Thank You Hillary

Throughout this campaign this blog has not been the kindest to Hillary Clinton. I place blame for that squarely on reaction to what I felt was a devisive message from her campaign. And this feeling was only reinforced on Tuesday evening when a concession speech sounded more self congratulating.

With that sentiment, I watched her concession speech this morning and I have to say, it was probably the best speech she’s delivered.

Thank you Hillary. I for one feel that in this one speech you took ten giant strides to unifying this party for the November election, and the defeat of John McCain. And in the end, if Barack Obama does not win the nomination, it will not be because of your lack of effort, but the fact that John McCain was the better candidate…oh doesn’t the RNC and the Republican ditto heads only wish.

Best. And go Democrats in 2008.

(UPDATE: The illustration for this post was of course inspired by Shepherd Fairey, who was inspired others, who were inspired by even more others…). If you want to see more of his work, check out obeygiant.com.)

A Letter to the Clintonistas

To Hillary’s Supporters,

As I’m sure you all know, tonight was a historic night.

For the first time in American history, an African-American won the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Unfortunately, for some of you, this nomination seems rigged. As the last two weeks have unfolded you’ve fallen back on accusations of sexism as the reason for Clinton’s loss. Some even suggested there was some conspiracy behind Clinton’s lack of pledged delegates. This argument has been spurred on by your leader, HRC, and used to drive a wedge between fellow democrats.

Tonight I hoped for something different from Hillary. I hoped she’d offer me some reason to get behind a joint ticket. Unfortunately, the Hillary Clinton I saw tonight was the same Hillary I’ve seen since she started to campaign last year. And I know I’m not alone. The other 18 million American’s who voted for Obama saw the same person.

This is the reason your candidate lost the election. (And remember, this was her election to lose…)

Tonight, on display, was a candidate who, despite her professed advocacy for civil-rights, could not bring herself to concede in the face of history. Instead she chose to stain the moment with her arrogance.

Her South Dakota victory speech became a speech about the creative math that gives her the “popular” vote count. She pushed you, her supporters to her website to show their support and donate to her candidacy. I went to her website and I encountered the second reason she lost.

She fails to understand social media and how politics are changing forever.

My comments on her blog are never filled with profanity. I do not degrade anyone, but I am honest about being an Obama supporter. And my comments do not post. How can your candidate advocate an open dialogue with her constituents and her blog (one of the most open, social forms of connecting with people) is screened like Putin’s Russia.

And so I end with this final request. I’d just finished watching McCain’s speech and thought I’d witnessed the lowest of class. I was wrong. I watched Clinton’s speech. This was the lowest of class.

My request is that you reconsider your pledge to take this to Denver or vote for McCain.

However, if you, as Clinton supporters, really want to vote for McCain come November…I for one do not care. If you, as women, really feel that a white male who’s against women’s right to choose what to do with their health, I do not care. If you appreciate men, who under the stress of a long day, call their wife a “cunt” who wears too much make-up. Again I do not care. (Because it’s my blog I can say the “c” word without being screened)

I say “I don’t care” with complete confidence that there are millions out there who are not like you, millions that are bothered by a McCain presidency, that do not want to look their own sons and daughters in the eye, and say, “I voted for McCain.”

Congratulations Clinton! You’re officially the candidate for…

the racists that still exist in this country.

What disturbs me is that there is obvious racist sentiments leading to Clinton’s victory in West Virginia. There were reports in exit polling that two-thirds of the voters in West Virginia would not vote for Obama because he is black. This should disturb Clinton more than anyone. Why should she celebrate in their votes? And it should disturb her supporters. It taints anyone that supports her.

Clinton has no chance of winning the nomination. It’s over. It’s long been over, but the Democratic party has been patient with her. And yet she continues on, based on the hope that super delegates will cozy to her broad base appeal argument.

My argument against the broad based appeal and the idea that Obama can’t win white, working class American’s is basic. I don’t want to be in a party that has racists. Period. I thought that was the other party (in fact the last two presidential elections West Virginia did in fact go to Repubicans). So if the Democratic party wants to make the argument that in order to win the election, it must appeal to this group, then sorry - I’m not party to that.

In fact if Hillary truly is not a racist then I’d expect her to come out and reject, repudiate and denounce the votes of the two-thirds of West Virginia. But of course we wont’ hear anything like that, instead we’ll have to endure another three weeks of torture as this nomination process slowly bleeds campaign money that could be going to the fight against McCain.

Wow…it makes you proud to be an American for the first time… right Michelle?

In Black and White (and Red) Day 7: China Olympic Disaster: A Silence Kept Too Long

I’m normally not one to recycle material, however considering that most visitors to this site are new, I’m going to guess you, my angry reader, won’t mind. (I’m assuming your angry, otherwise you’d probably not be interested in cartoons bashing China’s human rights position and the fact it was given the Olympics to host despite this obvious mark on its record.)

This is a drawing I did way back in the early days of this blog project called PixelMarx, I did a cartoon for the Darfur: An Unforgivable Hell on Earth. Since then, this cartoon’s been buried. That was until recently, as the public began to awaken to this whole issue.

Now with the protests surrounding the Olympic Torch relay, the image is all the more relevant. Those who’ve already seen this, I apologize (well maybe not).

You can read the original post, Foul Smell from Beijing More than Olympic Sized Pollution.

There are a few comments, including the most recent one just the other day.

Sier wrote, “Your drawing is based on your biased imagination and showing you have not any real knowledge about China.” To the biased imagination part, I fully agree (in fact I’m thinking I might steal that line when describing what I do here - drawings biased by my imagination - it has a special ring to it. But I digress.

Instead, I’m making my own pledge to boycott the Olympics, the whole thing. I’m not going to read, watch, pay any attention to the event. It’ll tie nicely into my boycott of NBC and the rest of mainstream media. And to all those who say boycotts don’t work…don’t think you persuade me :).

Note: For anyone wondering who the man behind the mask might be, it’s Hu Jintao (pronounced “who”).

In Black and White Day 6: Howard Zinn and A People’s History of American Empire

Howard Zinn’s upcoming book is being introduced by this nice presentation/political art film that’s narrated by Viggo Mortensen and guess what…it’s in black and white. I’m being lazy today (actually I’m trying to learn animation) so I thought I’d let another artist do the work.

Check out the work of Mike Konopacki, a political cartoonist, who’s brief 2 second spot at the end of the clip doesn’t give enough recognition to the artist…

The Building of a Movement: 2004, 2006, 2008

The world doesn’t seem much different than when this video came out in 2004. That’s when Dean still had promise, Kerry was looking tired and in need of another round of Botox, and some couch-potato Democrats were just starting to get tired of the Iraq war. There were signs though that something was happening and the youth movement (those 18 to 30) in this country was building.

The video director, Ian Inaba, has a great explanation of the impact this video had when it was released. While the video didn’t unleash the flood of youth votes critics would have required before making this a news story, a 9% increase is a nice amount.

Now in 2008 we have another movement, or more correctly, a continuation of the original Dean movement, except this time there’s no scream to stop it in it’s tracks. And this is what is frustrating Republicans. After nearly a decade of failed policy advocated by their party, (I’d like to actually include the Clinton post-1993 term in that as well), people are tired, but they also realize that they have a voice, that one vote does matter when added to enough other votes.

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

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