Rita Evacuees Can't Believe They're Being Housed In Jail

The current Candorville storyline has been prescient, unfortunately.

What's a cartoonist to do when real life keeps pace with satire?
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Cartoonists Without Borders

A few of us are building a web site to help direct donations to the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief efforts. As Michael Jantze put it, "our goal is to make sure we all stay focused on the needs of the victims for the long haul."

Check it out at CartoonistsWithoutBorders.com


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Candorville Asks for Katrina Accountability

Here we go... Today Candorville begins its look at the response to Hurricane Katrina -- the most pathetic response to a disaster I've witnessed in my lifetime. I was expecting the usual head-buried-in-sand responses to this week's strips, but so far I've only received one. Maybe the failures of our leaders this time were too obvious and irrefutable.

Monday: In today's strip, as the rest of the nation did two weeks ago, Lemont puts two and two together. A reader from Northbrook, IL had a problem with that:

"The assertion that many of the first responders from Lousiana were in Iraq is a lie. There is enough objective blame to be assigned, why throw up smoke screens?"

Now, I was expecting e-mails from people who simply don't think the Katrina disaster should be discussed on the comics page, or from people repeating the childish "blame game" retort (a weapon that those deserving of blame have always used whenever someone suggests they should be held accountable for their inept behavior). But I wasn't quite expecting an e-mail from someone who's been on Mars for the past two weeks and wasn't aware that large numbers of Gulf Coast National Guard troops are stationed in Iraq (with their equipment, which would have come in handy in New Orleans) and were unable to respond to the hurricane.

What's next, an e-mail saying "Hurricane? What hurricane? That whole thing is a lie. Why throw up smokescreens?"

I haven't even begun to talk about the racial aspects of the response, but the more first-hand accounts you read, the more clear it becomes that the racial element is very real, and very disgusting.

Tuesday:Today's strip comments on the two photos that have been making the rounds around the Internet. One shows a Black person wading through chest-deep water, carrying food. The Black person is called a "looter," while the White couple is depicted as "finding" the food. The other shows a White couple doing the same. A Chicago reader was offended by Candorville raising the issue:

"Liberals dislike George Bush because they say he never admits to a mistake. Yet when a substantial portion of the black community in New Orleans behaves abominably in the face of a natural disaster, liberals blame the media.

You have a thug in your strip for whom you cut no slack. Why make excuses for thugs in New Orleans?"

As Snopes points out, there were reasons for the different labels. But those reasons are immaterial, as far as I'm concerned. Here's my response:

"I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Taking food in a situation like that is no crime. You know you'd do it too, and you'd be right to do it to feed yourself and your family. Taking TVs and stereos is wrong (and White people did that too, but for some reason we didn't see images of that on CNN), but a "substantial portion" of the Black community filled their bags with pampers and food, not with DVD players."

Has anyone seen a photo of a White person in New Orleans described as a "looter?" In two weeks of searching, I haven't found one. Surely they exist, but they're not easy to find.

Whatever the reason, Blacks were more likely to be called "looters" and Whites were more likely to "find" or "take" food (not just in those photos, but on coverage I witnessed with my own eyes on CNN). The Supreme Court long ago (in the area of voting rights, but it applies everywhere IMO) settled that discrimination of results is just as bad as discrimination of intent, and I agree with that. The news services should have taken into account the circumstances (a mostly poor Black area, no food for days, no way to get to an ATM machine, and no money obviously meant most of the people taking supplies would be Black). In light of the circumstances the Media should have refrained from calling ANYONE a "looter" if they were only taking what they needed to survive. I believe taking this sort of situation into account when establishing guidelines for reporting is the Media's responsibility, and in their coverage of that part of the tragedy, they came up short.
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NEW -- Talk about Candorville in our new DISCUSSION FORUM!

We receive a lot of feedback from our readers via e-mail, but now we've set up something for those of you who'd rather give feedback in public -- someplace where you can chat with the cartoonist and other Candorville readers. Candorville now has its own discussion forum! Consider yourself invited to participate. All we ask is that you respect other posters, and that you don't post anything illegal, bigoted or adult in nature (or it'll be deleted). You can even post links to your own website. Come on in and talk about the latest strips, your favorite characters, the issues raised in Candorville, or whatever's on your mind. And if you disagree with what you see in Candorville, now's your chance to talk back!

