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CSotD: Fun with Franchises

So this happened yesterday. You might have seen something about it on TV.

They don't really ask that question, but Christopher Weyant has the situation pretty well in hand, because voting in primaries is more tactical than voting in regular elections.

That's particularly true in states with open primaries, like New Hampshire, and it goes back a long time: I voted in a primary in Colorado back in 1974 against a particularly toxic candidate in hopes of keeping him off the general ballot in November.

And it can happen in the general: My vote for George McGovern in '72 was a vote against Richard Nixon. I'd been a Muskie supporter and so by then I didn't have a candidate to vote for. But it was clear who was going to win and I just hoped to trim the mandate a little. 

Though imagine how different our world would be if McGovern had won.

 

Steve Kelley (Creators) indicates that this was his first New Hampshire Primary. Someone should have taken him aside and assured him that, first of all, the NH Primary has always been deeply tactical and has always involved both independent and crossover voters.

And they might also have told him Will Rogers famous line, "I am not a member of any organized political party — I am a Democrat," though one would think it would be obvious anyway. And moreso in this case, since the national party was punishing us for following our state law by having our primary first.

The Democratic Party couldn't conspire to order a pizza.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

Kal Kallaugher

Jeff Danziger -- Counterpoint

Kallaugher posted his cartoon a few days before the primary; Danziger's appeared this morning, though likely drawn in advance, and both are predicated on a Trump victory. 

The difference is that, despite Haley's defeat, Kallaugher may be closer to the significance of the outcome, because she didn't lose by that much, all things considered, and could remain in the race as a gadfly. I think Danziger is dismissing her too early, and, though she's not likely to defeat Trump for the nomination, she may do an effective job of outlining his shortcomings.

Robert Reich is overly optimistic about the meaning of yesterday's primary, but I agree with him that Trump is a long way from sewing up the general election in November. 

While we wait to see, let's talk about something more pleasant.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day #2

Adam Zyglis

Jeff Stahler

I don't think the NFL is profiting at the moment from the fact that one of their biggest stars is dating one of music's biggest stars. TV revenues for football are already going through the roof at such a rate that the NFL is adding broadcast and streaming games, and, specifically, the Chiefs/Bills game set an audience record.

It wasn't because of people tuning in for a two-second shot of Trevor Kelsey's girlfriend in the stands.

And they sure weren't tuning in to see his big brother Jason rip off his shirt and bellow.

However, after he finished blocking the snoopy cameras from spying on little brother's GF, Jason went down into the stands below their skybox and lifted an eight-year-old Swifty up to the window so she could show Taylor her sign and get a smiling wave she will never forget.

It was a sweet gesture that went viral and the little girl ended up on the Today Show telling of her adventure.

It's a heart-melter anyway, and the sort of thing football fans would expect of the Kelce brothers, who are a class act, if a bit hirsute.

But Zyglis and Stahler could be right that, as irrelevant as the relationship may be to the game itself, it has an appeal to little girls who, not all that long ago, wouldn't have sports in their collection of interests. But times are changing and, for the past half century, girls have been putting their ponytails through the back of a baseball cap and tossing gym bags over their shoulders on the way to practice.

 

They didn't have commercials like this when I was a young impressionable kid. I wish they had. I wish our world had been more like that on a couple of levels.

As for football itself, I don't know that a lot girls will be attracted to playing the game, though there are already girls playing in high schools and women working as NFL referees, plus the NFL is actively promoting flag football, which will be an event at this year's Pro Bowl. They even had a brief exhibition flag game between two girls' champion teams at halftime of the Chiefs/Bills game. But it would be nice if they were like the girl in Stahler's cartoon and could spend an afternoon watching with dad.

The world contains a lot of things that simply never occurred to us.

 

By some sort of contrast, this is the world I grew up in. Vintage Buz Sawyer (KFS) is at the start of a new adventure, with Buz investigating suspected Russian spies checking out the new Polaris submarines.

Roy Crane was a good artist and terrific storyteller, but he was also very much a Cold War warrior who alternated light adventure stories with more political material like this. He wasn't alone; at roughly the same time, Efrem Zimbalist Jr was chummy with J. Edgar Hoover and his TV show, the FBI, was very positive about the work of J. Edgar and his people, who checked each episode before broadcast.

Not sure how effective it was, given the number of Republican leaders who grew up when I did, presumably read the same comics and watched the same shows, but are now on the side of the Russians in the Great Game.

