What's The Matter With Ward Sutton?

[Originally published 9/26 on my old LiveJournal blog]

As the avid readers of this community know, I am a huge fan of Ward Sutton's wonderful Sutton Impact cartoons. I even skipped the "Serenity" film panel at this year's Comic Con so I could hear him speak. I also bought a copy of his book off of him there and chatted him up a bit. It was a very fun experience. I think his political cartoons are among the best around and I post them here for everyone to enjoy (?).

So I was shocked to see this week's cartoon and find that his target was his (and my own) hometown of New York (and the supposedly hypocritical liberals who live in it). The cartoon begins with Sutton mentioning Frank Thomas's excellent 2004 book "What's The Matter With Kansas?: How Conservatives Won The Heart of America", which examines why a rural heartland state like Kansas (one of the reddest of the red) would support politicians and leaders whose policies are destroying their way of life. I have written about this book earlier this year myself. Sutton posits that New York City residents have made the same political betrayal, by supporting Republican billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg for reelection. As partisan and mucho-liberal as I proudly am, I am sad to see Sutton approach the situation in such black-and-white way. And as a proud New Yorker, I also feel I must defend us NYC liberals. But first... here's the cartoon in question.


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Let me firstly state that I have read Frank's book and agree with his argument. A state with such rampant poverty as Kansas should not be supporting today's Republican party. It's like getting shot by someone and then joining the NRA. But the situation in New York, in my opinion, is quite different. New Yorkers have never betrayed their liberal standing. Just ask Al Gore and the celebrity-like reception he gets when he speaks at NYU. Or go down to Union Square park where people are protesting 24-7 against the Iraq war. Or just for kicks, scream out "President Bush sucks!" next time you're on the subway and watch everyone applaud. The UN is here. Michael Moore lives uptown. Liberal-hater Rush Limbaugh lives here and gets his Oxycontin here. Even those Fox News people have to see us out their office windows every day! Democratic hero Bill Clinton lives just a few miles north of the city, in Westchester County. His wife, and our junior Senator, is supposedly the '08 Presidential nominee. And senior Senator Schumer did us proud in the confirmation hearings for John Roberts. The Democratic Party knows that, every four years, New York can be counted on proudly to give its 31 electoral votes to the Democratic candidate.

So why then, might you ask, is our Mayor not only a Republican, but also heading toward an easy reelection win? Because he is a good mayor who has done more to fulfill his campaign pledges than the average politician. Probably because he wasn't a politician before; he was a businessman. And he wasn't a Republican either. He was a lifelong Democrat but switched parties to run for Mayor. After Guiliani resurrected New York anew from the hellish crime-infested stereotype it was before (as any movie set in NY in the 70s and 80s depicted), it seemed obvious to Bloomberg that if he wanted to get elected Mayor, the Republican party would be better suited for him. New York City residents may be overwhelmingly liberal, but they are not overwhelmingly stupid. The last Democratic mayor the city elected was David Dinkins, a man so inept, he actually made people want Ed Koch back. That's bad. What's that, Dinkins asked, there is an all-out race riot going on in Brooklyn?? Ohh, I'm sure they'll all tire themselves out eventually. David Dinkins was so bad, and Rudy Guiliani so better, this ensured people would associate Republican mayoral leadership with a job well done. For all the liberals reading this, don't worry, we make up for this by keeping Democrats in charge of the City Council.

Michael Bloomberg is, in short, a good mayor. He was looking pretty lame-ducky a couple of years ago with his "we need to close down firehouses to save money!" and "Ticket people for loud sneezing, we have a budget crisis!" crap, but his handlers quickly pulled him aside and said "Mikey, NO. We already did that Nazi shit in the Guiliani administration, it won't fly again". Anyway, I think Bloomberg has a pretty good handle on the pulse of the city. To counteract his status as a billionaire, he made campaign pledges to bring him more down to Earth. He would not accept the large annual salary of the Mayor, save for $1 every year. He would not have his own office at City Hall and neither would anyone else; instead everyone shared one huge room with a bunch of cubicles and shared work space. He would either ride his bike or public transportation to work every day. To even my surprise, he has kept these promises. He also promised to revamp the city's education system and while he has certainly not fulfilled all his goals there, he has shown enough progress that I am willing to give him another four years to try. And after 9/11, his business-sense saved the city from a potential economic collapse. He is not a politics-as-usual kind of guy and his unique style of governing is a perfect fit for the eclectic nature of New York City.