Candorville in the San Francisco Chronicle

If you live in SF, you can see Candorville every Monday on the Opinion page of the SF Chronicle, starting today. Supposedly it's going to run for the next 9 months, while Tom Meyer is on sabbatical. They may extend it longer than that, based on reader feedback, so if you like seeing it there, don't be shy about telling them (via a letter to the editor).
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Seattle readers - Write to the Times Now!

The Seattle Times has switched to a 50" web which means less room for comics, and as one of the newest comics, Candorville's been squeezed off the page (last hired, first fired).

We know that despite the change-up, the editors at the Seattle Times like Candorville and there's a good chance they'd restore it to the page IF readers write in and ask them to.

If you're a Seattle Times reader -- in print, online or
anywhere in the country -- and you want to keep reading Candorville in the Times, you should e-mail the Times at timescomics@seattletimes.com and/or call them at 206-464-2200 and let them know you want to see Lemont, Susan and Clyde put back in the paper. Papers do listen to their readers.

As Lemont would say, the only thing worse than not trying is a spam sandwich. I still haven't figured out what he means by that.
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NEWSFLASH - Karl Rove Leaked Undercover CIA Operative's Name?

Does the United States still care when its citizens commit acts of treason during wartime? If so, then Karl Rove may be in a bit of trouble.

For the past couple years, federal investigators have been pursuing a couple of journalists who have refused to reveal the names of the "high ranking" Bush administration officials who leaked the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame either directly to reporters, or to others in the White House (who lacked proper security clearance) who in turn leaked the name to reporters. According to Plame's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, this was done in retaliation for his revealing that one of Bush's main pieces of evidence proving Saddam Hussein was building WMD was false.

George Bush Sr. described the outing of an undercover federal agent as an act of treason. Whether that's true as a matter of law is debatable, but it is at least a federal crime. Time Magazine decided to release reporter Matthew Cooper's notes to the federal prosecutors, and according to early reports, those notes name Bush political advisor Karl Rove as the source who leaked the CIA operative's name to the Media.

From Editor & Publisher:

In another development, senior MSNBC political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell said Friday night on the TV talk show The McLaughlin Group that he had learned that the Cooper documents reveal White House aide Karl Rove as the source.

In a functioning democracy with a responsible bipartisan government, Karl Rove would be prosecuted for committing a federal crime, and possibly for treason. He would surely lose his job, in any case, but would likely spend several years behind bars (or worse, considering the penalty for treason during wartime).

Ssomeone who commits treason against the United States should be punished, even if that person resides in the halls of power. But the history of the last five years has shown that the one-party government refuses to condemn - much less prosecute - its own operatives when their wrongdoings are discovered. I think it'll play out this way:

The White House will first say the documents are all wrong. They'll deny the accuracy, unless corroborating reports come out from some other reporter. They'll point to the fact that Time's Matthew Cooper never wrote a story about this, and say that the reason he didn't write a story was because he didn't have enough evidence (they'll ignore the fact that a source isn't evidence, and simply try to discredit the reporter's notes).

If that fails, three or four days later they'll start arguing that outing a CIA operative isn't really treason if that CIA operative isn't doing her job well (even though, by all credible accounts, she was). At the same time, they'll disparage Valerie Plame's character, imply she was doing something unworthy of a CIA operative (by implying she had her husband sent to Niger to purposely discredit Bush). They'll dig up any other dirt on Plame and Wilson, and if there isn't any they'll actually start referring to her as a woman who led a double life (making her undercover status into something sinister). Half the country will willfully swallow all this and start repeating these disingenuous arguments rather than believe their leaders have done something wrong. They'll believe Rove was simply doing the patriotic thing by protecting the Commander in Chief from a rogue CIA operative.

Rumsfeld and Cheney will make the talk show rounds, saying this is "old news," it's "been investigated over and over again" and that "the American people" don't care about it, and the Media will believe that.

Democrats will loudly call for Rove's firing and prosecution (and NO Republicans, not even the widely-respected John McCain, will join them), and the Republicans will point to that, claiming it's a partisan witch hunt. Porter Goss, the Bush operative the Administration installed in the CIA, will appear on the Sunday shows and say it's not a big deal, and then the White House will say "even the CIA says there was no wrongdoing here."

The Media will ignore the seriousness of the charge, and help the Republican government cast this as a partisan attack by talking only about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of "Democratic attempts to paint this in a negative light".

If all else fails, something will come along to distract the news media eventually, whether that's by Administration design or simply the fact that today's Media has ADD, and within one to two months, it will all be forgotten. And if anyone tries to bring it back up, the Media and the Republican regime will accuse them of rehashing old news that doesn't really matter.

Just watch.

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