 

For that matter, we all grew up watching The Untouchables, and Dave Whamond doesn't need to exaggerate to make his point: Donald Trump really did compare himself favorably to "the great Al Capone" and honestly was pleased to cite Sammy the Bull as a character witness.

Well, it's hard to predict how kids are going to turn out, which was the topic of the latest Sufi Comics, a source of wisdom I look forward to:
That last panel is a good example of Sufi wisdom: It sounds good but, like a lot of simple solutions, can be very hard to put into practice.

Still, we do what we can.

 

CSotD: Year-End Clean Up

There's a lot of Year-End and New Year's material this weekend, most of it pretty much the same, so I went instead to Australia for Jess Harwood's take on the changeover, which I heartily endorse. Not only are the most well-adjusted happy people I know dogs, but nearly everyone I know in three dimensions is someone I've met at the dog park.

I intend to continue to debate big, important things and I certainly intend to vote, but I particularly intend to hang out with my dog and her friends and their humans.

And to go by the prayer of St. Francis to change what I can change, bear what I cannot change, and attempt to discern the difference, not because he was the patron saint of animals but because he was a good stoic.

 

The Nikki Haley cartoons are all over the place this morning, but I did all that yesterday and I believe both Bob Dylan and Satchel Paige about not looking back.

On the other hand, one shouldn't be too rigid and when Steve Brodner manages to drag both Margaret Mitchell and Carol Burnett into the debate, I'm not inclined to pretend he didn't.

This is a lovely way to say that, while she's loyal to her Confederate roots, she's also completely ridiculous. And that those two factors seem perfectly compatible.

 

I'm also not passing along "best of" pieces from overseas because so much of their best work for the past year was about their own national news.

So don't look at Ben Jennings' piece because you won't recognize everyone in it.

Or just look at the ones you do recognize.

Or dig the whole thing because it's so well done.

Your call.

 

I'm also skipping all the cliched "Old 2023 and Baby 2024" cartoons, except that I'm passing along Jeff Danziger (Counterpoint)'s because he's managed to rise above the usual and make it not only relevant but even touching.

It sums up my overall attitude that I know I can't do much to change things, but I can't just sit back and watch, either.

And I'm sorry if you think I'm antisemitic because I don't approve of firing on clearly marked UN relief vehicles driving negotiated routes or picking off Christian women in churchyards or killing people who wave white flags and cry out for help in your own language.

 

If you want a balanced look at what's happening in Gaza, Ann Telnaes has collated the work of two cartoonists there, one Israeli and one Palestinian, and here's a link to her thoughtful, on-the-spot coverage.

It's very much worth your while and I've used a gift link so you needn't fret over the WashPo's paywall. Go have a look.

 

We'll feature another political/New Year's piece, this from Lalo Alcaraz at La Cucaracha (AMS), and, like Danziger, he's managed to take the Baby New Year cliche and turn it into something relevant and thought-provoking. 

I'd note, BTW, that for all the rightwing bloviating about an open border, the Biden administration has indeed been in negotiations to tighten things up. But Mexican president Lopez-Obrador suggested we extend some aid and recognition to Cuba and Venezuela in particular and Central America in general so that people might be better able to stay home.

Which would depend on a Republican majority that claims they want to get a handle on this issue, but seems more fixated on walls and punishment than on effective cures.

 

And a tip of the hat to Tom the Dancing Bug for pointing out that the first step to solving problems is to face them, which is why we haven't solved all that many problems in this session of Congress.

It's been hard for the past several months for cartoonists who rely on exaggeration and satire, because the Freedom Caucus is beyond either, but Ruben Bolling scores here. It would be nice if, in the coming year, our legislators could quit competing to be more absurd than the cartoonists.

But I ain't gonna stand on one foot waiting for that to happen.

 

Man Overboard brings us back to this past week's holiday with a reminder of why it's doubtful policy to lie to your children. 

It's entirely possible to take a Jeffersonian view of God and Jesus and such, admitting you don't know everything and accepting certain aspects of the story as folklore while still accepting the moral teachings. But saying so in public can get you in plenty of trouble, because there are a lot of people who live in a dual reality in which looking up reveals stars and galaxies on the one hand, and angels with harps on the other.

And who want to embed that quality in our government.

 

When I was a kid, we had a book of stories about saints, and, in the introduction, the author explained that some of the stories were of things that didn't actually happen, but the point was that they could have happened, if God had wanted them to.

