Hillary, I’d be happy with my shirt back…

The grapevine (aka the Politico) says Hillary Clinton and company is having a hard time paying their bills. Now, as a voter, this concerns me. I’m a social liberal but when it comes to finances I tend to be more conservative. (Social Liberal Fiscal Conservative…SLFC…hmmm there might be personality identifier there). I wonder what my readers tend to be?

But I’m getting off topic.

I understand and value the what taxes do and so I shell out my fair share, but I want my taxes to be well spent, and the idea that the Clinton campaign is so broke that they’re having to let small businesses 60 days past due irks me - mostly because I know a little bit of what it’s like to be waiting for a check in the mail. What does this say about how a HRClinton White House would be run? Democrats on the Clinton bandwagon like to reflect on the days of yore when Bill was in office, but the truth is, he was never able to pass any sweeping reforms that would have threatened a balanced budget, being kept in check by a Republican congress eager to block any progressive agenda he might have. This time things are a bit different, and the last thing we need is someone continuing the bad spending habits of Bush where we want something so bad we don’t care how we spend to get it.

There I said what I needed to say.

Shout from the Couch: Podcast: Episode 1

Well, here’s my second podcast. I decided to give my podcast a title. Shout from the Couch was an idea I had a while back for a politically-themed graphic novel, but now I’m thinking an audio podcast is more appropriate. Basically it’s me, hashing and remixing my dialogue with the media. I do this all the time when I watch TV (and now YouTube) and I’m sure you all do as well. So here it is.

As for cartooning, I’m also going to get back to drawing political cartoons, but I’ve been having a lot of fun with this (and it’s also giving me practice for my eventual goal of producing animations). Plus isn’t that the whole point of blogging? To have fun, and to of course contribute in some way to the enormous amount of user generated content that flows out into the pixel-ether.

Here’s a run down of this episode.

• Obama Takes a Vacation and CNN Captures “Exclusive” video
• George HW Bush and George Bush Speeches Overlay-ed to commemorate the 4000 US soldiers killed in Iraq
• Hillary and the Sniper Gaff Part II (She’d leave Obama’s Church, but Stays with Bill???)
• Top 10 Reasons to Not Be a McCain Republican

And I want to give some thanks to soundsnap.com for the great selection of free MP3 sounds available for download.

There you have it. Thanks for listening.

Note: This podcast is part of a slow evolution of Irish Spacemonk as a character. The reason I point this out, is because Irish Spacemonk is a space monkey lost in orbit. He floats around with his cadre of mice and watches the earth spin. He’s based loosely on the real character of Gordo, who on his last mission was lost at sea. Irish Spacemonk was launched on a similar mission, however on his return, his capsule was picked up by a British cargo shop, and eventually the chimp to be known as IrishSpacemonk was delivered to an Irish monastery for an undisclosed about of money…yeah I know a stretch but I had to get him to Ireland somehow.

By the way, it looks like 2008 might be the summer of Space Monkey’s as there’s a new animated film coming out. Pretty exciting.

Pixelmarx Podcast…spare your ears, the tongue is not mighter than the pen in my case

 

 Podcast Trial [5:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Now if you actually listen to this thing after I’ve done a pretty good job of dissuading you, I’m sorry. This is my first attempt at doing a podcast, and while it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, there’s a lot to work out before it reaches any level of quality that I’m proud of. My only consolation is when I think of my first cartoos I posted, and how much they sucked.I am curious how many other bloggers out there have tried podcasting? What did you think? Was it fun? A waste of time and you’d rather type? I’m actually enjoying it although it took me forever to finally figure out how to get my mic to work. Finally I ordered a Tapco MIX100 10 channel mixer, which I’m now realizing was probably overkill, but it’s really nice in that I can control the volume of the input. I also noticed (after it was too late to change) that one of the reasons I can’t listen to NPR is the mouth noises and I ended up with my fair share in this record. My apologies. But hey, what’s life if you don’t try something new. And it’s late. And a person shouldn’t probably try to make their first podcast at 10:00 at night….but hey.

Here’s the audio file. Take a listen. Tell me what you think - if you care to. I’m open to comments. If you don’t care to listen though, here’s a quick rundown of what the podcast contains.

1 - For Portlanders there’s an Obama for America Kickoff this Saturday to get out the vote. Address is 3016 SE Division St.

2 - Paul - I’ll let you think you won :). BTW I enjoyed the dialogue.

3 - I read a bit from Bertrand Russell’s “Why I’m not a Christian” essay

4 - No Paul, I take it back, if you listened to me read that dull essay, then I won.

