“The Militarization of the Police Department – Deadly Farce,” an original painting by Richard Williams from “The 20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things of 2014″ in Mad magazine #531, published by DC Comics, February 2015.
Here’s the original, for comparison. And here’s a bit more about the artist and why he created the piece above for MAD Magazine.
Richard Williams on Norman Rockwell:
“For most people, he was the painter of ‘America,’” he added. “But even he said his vision was what he wanted ‘America’ to be. It was a mythical ‘America,’ a place where all people were decent, honest and full of good will. His work was full of gentle humor that made you feel a little better; even if you knew it wasn’t really true… you just wished it was. My parody of Rockwell’s painting simply says, ‘That myth is dead.’”
I think it’s relevant to add that even Norman Rockwell chose to leave his cushy job at the Saturday Evening Post because he wanted to make artwork that was more radical. The Post had rules that wouldn’t allow him to do artwork depicting black people as anything other than servants. The job paid really well and that was a huge reason he continued on. But he wanted change that and so he moved to Look magazine.
A lot of people know about the very first piece he did when he left the post which was the The Problem We All Live With which depicts Ruby Bridges walking to school under federal protection.
But I don’t think enough people know about Murder in Mississippi which depicts three real civil rights activists who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and sherriffs. The magazine ran the sketch instead of the finished piece because they felt it had a more striking statement to accompany the article. Norman Rockwell would finish that version after publication which is here
Rockwell’s legacy is sanitized because he decided to maintain his job at the Post for so long despite his frustrations with not being able to express himself. The civil rights movement was just his final straw to change what he could with the little time he had left. Look magazine received a lot of hate for Rockwell painting these as well.
Another favorite piece of mine is The Right to Know which depicts an integrated populace questioning their government. In 1968, the year of Vietnam and the year the Fair Housing Act only just got signed in months prior:
But I think it’s important to include the caption Rockwell originally wrote for the piece as well. I think it represents how a 74 year old Rockwell felt about the America he believed in and the people in it:
We are the governed, but we govern too. Assume our love of country, for it is only the simplest of self-love. Worry little about our strength, for we have our history to show for it. And because we are strong, there are others who have hope.
But watch us more closely from now on, for those of us who stand here mean to watch those we put in the seats of power. And listen to us, you who lead, for we are listening harder for the truth that you have not always offered us.
Your voice must be ours, and ours speaks of cities that are not safe, and of wars we do not want, of poor in a land of plenty, and of a world that will not take the shape our arms would give it.
We are not fierce, and the truth will not frighten us. Trust us, for we have given you our trust. We are the governed, remember, but we govern too.
taylor swift: she was the piss on the carpet / I was the floor’s poo / she would always be his number one / while I was the number two / little did we know / he would flush us both
white women who have lizzo blocked on twitter: I’m SOBBINHG. the METAPHORS. did she know she would define a generation with this? 😭😭😭
gayboys who own every switch pokemon game: agsshdjdkdakh no okay but why is this better than everything on the radio for the past ten years 😭 THIS ICONNNNN. EVERYBODY SHUT UP I’M IN MY FLUSHING ERA 📢📢
asian giant hornet in a japanese honeybee nest:
how it feels to be proven right with each new album she drops
honestly i have huge amounts of respect for greta thunberg for refusing to settle in for the lucrative career that was obviously being prepared for her as a toothless liberal icon
“Zines” (shortened from the word ‘magazine’) were a form of american doujinshi, popularized among anarchists, trotskyites, artists, and other liberal reactionary groups,
I live in Chicagoland and have family friends who are brown and undocumented. It’s not good here.
I want to specify that the US government ICE agents rapelled from Blackhawk helicopters to take over an apartment building, breaking open apartment doors in the middle of the night to drag barely-clad residents from their homes and detain everyone in UHaul trucks with the children zip-tied to each other. Regardless of citizenship.
There was too much traffic today, and an ICE agent deployed a tear gas canister in traffic in response.
This is not normal.
From the very bottom of my heart: what the ACTUAL FUCK
It’s not even near me yet, but where I live there’s lots of brown folks so they’ll come.
This is surreal. We’re being attacked by the United States.
we are surrounded by more computing power than we know what to do with, and every five years it is made obsolete by The New Development Wisdom being something like “every app needs to run in its own separate instance of chromium with every possible dependency loaded” or just “we don’t want to assume your phone could have less than 6GB ram anymore”
remembering the blogpost that’s about benchmarking how well modern websites load on low-end phones common in the global south, but the first half is just digging into how much disdain managers at webdev companies have for poor people and sometimes just anyone who doesn’t have an iphone. and this is who dictates what websites look like. wonderful
Here’s a simple way to find a Nexstar channel near you:
Remember the channel you watched Supernatural on?
Or Riverdale?
Or The Vampire Diaries + the spinoffs?
Or the Arrowverse shows?
That’s the channel.
In australia, we had this piece of shit shockjock radio host move to Melbourne and be awarded a HUYUUUGE pay packet in a brand new contract. This guy is a racist, sexist, misogynist, classist, piece of shiiiiit.
Well a melbourne community launched an an anti-advertising campaign against him. Listened to find out who was advertising during his show. Then called or emailed those companies to say, “Hey, are you aware that your product/service is being advertised on Kyle Sandilands show? Today, he said [heinous thing]. Is that what your company stands for? Is that what you want to be advertising next to?”
Folks—— advertisers left the radio station in DROVES.
We are talking multiple millions of dollars in advertising that was pulled from the radio station. The radio station is in an absolute crisis about it. Theres talk of firing Sandilands and just paying his contract out, because that will be cheaper than how much theyre hemmoraging from list ad revenue.
Targeting the advertisers works. It works fantastically.
you ever have situations that make you want to take people by the shoulders and go “you are not 15 any longer. this behavior is no longer quirky and cute. it is exhausting for you and everyone else to act like a teenager you haven’t been in a decade or longer. knock it the fuck off”
lots of ppl making this about adults who have interests they find cringe but let me be clear this is about emotional immaturity. idgaf if you’re 35 and like goku okay but can you have an adult conversation without making yourself the victim is the matter at hand here
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