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May. 15th, 2008 01:59 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
lafinjack.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
politicartoons
From Matt Bors:
Today's cartoon by Gordon Campbell is such a piece of crap I feel the need to remark. First, the concept is complete hackery. Fortune cookies are supposed to tell the future, not things currently happening--it doesn't make sense.
The visual implies the only thing he even knows about Chinese people is that they put a fortune cookie in your Chow Mein at the Chinese take out place down the street from his office. Couldn't he come up with a better way to say "There was an Earthquake is China"? Since people already know that what's the point of this comic? In case you haven't turned on a television or looked at a newspaper, he was nice enough to write "China" on the cookie. This looks like an illustration that would accompany an article about the earthquake, not an editorial cartoon--it adds no commentary, no opinion, and no joke. Nothing. It shouldn't exist.
The font is horrible. The gradient is horrible. It contains no drawing whatsoever. Where did he get the image from? The very first result in a Google image search for "fortune cookie." Although he has mastered Photoshop enough to flip the original image.
Are there any standards in this profession?
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Date: 2008-05-15 07:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 07:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 07:28 am (UTC)I agree, though. Without the racist font it could probably have been on TIME or something, but it still would've been dumb.
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Date: 2008-05-16 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 10:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-26 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 08:59 am (UTC)My guess is they'll do rather better than either.
It's one thing shaming Myanmar....
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Date: 2008-05-15 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 04:15 pm (UTC)With effectively speaking no political parties, and just a one-party civil service I wonder if they're not better equipped to respond to these things.
The 20th Century was the century of Capitalism Triumphant, and the Anglo-Saxon idea of a democratic free market came to dominate the world. Whether this is sustainable or not is moot. Also whether such a system/policy will become perceived as irretrievably entwined with the Anglo-Saxon countries is also part of the debate. Will we become as ossified and irrelevant as the Ancien Regime, and fall by the wayside in a similar fashion? Can we respond to China's growing economic might and influence by upping our game?
How efficiently China responds to this disaster may give us some answers.
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Date: 2008-05-15 11:26 pm (UTC)Huh? Most of the 20th century was a time when many countries (England, India, etc.) embraced socialism. Yes, much of the world has now turned to free-market reforms (like China), but your telling of the ideological battle of economic systems in the past 100 years is woefully inadeqate. Also, capitalism became popular long before the turn of the 20th century and is hardly based solely on Anglo-Saxon thought (French thinkers, like Jean-Baptiste Say, also laid the foundation, not to mention the influence of the Austrian School in modern times).
How is that relevant to the topic at hand?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that they perform well. Are you implying that fact alone means authoritarianism is preferable to democracy? Cause you know, capitalism and democracy usually aren't mutually exclusive with quick disaster responses. If you want proof, look at the responses to tornados in the Midwest, or the 1906 earthquake, which lafinjack pointed out.
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Date: 2008-05-16 12:00 pm (UTC)Perhaps the room for misinterpretation left by my usage, the century of Capitalism Triumphant, renders it persiflage and decoration; in which case I beg your pardon.
The UK was a democratic mixed economy with a welfare net rather than a true socialist polity. This happened because of post-war bankruptcy, and the feeling that folk who have been prepared to give their lives in war should be cared for. For the UK, WWII was a total war. At the end of six years of struggle when every able-bodied person had contributed to the war effort, the equivalent of an universal GI bill was voted in: and who can blame the returning soldiers for that?
However revolution it was not. And the period from '45 to '80 is the only period that a small majority of people in the UK were even remotely socialist-thinking. Such folk hardly exist now.
India though non-aligned, was still a democracy; given the elasticity of that particular term. But Yugoslavia, Hungary, East Germany etc, most certainly were socialist in the generally accepted understanding. (As an aside, the redefinition of the USSR as 'State Capitalist' by some theorists also misses a point, but never mind.)
Can we respond to China's growing economic might and influence by upping our game?
to which you ask the question:
How is that relevant to the topic at hand?
Could be that the cartoon in question is symptomatic of smug lazy thinking. The fortune cookie hasn't broken, just cracked. Our own responses to our own disasters of course allow us to speculate pompously (as I am fond) of the disparity between our stereotype of the Chinese and the reality.
If we're really unlucky, in all things, they're gonna whup our asses bad dude. You think your standard of living is declining at the moment....in a global marketplace for labour there are 1.5 billion Chinese folk with an average IQ six points above the Anglo-Saxon sphere all competing for our jobs.
We're losing our head-start.
I think disaster response gives a good idea of the overall state of a nation. Off-topic perhaps....but some of these exchanges deal with the politics of the cartoon rather than lit-crit deconstructions and textual and contextual analysis of the content thereof.
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Date: 2008-05-15 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 11:56 am (UTC)I've also seen the Chinese flag unraveled into richter scale readings.
More topical?
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Date: 2008-05-15 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 04:22 pm (UTC)I was surprised he didn't bring that up, too. I thought it was fairly common knowledge.
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Date: 2008-05-15 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 03:15 pm (UTC)By the way, I now have coffee dripping from my nostrils thanks to you.
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Date: 2008-05-15 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 05:39 pm (UTC)more like Japanese (http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/dining/16fort.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26nQ3DTopQ2FNewsQ2FWorldQ2FCountriesQ2520andQ2520TerritoriesQ2FJapan&OP=5b1f7217Q2FQ2Aoa9Q2ABn,2Q5DnnQ60qQ2AqQ23Q23.Q2AQ23HQ2AHmQ2ABQ22Q3BQ22Q3B5Q2AHm!nQ5DQ60Q518Q60Q273) (though they may have originally got them from the Chinese)