And in what ways, I wonder, do liberals have it bad under Bloomberg? For instance, I believe Mr. Sutton himself lives in Manhattan. Manhattan is doing well. VERY well. Maybe if he lived in one of the areas in the outer boroughs that all mayors tend to ignore, I could see his anger, but I'm sure life is well for Ward in his Manhattan studio apartment. And Mayor Bloomberg is actually more openly liberal than his Democratic opponent Fernando Ferrer. Ferrer has established that he will fight strongly for blacks and hispanics and that's great, but he hasn't said much else. He can't just be the race guy; we already have an Al Sharpton. Mayor Bloomberg is very much pro-choice and even took time to let reporters know he disagrees with John Robert's nomination for Chief Justice. Is Ferrer pro-choice? I don't know; he won't say. Mayor Bloomberg is a very outspoken supporter of gay rights and is for gay marriage. He even marches at gay pride events! Does Ferrer support gay rights? I don't know; he won't say. Mayor Bloomberg, while stating he remains loyal to the Republican party, has expressed criticism toward the handling of the Iraq war. How does Ferrer feel about the war? You guessed it... I don't know; he won't say. It's safe to say that, as a liberal, I have seen more evidence that Michael Bloomberg shares my belief than Fernando Ferrer does.

Sutton's biggest beef with Bloomberg, however, seems to be the fact that he agreed to let the Republicans hold their Convention here last summer. This seems like a really minor and random thing to critique a Mayor on. I certainly was not excited that Bush and his fellow neocon hypocrite Republicans were coming to New York to whore out 9/11 like a cheap Hell's Kitchen hooker and use our city's landscape to further their agenda of fear and bigotry. However, a part of me was glad that if they were gonna have their Convention anywhere, they had it here, in liberal New York City, where hundreds of thousands of protestors made it clear to likely confused delegates just what people thought of their beloved President. If they had the Convention in Houston or Topeka, the delegates and politicians would've been surrounded by people happy to see them, who would verbally fellate them all week long. Here, in New York, they were jeered at the whole time and their Convention surrounded by streets full of angry liberals who would make sure that, no matter what went on inside the Convention, they knew they were not welcome here. Seeing this made me proud. I work a block away and believe me, all of those delegates knew once and for all, whether Bush was a uniter or a divider.... Speaking of those protestors, Mayor Bloomberg and the tourism board started a program for that week called Peaceful Political Activists, welcoming said activists to the city. This program encouraged political activism and even allowed protestors to get savings all over the city at restaurants, hotels, and select stores. How many other cities, even in the blue states, would have had such a program? Think about that. Finally, yes, many many protestors were wrongfully arrested and basically had their Constitutional rights shit on for around 72 hours. But I doubt Bloomberg was aware of how rampant this was until after the fact. From what I hear, those decisions were made by people like Secret Service and NYPD cops had to follow orders. Many of them did so regretfully and did not enjoy their jobs that week. If it helps, those who were arrested successfully sued the city for reparations for these incidents.

So, in conclusion, I love Ward Sutton's work, but strongly disagree with his black-and-white take on the New York City mayoral race. The idea that liberals should not be allowed to vote for Republicans is stupid. Blind partisan support and people who vote along party lines are what is wrong with today's political system. I have complained here after the '04 election about people who voted for George Bush, even though he was clearly an incompetent buffoon, simply because they were Republicans and 'had to'. Well likewise, I can't support a Democrat voting for only Democrat candidates out of partisan obligation. Because they almost always share my beliefs and positions, I would say I end up voting Democrat 90% of the time anyway, but I won't do so if a Republican comes along who is a better candidate. Bloomberg is a better candidate. One of the complaints about the Republican party is that it's filled with these immoral, hypocritical, closeminded zealots... so why wouldn't liberals want to encourage the success of Republicans like Bloomberg who rally against this mold? I think we should. Any Mayor who waves a gay pride flag so comfortably as he does has my vote.

Note to Sutton: If you want to rip into NYC again, try the bureaucratic clusterfuck that is the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. Now that's a real political nightmare.