Which I bring up in connection with this xkcd because one of the more folkloric saints was Patrick, who certainly did a lot of preaching and monastery-establishing in Ireland but didn't actually drive out the snakes. Though he would have, if God had wanted him to.

But when I read this cartoon this morning, it occurred to me that Iceland probably popped up out of the ocean relatively late in the game, just as Ireland did. So I did some Googling and, sure enough, there are no snakes in Iceland, either. 

Though I suppose there would be, if God had wanted them to be there.

FWIW, my favorite folkloric story about Padraig is that he was baptizing one of Ireland's Norse immigrants and stuck his crozier in the ground to free up his hands, after which he realized he'd jammed it through the fellow's foot. He apologized profusely, but the Viking said it was okay and that he had just assumed it was part of the ceremony.

Which is more believable than the stuff about snakes.

 

Finally today, Cornered (AMS) offers a year-end reflection on life and mortality and suchlike.

Mostly, it offers a prompt for a good song from a truly great singer and composer who once worked with my second-favorite Richard Thompson.

 

CSotD: Knaves, fools and dropped balls

This first bit of folly may be yours.

Kirk Walters offers a variation on a familiar end-of-December theme: The crush of Christmas bills that arrive in the new year.

But unike Ramadan or Hannukah, Christmas doesn't wander around the calendar and pop up at unexpected times. It's always December 25 and New Year's is always January 1 and as the man said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, won't get fooled again." Or something.

That Walters builds the crushing ball out of credit cards is appropriate, because a few generations ago, it was much harder to spend what you didn't have. You could put things on layaway, but that only saved them for you in a storeroom. You still had to come up with the money before you could take them home and put them under the tree.

Banks also used to have Christmas Clubs, where you deposited a small amount each week so that, by the holidays, you had enough saved up for presents. If they still offer this service, they don't promote it like they used to. (Ignoring the fact that you always had the option of saving in a regular account, a piggy bank or a coffee can. But the Christmas Club added a sense of obligation, I suppose.)

But the advent (no pun intended) of credit cards in the past century made it easier to spend money you didn't have and, in fact, never really would have. A benefit for consumers but a much larger benefit for merchants and banks.

Mencken said "No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

Or, one might add, their ability to budget. And while "It's a Wonderful Life" is uplifting and all, you really can't count on your friends and neighbors pitching in to bail you out when things go cattywumpus. 

That's the microeconomics point of view. The macro view is a little more complex:

Lisa Benson (Counterpoint) is apparently of the opinion that Joe Biden is lying about the economy. There are some economists who are predicting a real recession in 2024, but they're a distinct minority, and a reminder of the old wisecrack that, if you laid every economist in the country end to end, they wouldn't reach a conclusion.

The consensus is that the economy is doing pretty well, certainly better than expected. There could be a slight shudder in the New Year, in part because there always is and in part because we're still shaking out from the pandemic and from global inflation. But very few experts are concerned and there is, if not a giddy sense of anticipation, at least a calm attitude towards the year ahead.

Oh, and as most of the US looks out at bare ground this Christmas, the Weather Channel's incoming major system is barely predicted to deposit enough snow to cover the ground.

If you want to find a problem with the economy, you might check with your local ski hill:

I don't know that "the weather's fine," but around here it's only a slight drizzle, and we don't have to shovel that.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

Mike Luckovich

Marc Murphy

Luckovich gets a laugh out of Nikki Halley's absurd answer to the question of what caused the Civil War, while Murphy is horrified at her ignorant dismissal of the "peculiar institution" over which 750,000 Americans died and for which countless men, women and children suffered.

It was a question she should have been able to swat over the centerfield wall for a home run. As has been said by her critics, it's not a matter of opinion: South Carolina gave the preservation of slavery as the first and foremost reason for their secession, and teaching that is now mandated in their school curricula.

Halley is now complaining that the questioner was a Democrat intending to set her up, but, first of all, if she becomes president, she'll meet all sorts of Democrats, not just on Capitol Hill but everywhere in America. Second, it might have been a "gotcha" question, but the easy, obvious answer would have earned her points with the opposition. As it is, her answer confirmed the opinion that the Party of Lincoln has been transformed into a white supremacist organization.

The truly bizarre part being that there was some hope that Halley would leapfrog over Trump and offer voters a conservative-but-not-insane candidate in November.

