racism

Wednesday May 13, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 13, 2020

Bryan Adams’s Instagram post draws rebukes from Chinese-Canadian organization, social media users

A prominent Chinese-Canadian activist says she is shocked, disappointed and angry about an Instagram post on Canadian singer Bryan Adams’s official account that she and others say is racist.

January 29, 2020

The post contains a snippet of Adams singing his hit song Cuts Like a Knife. An accompanying description expresses his frustration that COVID-19-related restrictions have led to the postponing of three shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England.

“Tonight was supposed to be the beginning of a tenancy of gigs at the @royalalberthall, but thanks to some f–king bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards, the whole world is now on hold,” the post read.

“My message to them other than ‘thanks a f–king lot’ is go vegan.”

Amy Go, president of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice called the post racist and believes it could stoke hatred of Chinese-Canadians.

“People look up to public figures. He is seen as an idol by many,” Go said. “It justifies this racist hatred against Chinese … This is so irresponsible and just so, so, so, so racist.”

Coronavirus cartoons

As the coronavirus pandemic has spread, many have raised concerns about growing anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism in Canada, with reports of anti-Asian hate crimes on the rise in Vancouver, including physical and verbal attacks. 

But on Tuesday morning, the singer issued an apology on Instagram “to any and all that took offence” to his post. He said he just wanted to rant about “animal cruelty in the wet-markets being the possible source of the virus, and promote veganism.”

“I have love for all people and my thoughts are with everyone dealing with this pandemic around the world,” he wrote in the post. 

As of 10 p.m. PT Monday, his original Instagram video had received more than 1,500 replies. 

Many of the comments expressed love for his music and dismay he would not be touring, but dozens of others accused Adams of racism. (CBC)



 

 

Friday February 21, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 21, 2020

Despite His Billions, Bloomberg Busts

You can buy ads and saturate the airwaves with them. You can buy allies, especially with the right budget.

February 7, 2020

But you can’t buy a debate performance, and that’s why Mike Bloomberg’s on Wednesday night mattered so much. This was the man talking, not the money.

And the man needed rescue — from his bloodthirsty rivals and even more so from himself.

Making his first appearance alongside other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bloomberg knew that he would be under furious attack and had clearly resolved not to show any negative emotion. But that meant that he often showed no emotion at all. Or he looked vaguely bemused, and that didn’t communicate the coolness that he intended. It signaled an aloofness that he very much needed to avoid.

He made a groaner of a joke about his wealth, saying that he could hardly use a plebeian instrument like TurboTax to ready his tax returns for public consumption. He made light of past harassment-related complaints from female employees: “None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told.”

February 11, 2020

He repeatedly — and laughably — suggested that he wouldn’t tear up nondisclosure agreements with women who have sued him or his company because they wanted the silence as much as he did. Elizabeth Warren hammered and hammered him on this point, but he wouldn’t budge, and that left the impression that he couldn’t budge. The truth would be too ugly.

My first sketch of Michael Bloomberg. Kinda’ resembles actor Christopher Plummer in this depiction. More work needed? Or, why bother? Maybe he’s washed up?*

Ugly: That’s the word for this ninth debate of the Democratic primary season. It had the fewest candidates — six — but the most nastiness, because those candidates clearly felt an urgency to diminish their competitors and elevate themselves before it was too late. A meager haul of votes in the Nevada caucuses this coming Saturday could effectively undo one or more of them; a poor showing on Super Tuesday less than two weeks from now would definitely be the end of the road.

It’s no wonder they wanted a bite of him. It was the first time since Bloomberg announced his run for the presidency that he was within reach. For three high-spending, high-flying months, he campaigned essentially as a phantasm, ubiquitous in television commercials but averse to interviews, a supposed paragon of electability who had yet to put himself before voters, more idea than actuality, able to be seen but not touched.

But on Wednesday night, that changed abruptly. The apparition became flesh. And it was bruised from the get-go and bloodied soon after. (Continued…NYT)

 * It was my second time drawing him, actually. The first time I sketched Michael Bloomberg was while watching him on TV as he spoke to delegates at the 2016 Democratic Party convention.

Wednesday January 29, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday January 29, 2020

Bigotry is the virus we should worry most about

Sadly, it didn’t take long for racism, xenophobia and social media idiocy to become part of the coronavirus story. Mere days after the first confirmed Canadian cases were identified, social media content from the wacky to the downright dangerous began making the rounds.

The virus is a U.S.-government patented germ warfare weapon. It can be treated with herbs and spices. It’s a global population reduction tool.

Coronavirus cartoons

But the worst, and the most offensive, social media poison blames Chinese (or Asian) people in general for the virus. It has been linked to hygiene and eating habits and other things that don’t bear repeating.

Viewed in isolation, most of this stuff is just stupid, some is downright laughable. But it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Thanks to social media, the cranks, trolls and plain evil people in the world live next to a fast-moving river. They can toss their garbage in, and watch it circulate all around the world in no time. Broken telephone syndrome sets in, and then even the most innocuous claims and commentary can get twisted into something much worse. They can even devolve into fomenting hatred.

Bigotry and xenophobia directed at Chinese Canadians is not new. In the 19th century, the racist term ‘yellow peril’ was used to describe the threat posed by the expansion of power and influence of people from Asia. Racism was legislated into Canadian immigration policy.

We might have hoped that Canada had evolved past those offensive views. But the SARS crisis of 2003 proved that’s not the case. Chinese people, and anyone who looked Asian, felt naked bigotry. Businesses went from busy to empty overnight. Toronto lost an estimated $1 billion as tourists avoided the city, especially areas with many Chinese businesses.

As the current coronavirus story gained prominence, some of the same people who experienced all that in 2003 worried publicly that the same thing could happen again in 2020. Amy Go, interim president of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice, put it this way in an interview in an interview with The Guardian: “I was hopeful it wasn’t going to be like 2003. But it is. It’s happening now and it’s just going to be amplified (by social media).”

A group of Chinese moms worried about the “inevitable wave of racism” that would arrive with the spreading virus. One of them, Terri Chu, said: “My Twitter has just exploded with vitriol since this morning.”

A popular Toronto blog reviewed a new Chinese restaurant on Instagram and the post was drowned in a sea of racist comments. Nine thousand parents at a school board north of Toronto called for kids who have been to China recently to be kept home from school.

Here we go, yet again.

This new coronavirus, like the last one, is a scary thing. But its relative risk to the general population remains very low. In the three cases reported so far, the victims have self-identified, and in two cases have isolated themselves to protect others.

Public health authorities have implemented measures they learned from the SARS crisis. It is too early to call them 100 per cent successful, but so far they’re working. The best advice as of now remains consistent: frequent hand washing, coughing and sneezing into sleeves, reporting symptoms when appropriate and stay tuned to legitimate news sources for the latest updates.

And if you hear or see bigotry or xenophobia directed at Chinese Canadians, or anyone else for that matter, consider saying something. Don’t just scroll by in silence. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

 

Media isn’t helping either… from r/Sino

 

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)