We have met the enemy and-with the help of a celebrity focused news media- he is us.
Tag: sexism
LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling
The owner of the LA Clippers is banned for life from the NBA and fined $2.6 million after audiotape of several racist comments he made during a conversation with his girlfriend is released.
From the looks of this guy he must be an exceptional speaker since his First Amendment right of $peech attracts such young and beautiful women.
Bully blocking bridges and other things…
The big political story this morning is Governor Chris Christie’s bridge problem. Apparently a couple of Christie’s political hacks, obviously still in a high school state of mind, decided to stick it to a political opponent by creating a massive traffic problem on the George Washington Bridge. Christie is scheduled to make a statement today at 11am, so more on that later. Another interesting story to catch my eye early this morning was this from the LA Times:
Some of you may know I used to work for Disney, so I do have some insight about the whole issue of women and the animation industry. Too much to talk about right now, but I am looking forward to seeing what the animation blogs make of this. Meanwhile, here’s a quick sketch of Streep, one of my favorite actors:
Supreme Court sexism?
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has had to deal increasingly with the question whether she’ll step down from the bench while a Democratic president is still in office. Yes, she is 80 years old- the oldest member of the Court- and there’s the danger of health issues forcing a resignation during a conservative presidency. But hey, but the life expectancy of women in the US is five years more than men. That means that Justice Scalia (77) should consider stepping down as well as Justice Kennedy (77) and Breyer (75), right? At least we should expect more interviewers asking them the question only posed to Justice Ginsburg…
Six Chix sunday strips
In 2000, King Features launched Six Chix, a daily comic strip created by six women. I was one of the original “Chix” and my designated day was Thursday. The color Sunday strip was rotated between all the cartoonists. I was a bit ambivalent about the whole thing; while I enjoyed the opportunity to create cartoons which weren’t purely editorial, the gimmick of a strip by six women set my teeth on edge. There wasn’t a reason why any of the Six Chix contributors shouldn’t have been offered a strip on their own; can you imagine syndicates even approaching male cartoonists with this idea? 
Some good news after the Oscar booby show
Just wanted to offer a glimmer of hope after my last post about the Oscars. I recently returned from a visit to California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where Ralph Eggleston and I did a presentation for the character animation program. During our question and answer segment it was mentioned that women made up 62.5% of student enrollment for the 2012-2013 school year. When I attended CalArts in the early 1980’s there were approximately 6-8 women in the entire program. Progress.
photo courtesy of Amanda Candler, one of the inspiring young women at CalArts. See more of her student work at her blog.
The Oscars and women
I considered just letting this go. There’s so much other important news happening and frankly I’d rather concentrate on my next animation. However, after listening and reading some of my regular morning news sources I felt I had to spend a few minutes to address last night’s Oscars. Yes, there were funny and memorable moments; I laughed out loud at the clever Christopher Plummer Von Trapp intro and cheered Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger performance– but really, we’re still doing boob jokes? Yes, I know Seth MacFarlane was brought in to attract younger audiences but the obnoxious references to women’s body parts and female tendencies really set my teeth on edge. As some of you may know, MacFarlane’s fame comes from animation and since I began my career there, I wasn’t surprised at the sophomoric humor. But what was a surprise was that it hasn’t changed since the 1980’s.
But maybe I’m not reading the tea leaves here. Perhaps this is the way to look at the situation; let’s hope so.