She not only damaged her chance of overtaking him, but the hope that she'd prove more acceptable if she did.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day #2

Al Goodwyn -- Creators

Chip Bok -- Creators

The posters used to say "War is good business: Invest your son!" but these days, people who want wider wars can send both their sons and daughters to the battlefield.

If not in Europe after Kyev falls, perhaps we can return to the Middle East for a return engagement there.

Meanwhile, the idea that the US is doing nothing about Houthi attacks on merchant shipping in the Red Sea requires staying away from the news entirely, while saying that we're not doing enough seems like a desire to see more open warfare involving American troops.

There are experts who want the US to step it up, but that's a matter of going from knocking down rockets to hitting launch sites, and we're about an inch away from that escalation.

But just as sending a few troops over to topple the Taliban or to root out Saddam was not as easy as the chickenhawks assumed it would be, the options in this case, with its roots in the Israel/Hamas violence, are equally tangled and perilous.

And, BTW, we did hit back at Iranian forces. I know: Details, details.

But to suggest that we're doing nothing is not simply ignorant but an insult to the American troops already engaged. 

 

But, gosh golly, it's still Christmas time, and Tim Campbell (Counterpoint) reminds us that we should continue to celebrate our Lord's birthday in the proper mood for which our leader, a stable genius, has provided a good, Christian example in which I think he was quoting his favorite book of the Bible, Galoshes 2.

It truly is a Wonderful Life!

 

 

CSotD Part MMMXC -- A New Beginning

Adjust your bookmark, because the blog is moving in order to become a feature on The Daily Cartoonist, a site newly re-energized with the addition of DD Degg, whom some of you will know from rec.arts.comics.strips.

I hope you'll stick with the shift. I'm going to continue to blog daily and the only major change should be more exposure and more readers.

Meanwhile, in the interests of transparency, it will, unless it goes delightfully viral, replace and slightly surpass my Amazon link income, but I still have a couple of dozen coffee mugs, so please don't be shy. (Details above)

And I'll see you over there, every morning by 9 Eastern.

 

A potpourri of the unneeded

My town has been replacing an outmoded sewer system, which will improve the cleanliness of the Connecticut River but has played hob with trying to get from one place to another, since it involves very large pipes under very important streets. 

This has given me many opportunities not only to contemplate how they could have done it better but the times I've had to listen to people go on and on about projects and particular jobs that could have been done better. Like the esteemed and very important J. Barnard Pillsbury in today's Barney & Clyde, their expertise comes mainly from not knowing how the job works.

I don't know how far back the term "sidewalk superintendent" goes, but the more visible your work, the more you can count on getting advice from people who don't, as Clyde suggests, explain all the experience they have had doing your job.

So they complain about "shovel leaners," which might mean they've never used a shovel and honestly think you can keep it up from 8 to 5 with only a half-hour break for lunch, or they can't see that the guys are waiting for the pipefitter in the bottom of the trench to finish his specialized job so they can fill in the trench. 

And that pipefitter then has to stand around waiting for the next chance to do his job because you can't just drop people off the clock and send them home for the moments they aren't needed.

Construction isn't the only place you can watch and comment, though it's one of the most clear-cut examples.

Meanwhile, one of my favorite things about being a business reporter was getting to tour factories and get the inside skinny on how they do things, especially if you were doing it with someone like Susan Collins or Gerry Ferraro, who swung enough weight that, if they wanted to stop and get a particular worker's view on how things were going, well, that's what we did.

Sen.Collins, by the way, grew up in Caribou, Maine, as the daughter of a prominent family, but it was one that owned a building supply company, which added a blue-collar tone to her POV, while, like all the other kids in Aroostook back before automation took over, her school shut down during the potato harvest and everyone went out and got some dirt under their nails quite literally.

She didn't offer a lot of advice on factory tours, but she sure asked some interesting questions.

 

 
Pajama Diaries hits on an issue very much alive (no pun intended) for people of my generation in a sort of sandwich way -- we're coping with our own parents' mortality, and starting to consider sparing our kids the same process.

It starts with downsizing. I've been empty-nested for decades and currently have a livingroom, bedroom, kitchen and bath, so there won't be a lot of furniture.

Most of what my kids will have to sort through is old clippings. If I were some literary tyro, the researchers would want it all for their doctorates but I suspect the outcome in my case is that a half dozen major pieces will remain for great-grandchildren to puzzle over and the rest needs to go.

