They don’t like it up them

One of the least impressive features of Team Comics is how quickly it closes ranks against the Big Bad outside world sometimes. I first noticed this in the ongoing Danish Cartoons debacle, where the question of whether these cartoons were racist/bigoted never played an important part in the narrative that developed around them. What with death threats against the cartoonists involved, that this was never much discussed was understandable, but there was still a worrying lack of self criticism nonetheless. Something similar is going on right now, after MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell attacked a James Hudnall/Batton Lash cartoon for being racist. This cartoon:

Which, if perhaps not overtly racist, is keen to use the Big Black Mama stereotype on Michelle Obama, somebody you really cannot accuse of being fat or prone to gulp down a dozen hamburgers in one go (not fried chicken?). It’s an excruciatingly bad cartoon, part of a series that’s published on the Andrew Breidbart Big Hollywood site and which includes entries like this. Breitbart, for those who don’t know him, is waging a personal war agains the socalled liberal elites and media, has a hate-on for Obama and his readers are hardcore wingnuts: racist, sexist and convinced the president is a sekret muslim socialist born in Kenya wanting to unleash sharia law on America. That’s the context in which this cartoon was published: on a site that’s not know for its racial sensitivity, as part of a series that is happy to use racial dogwhistles (one cartoon showing Obama in Joker makeup kniving the statue of liberty) for an audience that eats up stories about Obama being ghetto.

Not surprising therefore that O’Donnell attacked them. And while the emphasis in the comics news coverage is on the alleged death threats the pair have recieved (The Beat, Comics Reporter) , it would’ve been nice if the coverage had also looked at the context in which Lash and Hudnall created their cartoons, their own role in fueling the political anger and hatred on the American right. Because they’re not innocent victims and this is not just about freedom of speech. You cannot pump out hatred and not expect a backlash.