5 - Then I have some fun with Hillary’s Bosnia sniper fire gaff.

And that’s about it. It’s kind of fun. I’m a huge talk radio fan, especially of The Ed Schultz Show, and based on the quality of his show, I know this production ranks way below at somewhere around … well I’d prefer not to say.

Bush Lays Out the Foundation for Peace, One Body at a Time

Yesterday, Bush stated in an address, that the 4,000 deaths in Iraq have laid the foundation for peace.

The Blood Tag: 4,000 US dead. Nearly 30,000 US wounded.

The Treasure Tag: $500,000,000,000 USD and counting.

The Collateral Tag: 82,000 Iraqis and counting

That’s all I’m going to say.

What Do Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Hillary Clinton Have in Common?

That’s what I’m wondering.

While other news organizations seem to have moved on from the issue of Obama’s pastor and his comments, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh seems obsessed with bringing Obama down. My question, in watching this is what’s their point? Why not tackle both democrats with equal tenacity. And who really benefits? No true democrat listens to their commentary. Independents see them for the hate-mongers they are.

The only one benefiting from the constant cycle of Reverend Wright and Obama bashing is Hillary Clinton. And she’s smartly remained mum on the topic, enjoying the slight boost it’s given her. She’s also probably the only democrat on this earth said FOX NEWS was more fair than MSNBC. This has been the greatest gift to her campaign short of Rush and Sean forming their on PAC for her cause.  She’s not had to run near as much advertising in the coming primary states due to the great negative campaign being pushed by Fox, and other right-wing media outlets.

And what’s the motive? It’s not Rush-Sean-Fox’s love of Hillary. It’s the fact that they want to tear apart the Democratic Party. They want the huge numbers that have been energized by the candidates during this primary season to stay home.

It comes down to a simple event that needs to take place.

Hillary needs to drop out.

She can’t win, but she can systematically tear apart the party by remaining in the race and dragging this out. She’s also continuing to funnel donations that would be going to other Democratic campaigns, into both Obama and Clinton campaign coffers.

P.S. With regards to the cartoon, I want to remind any right-wingers out there that might take offense, it’s you who’ve insinuated that his supporters think he’s some sort of messiah, that they think Obama can walk on water. So I say, if you can take him that far, then you should be able to take the analogy to the end.

Vogue Magazine, a Confession, and the Confused Artistry of Annie Leibovitz

I’m in the checkout line at Safeway with two beers and shaving cream and I notice the latest issue of Vogue.

Is this for real?

With all of the uproar over race, racism, and a media that keeps picking at the scab, how could such an insensitive cover make the stands?

I left the checkout with two beers, shaving cream and the April edition of Vogue, and a bit of fire for the keyboard with three points to make.

First point. If you’re a photographer, and your going to rely on Photoshop to pull off your ill-conceived gig, do it right.

I’m a graphic designer by trade and not a physicist, but I’m pretty convinced the cover image is a mediocre Photoshop job ( please comment if you feel otherwise.) One of the tell-tale signs of a manipulated image versus the real deal is gravity - the way bodies press against objects, or folds and light shadows bend and fall. In this photo, Gisele is weightless. While I know 99% of us couldn’t even dream of doing what Lebron does on the court, try to do what he’s doing in this photo. Even LeBron couldn’t pull this off.

First, find someone about half your weight and who is comfortable running suspended in your left arm. (It also helps if they don’t have a right arm.)

Now grab a basketball and assume a pose that goes somewhat like this. You’re in a wide stance and dribbling the basketball. Your left foot, (the same side as you’ll be holding whomever you convinced to play Gisele), hovers a few inches off the ground. Your Gisele should now assume the running pose in your left arm. Keep dribbling the basketball with your right. Now as Gisele fakes running, casually keep her restrained.

Keep this pose while I ready my camera.

Now comes the tough part. Roar at the camera. Don’t say cheese. That’s too wimpy. Make this a deep roar from the depths of your being, all the while looking straight at the camera and dribbling the basketball.

Oh, and Gisele, while you’re running, levitating and being restrained, give us a goofy smile and look somewhere way up in the rafters just over my left shoulder.

I hope you get my point. This cover is a concoction, and one of the worst kind, because it takes it’s influence from a movie, King Kong (1933), with a long history of controversy over it’s racist innuendo, and places it smack dab between my beer and shaving cream. Lesson here: If you’re going to concoct, know how to mix your ingredients.

This brings me to point two, a confession on creative arrogance.

Artists deal in manipulation of images. We see, process, and then regurgitate in whatever medium we prefer with the hope that others see what we see. From the moment we’re born, images are coming in, embedding themselves in our subconscious. And herein lies the problem. No two people have ever been exposed to the exact set of images, or reality.