And my progeny can be grateful that the old man was a writer and not a sculptor.

  

Things to read that I didn't write

Speaking of the boxes of clips I've got under my bed, this Graeme MacKay panel is a commentary on recycling limitations, and, while it is specific to the Hamilton, ON, area, what he describes is happening in a lot of places.

Recycling used to be kind of complex and not many people did it, and then it got super-easy and everyone was doing it and now a lot of places are re-thinking whether "easy" was an approach that works.

It's not plain to me whether China's rejection of dubious recyclables is true economic necessity or part of the gathering trade war, but even before that, I heard pushback on no-sort recycling.

To start with, you can't recycle pizza boxes because they're greasy, and that's just the tip of the list of things you shouldn't put in the rollout bin. But even people who know that can accidentally leave a little beer in the bottom of bottle, the spillage of which will contaminate any paper or cardboard and make it unusable.

And, if you know all that, it doesn't matter because your neighbor doesn't, so his unsorted recyclables will make yours unusable.

Having to rinse things out, remove labels and check the numbers on the bottoms of the plastic things was a pain in the ass that meant only a small number of people bothered. But the stuff they recycled could be recycled.

We're close to a situation where we're just sending out two garbage trucks, one that knows it's full of garbage and one that pretends it isn't.

MacKay lays it out in more detail. As for the cartoon, I love the phrase "feel-good social engineering," and I support recycling, except for the extent to which it destroys my faith in the trainability of hairless apes.

 

 Plus this:

I featured this Bizarro the other day, and in his current weekly wrap-up, Wayno goes into some detail about its inspiration.

I don't know what the second album I bought was, but the first was the Yardbirds' "For Your Love," in 1965, and I bought "Sgt. Pepper" along with "Fresh Cream" and "Absolutely Free," on my way to college, six months before "We're Only In It For the Money" was released.

So I'm not any hipper than Wayno, just a little older. 

Anyway, he's right that The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny is probably not the moment of zen to unload upon an unprepared audience, and I like his alternate offering which does not require familiarity with Kafka.

And, being older, here's something from my first album, which does not require familiarity with Eric Clapton, but it's how we first met him (and Jeff Beck):

 

Picking up the pieces

So yesterday's debacle included a crash that lost two hours of work and then, when I started up again, some second wave of technical gremlins that brought things to a quick exit because I had a meeting to get to.

"Gremlins," that is, not to be confused with "Femlins," one of whom appears in Andy Marlette's latest cartoon.

I've been so tied up with work for the last few days that I can't comment on this latest thing, except that if the tapes don't show that he actually shot someone on Fifth Avenue, I can't imagine how they'll derail Trump at this stage, since -- as far as I know -- he's never denied the payments under oath, so there's no perjury, and revealing that Donald Trump is a liar is, well, not much of a revelation.

Nor is revealing that he's an adulterer or a tomcat or whatever. Keep it straight, folks: The Nixon tapes tied him to a criminal conspiracy. Clinton was not impeached for adultery but for lying about it under oath. Neither of these apply here.

Marlette has it right: It's an embarrassment.

But even that has to be understood in light of the President's inability to be embarrassed. 

We've got a lot of questions yet to be answered, but I think we all know the answer to "At long last, have you no sense of shame?"

Next question?

What I had realized before I hit the road and got busy was that Trump was becoming hard to satirize because not only is he shameless, but he has been operating at a level of erratic, inexplicable malfunction that you can't really exaggerate for comic effect.

Dan Perkin's remark (worth reading again) that, rather than a source of constant inspiration, Trump is like asking for a glass of water and getting hit in the face with a fire hose is often quoted, but I think Mike Luckovich's current lineup of cartoons he didn't bother drawing illustrates the actual difficulty.

First of all, how do you exaggerate it? And, second, how do you find new ways to attack the same, repeated lies, distortions, cruel attacks, nonsensical declarations and relentless flow of folly?

 

As Gary Varvel suggests, there is a ridiculous element to the carny-barker cries of "Breaking News!" with which Wolf Blitzer lures viewers into his tent, and, when everything is an emergency, people eventually decide nothing is, and they tune out.

And yet you can't simply go silent or declare that this is "the new normal" or go back and site other low moments to justify what is happening.

To put that fire hose metaphor into a more specific usage, the fact that we've seen buildings burn in the past is no reason not to fight the fire in front of us. 

