As an American black male, I have the life expectancy of a fruit fly. Unless I have the good fortune to spend a few decades in prison. So you can imagine how the Trayvon Martin story has given me the warm fuzzies. That’s black slang for overpowering anti-social rage.
There have been other reactions. They are wrong.
I’m reasonably sure that the Neighborhood Watch hasn’t been promoted to a branch of government. There are several more deserving community institutions in line, like bird watchers or UFO chasers. Moreover, even if the Neighborhood Watch wasn’t comprised of the most worthless half of a town’s paranoiacs, I’d like to think that it would be considered impolite to shoot unarmed teenagers on a whim. I’d also like to think that when such a thing happened, you wouldn’t get a free pass if the victim was the wrong color in the wrong jacket. I’m an idealist like that.
As usual, we can rely on Texas for a nice, modern take on the situation.
Delightful.
This gem comes from The University of Texas at Austin. I know we don’t have very high standards for student editors, and even lower standards for student cartoonists. But I have trouble imagining the people involved in printing this as anything but monkeys or skinheads. The cartoonist has left the “Daily Texan” and issued the half-hearted apology that comes with this kind of idiocy. A well balanced person would let this go there. That person is not me.
Here’s the cosmic punchline: the cartoonist’s name is Stephanie Eisner. She shares the famous Will Eisner’s last name, but couldn’t be further from his skill level if she hacked off her drawing hand and started huffing paint. The real horror of this cartoon is that it sucks shit before you even get to the racism.
The art is something her pencil vomited up after tequila night. I’m not sure what species the two abominations she drew are supposed to be, but they sure as hell aren’t human. I believe I saw similar faces on the cover of a Lovecraft book once. The older woman does not have hands. She has talons. Somehow, the shading is worse. Everything is smeared past recognition. It looks like Stephanie let her little brother go to town in MS Paint. Then again, I could be wrong. Maybe Stephanie intended the little girl to look like she had a horrifying skin disease.
The dialogue is a disaster. The media strawman (strawwoman?) is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the forehead. Mallard Fillmore would tell Stephanie to tone it down. Then there’s the word choice. Black or white, only people about four times Stephanie’s age can use the word ‘colored’ without sounding like an idiot. The 1950’s are over. The toolkit has grown. There’s a rich tapestry of modern racial slurs to draw from. There’s no need to imitate Archie Bunker. I get that newspaper cartoons are half a century behind the rest of the comics industry, but there’s really no excuse for this.
My final grade for this piece is an F+. We don’t have to judge Stephanie Eisner as a failure in human empathy. She’s also a failure as a cartoonist.
Based on Ms. Eisner’s work here, I recommend that she pursue something more her speed. Like eating glue.