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In response to the allegation that his regime has deployed chemical weapons to combat the Free Syrian Army, President Assad responded with “Chemical whos-in-whats-its? No, never heard of them.” He then promptly released the hounds on the remaining reporters.
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Well, when I started this drawing it was relevant. I thought I’d still post it since I haven’t been on here as regularly as I used to be. As stated in my last post, things have been extremely hectic. I’m finally getting settled into my new home in Baltimore and it’s opening up more time for me to start posting here again. As much as I would’ve loved to post regularly for the past few months, sometimes life just doesn’t allow it. I make little-to-no money for the things that you see on this blog, so sometimes it has to take a backseat because my bills won’t wait for me to draw a picture of John Boehner in a diaper (by the way, I would never draw that. Don’t worry). So with that said, I apologize for the long gap and I will be back to posting art and commentary. Thanks for your patience!
Stop me if you’ve heard this one – a political columnist, a music critic, a ballerina, and a failed congressional candidate walk into a bar … wait, that’s a different joke. What I’m actually talking about is MSNBC’s “The Cycle,” hosted by the aforementioned four. If you aren’t aware, “The Cycle is a political commentary show that MSNBC is using as a fancy dress to make the audience think that the channel is hip. It comes with the complete package of stale, saltine humor and all the Florence and the Machine songs you could want as transitions into commercials for hedge funds and insurance companies.
With that said, “The Cycle” caught me a bit by surprise on Tuesday, when they broke character as MSNBC’s Kool & the Gang to rehash the paint-by-numbers argument of scapegoating violent media for mass shootings. Host Toure questioned their guest, clinical psychologist Dr. Stanton Samenow, about the correlation of modern violent media to kids displaying violent behaviors. Dr. Samenow responded by completely dismantling the link between media and violence in a span of 5 seconds, leaving the hosts to scramble for talking points to last the rest of the segment.
In retrospect, this embarrassing bit of television could have been avoided if “The Cycle” had done it’s job as a news show and researched their hypothesis. Once they did that, they would have learned that media does not cause violence.
The attempt to blame media for our failings has existed for decades. Just think of it in terms of dogs – comic books were the German Shepherd of the mid century, music was the Rottweiler of the 1980’s, and video games are the Pit Bull of today. And just like how it was much easier to blame the dog than the owner, it’s much easier to blame the media that a shooter may have consumed than it is to blame society’s pitfalls. The Newtown shooting is no different. In wake of the massacre, Congress has introduced legislation to study the effect that violent video games have. And as I said before, if they did their job they would have already found piles of research in existence.
And as always, it was introduced by people who quit paying attention to video games after “Bad Dudes.” Anti- video game advocates have been clamoring to say that Adam Lanza was trained to be a killer by playing said games. Now, I’m a life-long gamer, and the last time I went shooting I ended up getting smacked in the face with the scope because I mis-judged the recoil. If video games are supposed weapons training programs, then I think I need a refund.
Perhaps news media such as “The Cycle” should take an introspective look when flinging accusations of violence. It has since been revealed that Nancy Lanza owned her guns and trained her son to shoot them because she thought the world was ending and severe economic collapse loomed. I wonder if video games made her think that, or if this real life Huffington Post article about a zombie apocalypse had any affect? Or how about “The Cycle’s” own S.E. Cupp decreeing that the American Dream is dead and that President Obama wants to take your money? Could news media’s drive to sell advertising by publishing extreme nonsense finally have caught up to it? No, it is because of Solid Snake. We shall hang him in the morning.
With the Romney campaigns recently demonstrated inability to interact with the press on a level between mediocre to a complete bungle, it’s not that surprising that they have decided to forge a strategy that completely ignores it. In a recent interview with Breitbart, top advisors to the Romney campaign discussed their plan to bypass traditional journalism for the more conspiracy heavy news outlets such as The Drudge Report and Breitbart itself.