The challenge for editorial cartoonists is to continue to keep the public informed without either losing credibility with unwarranted panic or lose their attention with a relentless drumbeat that fades into the ambient noise of our lives.

 

However, it's not impossible to make sharp points, and Matt Davies offers a view of that private conversation. I think the Congressional effort to subpoena the interpreters is folly, though I'd love to know what they discussed. On the other hand, I think that, if he doesn't have the specific transcript, Davies has captured the process.

 

And Luckovich, in turn, points to the reason Trump is able to get away with being a Russian stooge. As inconceivable as it is for Trump to buddy up to Putin, it's even moreso for the Republicans, supposedly the voice for American conservatives, to not simply ignore his antics but to justify and enable them.

Trump at least has the double excuse that he's an amateur and so can be flummoxed by Putin's attention, as well as the darker excuse of possible financial tangles or even that semi-mythical pee tape, to explain why he is so loyal to the Russians.

But you have to wonder if he somehow found a tape of the entire Republican party cavorting with hookers in a Moscow hotel?

What explains the fact that they continue to actively support this incompetent, disloyal nitwit?

 

Well, Nate Beeler is no bleeding liberal, and he seems to be willing to break ranks with those who pretend to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

 

Nor is Scott Stantis a leftist by any definition, and he's willing to confront the evidence that seems to add credence, if not specifically confirm, long-bubbling rumors of Russians channeling money to Republicans through the NRA.

As said before, November is going to tell us a lot. The Republican leadership can count on the unswerving loyalty of the Deplorables, but it's a very open and interesting question as to how big a portion of the electorate those people actually represent, and you won't get an answer by only meeting the public at Deplorable rallies.

We'll see.

People get the government they deserve, and we're in "Fool me once" territory.

 

Meanwhile, in less fraught matters: And on a slightly related topic, Jimmy Margulies offers this take on his former governor, Chris Christie's, forthcoming book. 

Not that we expect politicians' memoirs to be anything other than self-serving, of course, and, whether or not Christie has a sense of shame, I'm not sure many people outside the NYC/NJ Metro area give a damn about him, or -- except during his brief flail at the presidency -- ever did except as a source of amusement.

And it's fitting that, whatever the merits of his autobiography, the man has decided upon an irresistible straightline for a title. 

My response being, "We thought you had."

 

 Plus this:

This F Minus would have run yesterday if not for the gremlins, and I'm off to a workshop now where one of the things I'll tell my young writers is that not every book and movie contains a message.

Much of my mentoring is in getting them to write for themselves and their young readers, after years of being taught to write for the teacher.

Teachers want you to find messages. Other kids want to know if the book or movie was any good.

We once had an issue in which we reviewed an ice show and a movie both of which were called "Dream Big."

I'm trying to teach them to wake up.

Here's all the message you need:

Friday Funnies

Bizarro got a laff the other day, but then it became strikingly relevant as I hit the road and, as I went through airports realized how many people have, indeed, been transformed into Bros.

It's a sort of uniform, and it goes beyond the backwards ball cap and goatee. Wayno has captured it quite well, in fact. 

It's not the only uniform out there. I also see a lot of the extended goatee of the white-supremacist/militant-libertarian, and I have also begun to notice Old Duffers.

The Old Duffers strike me in particular because they're not that much older than I am anymore and I wonder where they find clothes.

Perhaps there's a store called "Old Duffer"in the mall where they sell the stuff.

Though maybe I don't have to worry about it, this being one of those things where, yes, you just wake up one morning and find that it has happened.

This Heart of the City, in which a small girl eats paste mixed with tomato sauce, brought back a funny memory. 

I'm no Mrs. Angelini, but I do know how to fix Ragu on short notice and I certainly never foisted any canned pasta on my kids. But one day when the boys were in junior high and high school, we were shopping and they said they wanted some Franco-American. 

There was a brief "the hell you do" conversation, but the stuff was about 50 cents a can, so I let them each pick out two cans. 

When we got home, they each dug into their first choices. And then a few months later, we dropped the other two cans into a Food Drive bin. 

Sometimes the best way to win an argument is to give in.

Both boys today are excellent cooks.

 

And I hadn't planned on such a short blog but my site has just gone cattywumpus and I've got to get ready for a day of work here in Denver, so I'll have to call it a day and we'll pick up on this theme tomorrow, the good lord willin' and the software havin' restored itself.

The Critics Raved

Kevin Siers proves that you can breathe life into any tired trope if you are clever and the facts align.