In college, after I changed my major from Marketing and decided to dive head first into the process of becoming an Artist, I created art under the concept of shock first, question later. The unconscious intrigued me. Juxtaposition without reason, became reason itself. This was 1995 and I’d created a painting that stirred people, angered people. This is a painting for which I’m not proud. But at the time I wouldn’t take any criticism. I said, it’s how the images appeared, I created, I’m stepping back now and I disassociate myself from it. How was I to know what those to symbols meant anything other than my original intention? It’s all ART, right? Wrong. Lesson two: Don’t assume you have no responsibility to self-censorship.

And so I’m going to finish this long soapbox post with my final point.

Annie Leibovitz is a portrait photographer of great fame. At one time we’ve all seen her work. Because of her fame, and the expanse and recognition of her work, I’m going to make some assumptions. First, that she’s smart with a world view and has a great creative perception. That she knows her history of symbols and imagery.

As the photographer for this Vogue cover, Annie knows very much that she’s doing a play on the King Kong movie posters of the 30s (a time when the question of whether racism was ingrained in American life is a mute point). And yet she chose this as the construct for her LeBron and Gisele shot.

Magazine covers don’t spontaneously materialize. They start with a creative concept and a story. They are a collaboration between creative direction, editor, photographer and subject. Leibovitz was given a subject. A black man, a celebrity, and great athlete, and a blond woman, a super model. When the idea was conceived to shoot a photograph in the likes of the King Kong film poster, I’m going to guess this made some on the creative team a bit uneasy, but they went along with it. They were dealing with creative genius, and of course, it’s all in fun. And so the process that would produce this cover started. Leibovitz, thinking she was doing something daring, in the same mold as her photograph of Whoopi Goldberg in a bathtub of milk (another photo that could be questioned for its creative intentions), or her Demi Moore pregnant cover for Vanity Fair.

Unfortunately, the imagery and predisposition to make this photograph was already in Leibovitz’s unconscious way before this shot took place. It probably started in childhood with images from the 40s and 50s and has been reinforced all through her life. And her creative arrogance, and the fact she’s likely a politically liberal person with an open mind, means her mind is closed to her own prejudices, that she’s unaware of the myth she continues through her art. The myth that black men are primal brutes, that the blond damsel is their prize. There are a million ways to arrange and photograph two attractive celebrities.

Leibovitz gave us this.

For those interested here’s a list of other commentary on the subject of this Vogue cover:

1. ESPN Sports, Jemel Hill, March 21, 2008

Show’n Them What’s Really Wrong with America

Wow, I feel as though I’ve been drawing an entire series on racism in America lately. Didn’t quite expect that, but I guess it’s good to suck it up and address what needs addressing.

I’m going to confess - actually the Irish in spacemonk probably gives it away - but I’ll confess anyway. I’m pretty white. With a typical mutt heritage of various European immigrants (Irish, Swedish, German, and whatever else there is out there). And I was also educated in a largely white school in Alaska. But I’m also of Gen X, a liberal democrat, and so I like to think of myself as pretty open minded.

Then I took a Black Studies class on the history of African Americans in film, I was surprised to learn how ignorant I’d been of the ingrained racism in movies, even to this day (If you wish to read a great book on this subject, check out, Donald Bogle’s “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks” .) And if this is rampant in the movie industry - a pretty progressive bunch - then I feel safe to guess it’s gonna be even worse in society in general. If you don’t believe me, do a search for blacks as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Then do a search for females as CEOs for Fortune 500 companies. You might be surprised to learn it’s four blacks, twelve women.

So this gets me to thinking that as long as we avoid teaching our children the real nature of racism, that it isn’t just what makes the news, but it’s an inherent pattern of stereotyping, of fears, passed on by parents to their children, then we’ll never get beyond this issue. It will continue to be pushed aside, left for later generations, hoping that it goes away. Just last year, while in the grocery store parking lot near where I live, a pickup truck with teens was cutting across, with two huge Confederate flags flying off the back end. I was surprised. Who’d be that insensitive? This wasn’t the South, this was Oregon.

America, we haven’t made it as far as we like to tell ourselves.

Someday a black man or a black woman will again try to run for president, and will get quite far, and then it (the issue we refuse to talk about) will rear it’s ugliness into the lives of another generation, and because they’ve never been taught where the anger and resentment originates, we’ll deal with it in a similar fashion as we are today. Scared. Hateful. And with suspicion.

It will seem like we’ve gone nowhere.

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