After the way Romney has been smacked around in the media, headlines such as “Breaking: Obama Plans to Spread Cooties” should offer a safe haven from the harsh world of accountability.
I personally find this to be a hard pill to swallow. In the interview with Breitbart, the Romney advisor painted hard-right conspiracy sites as a moderate conservative’s beacon of light in the oppressive kingdom of the liberal agenda. This is where I call foul. As a former conspiracy junkie, trudging through digital rags such as Drudge and Infowars in an effort to find some semblance of a political identity, I can tell you that the only thing that comes close to being moderate on these sites are news stories with credible sources.
What conspiracy sites lack in reliable news articles, they make up for in being a great library of new age American fiction. Trying to find any ounce of credibility on these sites is comparable to mounting a tiresome journey to light the Torch of Gondor.
Upon entering the site you are bombarded with tales of discontent amongst the land. Shadowy figures warn you of Eric Holder’s plan to raffle off white children to Mexican gun runners, the United Nations plans to take your guns and replace them with homosexual sons, or even Obama’s secret past as a CIA agent in Pakistan (the last is an actual headline).
Sacred text to lead you to a path of purity are aplenty – though contrary to what you are led to believe by the conspiracy lore – none of them are the constitution. No, these sacred texts are whatever book the site is trying to sell on that particular day. Whether it be Alex Jones’ latest scripture about how the CIA spit in his sandwich or Ron Paul’s yearly loose interpretation of the constitution, options abound to save yourself from the oppressive overlords.
And if you still don’t feel safe from the oncoming black helicopter horde, you can seek haven in the advertisement section, Cash-4-Goldonia. It is here where you can bolster your stockpile by trading in your sack of 16th century Spanish gold doubloons for $15 and a squirrel pelt. If you see fit, you can then take that bounty and use it to buy a years worth sawdust flavored food rations to stave off a Zionist reptilian from making you his housewife.
These sites even have their own Mordor. A nether-realm where many a man has lost time and sanity. A cruel land where lurks the heathens who have escaped their basement harness. I speak of the comment section.
It is here where grown adults come to cast their scorn upon the world, releasing all of the pent up rage they have accumulated since their spouse stopped touching them after they grew tired of hearing about the secret Nazi moon-base. They have their own dialect, primarily made up of Bill Hicks quotes and strawmen. A properly spelled word arises only with every third moon of winter. Beware, speak once and you will be branded with a scarlet “CIA” for operative. One should avoid this area at all cost unless they enjoy caps lock and the words “Tower 7.”
When you decide to venture into a hard-right conspiracy site, you really learn how precious facts are. Leaving these sites behind, I felt that I should write an open apology to facts everywhere, that I would never take them for granted again. Trying to find a factual news article on a site like prisonplanet.com is like trying to find a needle in a pile of shape-shifting necromancers who only learned how to turn into tiny, sharp metal objects. According to what I read during my conspiracy spell, I should have witnessed martial law, a faked alien invasion, and been put in a FEMA concentration camp. The only thing that resembled that dystopian future was the 3 hours I lost when my girlfriend put a guilt gun to my head and made me watch Transformers 3 because “we never do anything she wants.”
Conspiracy sites are the perfect platform for Mitt to get his message out because nobody actual cares about Mitt Romney. Mitt profited off of firing people? That’s fine because Obama wants to kill farmers with drones. Mitt lied about how long he worked at Bain? I’m sorry, I couldn’t here you over this man telling me that Harry Reid has the corpse of Vladimir Lenin preserved in his meat pantry. These sites cater to the new American news goer who is concerned less about an investigative report and more about lying listicles. On these conspiracy sites Mitt will not only be able to color outside of the lines, he’ll be able to draw a whole new picture.
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I have a staunch “no” policy when it comes to double posting my art on my blog but I have made a exception for this. Recently I have seen very heinous posts about the atrocities being committed against the revolters in Syria by the Assad administration. The situation in Syria is very dire and deserves the recognition. I did this drawing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad this past summer.