The Pinocchio gag may, like Hitler references, have been rolled out too early and used too often, beaten into cliche before we realized how much we were going to need it. Or maybe it's just that calling someone a Pinocchio because he's been caught in a lie is tired to begin with.

However, you can't be afraid to reach for the right gag at the right moment, and the would/wouldn't pun, combined with Pinocchio's wish to be a real little boy instead of one made of wood, makes this irresistable, and the liar aspect of the story adds to the commentary instead of forming its center.

That is, if Pinocchio weren't remembered as a liar, the story of the puppet who wanted to be real would not be enough here. And we've all seen Pinocchio the liar as commentary far too often. But the blend works really well.

 

Almost at the opposite end of the wit scale is RJ Matson's commentary, which manages to be silly and well-conceived at once. Once again, the idea is familiar: Rewriting the slogan on a MAGA cap.

But had he done a Do Make Don't Make gag, it would fall flat, because it's not a DMAGA cap and, to work, you have to play with what you have been given. 

That might cause a cartoonist to back away, because there's no negative form of "Make." But, then again, Trump's defense of his alleged "misstatement" is so shallow and unbelievable that a ridiculous, made-up word is a good way to express not just doubt but rejection of an equally silly attempt to explain away what we all saw.

 

Clay Jones makes another joke about changing a positive to a negative, but it works on another level, because it's more about what we should have heard and what we've come to realize.

People have talked about "treason" and "high crimes and misdemeanors," but I don't think we're there yet, at least not based on the verified accusations. If he handed over the American diplomats Putin would like to question,we might be closer, but, for now, we seem more mired in "dereliction of duty," which is certainly as impeachable as lying about a blow job but, then again, that impeachment failed, so it's hardly a model.

It's that moment in "All the President's Men" when the wise old editor throws cold water on eager young reporters.

It's not that they aren't on the right track. They just don't have it.

Yet.

 

The question before us is why Trump seems so beholden to Putin that he would make such an ass of himself and turn his back on our traditional allies while embracing a tyrant. Mike Marland offers a humorous suggestion, or, at least, one that will remain a joke until someone produces the pee tape, if it exists.

Several things in that bundle of data have panned out, but the infamous pee tape remains pure conjecture and will likely remain so. If it exists, it's almost certainly being held as the ace in the hole, to be played only when absolutely needed, and, at least for now, confusion seems more useful to our enemies than an actual impeachment.

And Tom the Dancing Bug has a longer cartoon about the confusion caused by Trump's bald-faced lies, which, yes, do seem like the lies we tell, and eagerly stretch to believe, in a failing marriage. Go read the rest here.

I think Ann Telnaes gets down to what Putin really has hanging over Trump's head, because, even without knowing everything the investigators know, it's becoming clear that the tangle of business dealings has left the Trumplings vulnerable.

Which leaves the fascinating question of how much Papa Strompf cares about his kids, because his willingness to throw others under the bus in order to save his own skin has never been tested quite to that degree. On the other hand, his level of rank narcissism has also never been fully probed.

Another question being can the kids fall without taking down the old man?

It's an interesting question. If I were one of the kids, I'd be particularly interested, because, sheltered and pampered as they may have been, they're old enough to know who they're dealing with. If nothing else, they have their mother Ivana's example to ponder.

 

All of which leaves us here, as shown by Clay Bennett. 

And, of course, even the release of Mueller's report will yield a chorus of "Did Not!" and "Fake News!" from Trump loyalists. One question is how many of them there really are.

If you take out the ones who were simply voting against Hillary, the ones who expected him to lose but wanted a strong showing to shake up the system and those who wanted him at the time but have since recanted, it may not be a huge number.

Another question is how much do his allies in Congress have invested in retaining power, and how far are they willing to dive into muck in order to preserve it?

Again, the mid-term elections will tell the story and perhaps moreso than anything Mueller reveals, in a world in which nobody knows what truth is anymore.

 

Meanwhile, in lieu of a musical moment of zen,
here's a podcast of yesterdays 1A radio show in which Rob Rogers, Ann Telnaes, Pat Bagley and Scott Stantis had a 47 minute discussion of editorial cartooning in the current atmosphere. 1A is one of the brighter new shows at NPR and it's worth a listen.

 

 

“Our relationship has never been worse than it is now.”

Donald Trump turned 16 in June, 1962, a few months before the Cuban Missile Crisis in October. He was a junior in high school.

