Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
• Dave Blazek's job is to make his readers forget life for a few seconds and laugh. Through his syndicated comic, Loose Parts, he offers quirky observations and absurd scenarios -- but lately, a pressing question has popped into his personal thought balloons as a daily gag cartoonist: Should he let "the new normal" of pandemic life in 2020 invade his strip's silly, sealed-off world? "I understand that the coronavirus -- and all that it has changed -- is tremendous fodder for ideas, and it certainly has the benefit of common experience that so many cartoons tap deep into," Blazek says. "But I just decided to not address it in Loose Parts." Instead, Blazek is among at least 70 cartoonists who plans to pay visual tribute to first responders and other essential workers in his print and online color art on Sunday. The coordinated "cartoon gratitude" campaign will feature a handful of icons embedded into the strips, to thank everyone from medical personnel (symbolized with a cartoon mask) and scientists (a microscope symbol) to teachers (an apple) and food workers (a fork). The idea began with Baby Blues co-creator Rick Kirkman, who contacted some of his fellow cartoonists about coordinating a campaign while sheltering in place. Kirkman hopes readers will get into the spirit of the "big thank-you search" for symbols, like an I Spy game. "Each time they find one," he says, "it's a little vibe of gratitude for the people it represents."
• It's not the first time that Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing has been freshly urgent, but Lee's 1989 film has again found blistering relevance in the wake of George Floyd's death. On Monday, Lee released a short film titled 3 Brothers connecting the death of Radio Raheem (played by Bill Nunn) in Do the Right Thing to the deaths of Floyd and Eric Garner. Floyd died last week after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee against his neck as he begged for air. Garner's dying plea of "I can't breathe" became a rallying cry against police brutality in 2014. Blazed across the screen is the question: "Will history stop repeating itself?" "I've seen this before. This is not new," Lee said Monday. "I was born in '57 so I was 11 years old when I saw the riots with Dr. King's assassination, later on with Rodney King and the Simi Valley verdict, Trayvon Martin and Ferguson [Mo.]." Lee said. As much as Lee sees history repeating itself, there's one element of the current unrest that strikes the filmmaker as new. "I've been very encouraged by the diversity of the protesters," Lee said. "That is the hope of this country, this diverse, younger generation of Americans who don't want to perpetuate the same [expletive] that their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents got caught up in. That's my hope."
A Section on 06/02/2020