I just was listening to Rachel Maddow commentary on the fact that  last night the Newt Campaign released files on his work with Freddy-Mac.  But: they couldn’t find some of them. And apparently, there are no notes, records, written or otherwise, about what he actually did for them. Did the dog eat them?  What do we do with Newt, then? Do we give him another chance? Do we mark his grade down, do we call Callista and see what the truth is? None of this will work, sadly.

Simulataneously, I was looking through my files for a cartoon to post today.  I did this one last week with no obvious thought in mind of politics. But maybe subconsciously I was thinking about politics. I feel like we are in grade school with the GOP field. Doesn’t each of those guys remind you of some guy you hated in High School?

Newt, the know-it-all tubby creep who always seems to wear the same clothes and talks back to teachers;

Mitt, the awkward rich kid who thinks everyone loves him and who you catch looking in the mirror frequently,

Ron Paul, the nerd who won’t stop telling you all about stuff he thinks is important because he knows of no other way to talk to a girl,

Santorum, the religious nut who is looking for people to tattle on.

It would be fun, if it weren’t so scary. No, actually it is fun, I take that back.

I drew this cartoon after I heard the phrase used by a pundit, something about being pulled into another’s rhetoric. This is what politicians do. They repeat and repeat until we believe them. They say what the pollsters think people want to hear, and drill it back to them.  They take opponents words out of context and quote them so often, that it seeps into people’s consciousness. “Mitt likes to fire people” is one such example of a phrase taken out of context in the recent New Hampshire primary circus. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t (he probably does)–but it is an idea/phrase that will stick in some people’s minds, even if they know it was used incorrectly.

Not that it matters at the moment, for it seems Mitt will be the GOP nominee. But maybe we will hear Obama using a version of that phrase. Let’s hope he comes up with some new rhetoric, I am ready to be wowed.  I’m sure his people are working on it as we speak.

If I were a Republican, I would find Mr. Huntsman very attractive. It’s not news that he’s classically handsome, and if I were a Republican, I would find it difficult not to gravitate towards him. If only for his looks. What else is there to go on? Why not make a choice based on looks? Heck, at this stage of the game, they are all not telling the truth anyway.

The lukewarm attitude towards Mitt reminds me of a cartoon of mine that The New Yorker published in 1983. You can just insert Mitt Romney’s name in the fortune cookie caption.  It’s about the Democratic Presidential nominee Walter Mondale, and the cartoon reflects the tepid feelings towards Fritz by the Democratic party. I don’t recall there being such a circus back then as we have now, however. Also, parenthetically, this cartoon was my second sale to The New Yorker, and my first political cartoon for them.

Two weeks ago, I was fortunate to speak at a TEDx in the Bay Area of California, called TEDxBayAreaWomen (TEDxBAW). The conference was a day long gathering of men and women who spoke about the International Entrepreneurship of women, and I learned a lot about business and micro-finance and global trade. It was fascinating. I chose to speak about something that all women have in common: our bodies. As a cartoonist, I deal in bodies, and my thinking was that no one else at the conference would speak about this in the way I chose to. My talk begins humorously, personally, but then I take the audience into the more serious subject of freedom for women’s bodies. We may be doing amazing things around the world--and women are--but many of us are not able to truly be ourselves or truly succeed because of restrictions on our physical presence. I discuss the appropriation of our bodies by culture, but also the violence against our bodies. I hope you enjoy.

I am excited to have the opportunity to do another TED talk, and to speak at the TEDxBAW event next week. I have been at work on my talk over several months–it is a long process to craft something using images and words into a coherent 18 minute message.  And know it so I don’t use notes.

The talk is about women’s bodies. Drawing bodies of all sorts and genders is my bread and butter; and in the talk, I explore many of the funny and serious issues that confront my own, and all women’s, embodiment.

The cartoon above is one from the talk. I also created a video, but cannot show it to you until the talk is delivered. Stay tuned!

Hopefully, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain will come out and explain his behavior and the charges of sexual harassment, and we can move on.  And maybe he can move on. I realize we don’t know for sure who is telling the truth, but the numbers of women alleging this behavior makes it seem like there was a pattern on his part. My sense is the GOP wants him to go; it’s just his supporters–whoever they are–are  sending him money. Not to mention the wealthy Koch brothers organization.

In any event–sexual harassment is real for many, and needs to end. There, I’m done with my rant.

Most weeks, I just do cartoons that are about life, culture and are sometimes indirectly political. However, there are issues in the news that I can’t ignore, like the one above. Since I do a weekly cartoon for Womens Enews, there are events I feel I have to do a cartoon on, particularly when it involves women’s rights. The above cartoon is appearing there now– as a daily web-based magazine, they post my cartoon right away. The New Yorker is a weekly, and they would most likely not run a cartoon like the one above, although I show them everything I do.

Maybe we need a magazine totally dedicated to the stupid things powerful men do.

So we have two confirmed candidates in the Republican party, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich. My first thought is, can we have a president named “Newt?”   I found it interesting that Mr. Gingrich, as advanced in age as he is, immediately sought to make his age a non-issue by announcing his candidacy on FB and youtube. He’s hip, we are to think.  At least his staff thinks they are.

What I look forward to seeing is what the little girls in the cartoon above are thinking. While I am not sympathetic to the Republican cause, I am nonetheless happy to see candidates who are women stand up strongly to candidates who are men. Plus, it would make great theater, don’t you think? Throw a little Trump in there, mix it up with a dash of Huckabee and garnish with Mitt. You might like it spiced with Jindal or Rudy. And, of course, Pawlenty on the side.

This cartoon was published in The New Yorker in the months following September 11th, 2001. I think it’s appropriate to publish here again, with news of the death of Osama Bin Laden yesterday.  The little girl in this cartoon would be about eighteen now, and would probably still be worried today. New York City, and those who lost loved ones in the attacks on 9/11 may feel some relief, but the people who listened to and followed Bin Laden are still out there, hating Americans. President Obama is doing an a remarkable job to make our country new again, to work with our allies and the world to solve problems and rid the world of terrorism. But it’s not going to happen with the death of one individual, no matter how powerful he once was. Let’s hope the Arab Spring continues and combined with this news, we are one step closer to peace.

Those of us born before 1990 work hard to keep up with technology, we weren’t born into it.  I love twitter, tumblr, email, FB, and I was born well before then.  But it will be interesting to see how the upcoming generations will be different because of the Internet.  Will they physically be different from bending over phones?  Will their brains work in new, as-yet- to-be-understood ways? Will their handling of cyber-etiquette be so ingrained as to further distance us from them? Just when we were able to trash the music divide that existed with parents when I was young–my children and I share music tastes– along comes the Internet.  I text with my daughters frequently, but I am not able to email my computer-less father.  The Internet is not only changing us in both good in bad ways, it is changing how the generations co-exist.

I guess there’s always something.