorish American president, particularly, at any time that an occasion to do so presents itself. So it was a banality that Trudeau was questioned on the subject, and after all, it was only in response to a reporter’s question that Trudeau addressed the matter in the first place.

June 22, 2018

And even then, Trudeau did so with a 10-foot pole, but not before expressing confidence that the entire world should be sufficiently familiar by now with the purity of his state of mind that what he thought should go without saying. “Canadians, and indeed people around the world, know exactly what I think about those particular comments,” Trudeau said. Well, okay then. “That is not how we do things in Canada. A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, and the diversity of our country is actually one of our greatest strengths and a source of tremendous resilience and pride for Canadians and we will continue to defend that.”

It does Trump no harm to have somebody like Trudeau coming out of nowhere to weigh in on behalf of the four Congresswomen, or at least to give that impression. The same goes for the similarly pro-multiculturalism New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who also expressed revulsion with Trump’s utterances. The criticisms Trump’s tweeting elicited from outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May, and from the clownish Boris Johnson, who is a hair’s breadth away from replacing May as Conservative Party leader, are just as unhelpful. Trumpism bears little resemblance to traditional Republican conservatism. That legacy is all but spent, so who cares what British Tories think?

October 18, 2016

To understand what Trump said, which was to the effect that certain novice Congress Democrats who are neither white nor male should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” it is necessary to know something about who his remarks were directed at. They are the pugnacious and notably leftish rising stars Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. All but Omar, who arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Somalia, are American-born. But that’s almost beside the point.

July 12, 2019

But just as Omar’s virtues may not be quite as impeccable as they appear, Trudeau’s virtues don’t always hold up under close scrutiny, either. Responding to Trump’s cunningly devised attack on the Squad by claiming it’s “not how we do things in Canada,” and that a “Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” is hard to square with Trudeau’s near silence on the recently-adopted Quebec law, aimed almost entirely at Muslim women who wear hijabs and niqabs. Because she covers her head as her religious piety requires, Ilhan Omar would be prohibited from teaching public school in Quebec. So that, too, is “how we do things in Canada.”

January 16, 2019

Trudeau is already too susceptible to basking in the flattery that well-to-do American liberals like to shower upon him, and the liberal American style has become so prevalent in Canada that it’s becoming commonplace to imagine that Trudeau is somehow obliged to “speak out” about the gross excesses of the American right at every opportunity.

But that’s not his job. It is up to Americans to get Trump sorted. The United States is a democracy, and on Tuesday, for the first time in a century, the U.S Congress voted an official rebuke of President Trump’s ugly commentary.

For now, that will have to do. (National Post)

A Canadian is a Canadian is a… from r/canadapoliticshumour


 

Thursday July 18, 2019

July 18, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday July 18, 2019

‘Send Her Back’: The Bigoted Rallying Cry of Trump 2020

December 9, 2015

On Wednesday night in North Carolina, Donald Trump agitated rally-goers with inflammatory rhetoric about Representative Ilhan Omar, a naturalized American born in Somalia, until his supporters began chanting “send her back”––as if a legal immigrant who became a U.S. citizen can or should be denied equal treatment under the law and extra-constitutionally deported by the president.

Burning a copy of the U.S. Constitution would show no more contempt for it than the crowd’s bigoted, nativist reverie about tyrannically deposing an elected member of Congress. No opinion expressed by the congresswoman, no matter how wrongheaded, could excuse the un-American mob.

The crowd’s authoritarian outburst and the purposefully divisive, irresponsible presidential rhetoric that prompted it portends an ugly Trump campaign for reelection. Like “lock her up,” the chant that Trump rally-goers directed at Hillary Clinton in 2016, “send her back” is poised to travel the country with the president.

January 13, 2018

Already, the civic poison of the chant has been televised and celebrated on social media by Trump supporters. Naturalized immigrants must have heard it and felt anxious. Racists must have heard it and felt glad. Children must have heard it, too, and felt uncomfortable, knowing in their gut that the chant is wrong. Some kids are surely being malignly influenced by its repudiation of the American creed.

Republicans know that more of the same is coming. Wednesday’s rally put them on notice: Trump intends to run a reelection campaign that stokes the ugliest impulses of his base, no matter how much damage it does to the civic fabric of America and no matter how much hatred it stirs up against immigrant populations. The overwhelming majority of the GOP and its electorate are sticking by Trump anyway, even though they could be working for a contested primary election.

That is shameful.

How many times between now and Election Day 2020 will Trump whip up a crowd of his supporters into a new frenzy of bigoted, unconstitutional nativism? Four more years of this would be devastating for America. (The Atlantic) 

MacKay’s Sci-Fi Gallery

February 26, 2008
April 30, 2009
July 20, 2009
May 9, 2012
February 21, 2013
March 19, 2013
January 31, 2014
May 7, 2014
November 13, 2014
January 16, 2015
August 19, 2016
May 31, 2018
November 14, 2018
November 18, 2017
July 18, 2019
July 17, 2019
September 22, 2012

 

Thursday February 21, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 21, 2019

Pro-pipeline protestors arrive in Ottawa from Alberta, as political attention remains focused on Quebec

December 13, 2018

A convoy of oil workers arrived in Ottawa on Tuesday to deliver a message to the Liberal government about the province’s desperate need for more pipelines. Perhaps fittingly, however, the government’s focus was instead trained on Alberta’s deepest political foe: Quebec.

The long line of semi-trucks sat idling on Wellington Street in Ottawa, blocking off the street that passes in front of Parliament as part of a protest by United We Roll, a pro-industry group.

The Ottawa rally marked the final destination for the convoy, which started its journey in Alberta four days ago. Semi trucks were hitched to trailers emblazoned with calls to “build the pipeline” and “kill” Bill C-69, the Liberals’ environmental assessment reforms. Bearded men in fluorescent vests exhaled thick clouds into the cold air and yelled for Ottawa to “open your eyes” to industry struggles.

December 20, 2018

But, as if drawing directly from Alberta’s deepest political suspicions, MPs were instead focused on Quebec for much of the day, and the ongoing furor over allegations that the Prime Minister’s Office pressured the attorney general to help Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin avoid prosecution on corruption charges. The minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, has quit cabinet and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s principal secretary has resigned.

Haley Wile, a co-founder of United We Roll, brushed off suggestions that the SNC-Lavalin affair was sucking up political oxygen in Ottawa and distracting media from the rally.

Rally organizers said they plan to ask several cabinet ministers, including the Prime Minister’s Office, for meetings to discuss energy policy and Alberta’s pipeline woes. No Liberal MPs attended the rally, though Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier both delivered remarks.

Howdy Doodie Andy Scheer

“I didn’t think Justin Trudeau was going to come down and say ‘Let’s get this pipeline built,’” Wile said.

One bright green placard on Tuesday read: “Hey Trudeau, if SNC was in Alberta would you build us a pipeline?” Another read: “Build pipelines, let Jody speak.”

In a statement on Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s Office said it would not meet with organizers of United We Roll.

“We will always support the right of Canadians to be heard, but it is essential that their message not be co-opted by those who spew racist and divisive language,” it said.

Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi on Tuesday said it was “very unfortunate” that the message from the convoy has “drifted from pipelines to issues that are not relevant to the discussion on pipelines.” (Source: National Post)