 I was not quite 13 and in the eighth grade, and I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis as well as the Crisis in Berlin and several other things that made our relationship with the Soviet Union more than a bit fraught at the time. I even remember when Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Russia in 1960. 

But, even if I didn't, it was on the tests New York State students had to take, even the ones in military school.

I would feel foolish saying that our relationship with the Russians is worse now that it was then.

Nobody who was in junior high or older could possibly believe such a thing, unless he tried very, very hard. Or was astonishingly ignorant.

Perhaps the people who were shouting for Obama to release his academic records should demand to have a look at the report card of a man who doesn't know there once was a Cuban Missile Crisis, or any of a number of other dangerous, brink-defying events back then.

Because we sure had plenty of them.

It was in all the newspapers, and Gib Crockett didn't have room to draw everything. In Southeast Asia, the French and Viet Minh were going at each other and Laos was trying to remain neutral, while over here, Cuba was being armed by their friends in the Soviet Union, and in Europe there was a crisis in Berlin, where the wall was a year old and the Soviets wanted the Allies out. Down south, Argentina had just had a coup and, in our own backyard, Oxford, Mississippi was in the midst of integrating Ole Miss, with Gov. Ross Barnett facing legal action for having impeded the process, and George Wallace ready to step up for his turn at obstructing justice in Alabama.

Which still doesn't bring in the Congo or Algeria nor does it include the fact that it had been a year and a half since the Bay of Pigs invasion, but we were still negotiating to free more than 1,000 men captured in the misadventure, which Bill Mauldin suggests was a source of amusement for Castro.

Berlin was seeing people scale the Wall and be shot, or tunnel under it, while the tension in that divided city, as Bill Crawford suggested, was building to a serious state, with Khruschev and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrei Gromyko, ratcheting things up, testing America's young president.

There was talk of a summit, and JFK met with Gromyko in a preliminary conversation. Khruschev was ready, Herblock said, reckoning back to the UN tantrum in 1960.

And Mauldin recalled a different tantrum, from 1959, when, on a visit to California, he was barred from Disneyland for security reasons. “And I say, I would very much like to go and see Disneyland. But then, we cannot guarantee your security, they say. Then what must I do? Commit suicide? What is it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken hold of the place that can destroy me?” 

None of which references things like China and India getting into a shooting war, in which Nehru was forced to replace Indian Defense Minister Krishna Menon.

Or Castro reaching out to Ahmed Ben Bella, the leader of Algeria, newly independent after a protracted guerrilla war against France. (France was having a bad decade. They lost Indochina as well.)

And, as Rube Goldberg noted, the fear of Castro's example inspiring trouble throughout Latin America was seen as a clear and present danger.

Meanwhile, though we worried about Communist takeovers in our hemisphere, Eisenhower had also sent the first US troops to Vietnam and the process was being ramped up under Kennedy. Bill Mauldin was not impressed.

But when President Kennedy summoned all hands to Washington and scheduled a prime-time address to the nation, papers quickly sprang into action with maps and explainers about the medium-range Soviet missiles that air surveillance had discovered. Besides aerial photographs of the missile sites, they provided maps showing the range of Cuban missiles.

Kennedy threw a naval blockade around the island and needed only to stop a few ships before it was taken seriously, whereupon some Russian ships withdrew rather than press the issue.

It was clear, as Herblock noted, that Kennedy, however much he'd had his nose bloodied at the Bay of Pigs, was neither going to back down nor negotiate a way in which the missiles might remain.

And that included turning a deaf ear to Castro's insistence that Guantanamo be a trading chip in whatever agreement might be reached.

(This Mauldin panel has turned up in some "best of" collections and commentaries on the Crisis.)

Bill Crawford observed that Kennedy's firm response was putting Khruschev on the spot.

And, though elections were less than a month away, attention had turned to a fundamental question in a country that was not particular divided at the moment.

And Khruschev blinked.

And Kennedy ran off with the win.

Castro's dream of being a big man in the Western Hemisphere faded

And Mauldin gave him one last kick in the pants.

However -- and this is a critically important coda to the Missile Crisis -- Mauldin also observed that solving that problem was not the end of the entire matter, and that, regardless of how some President might view things a half century later, it didn't mean that our relationship with Russia was now hunky-dory.

Perhaps that pliable, uneducated president should take a lesson about what the Russians do with puppets that are no longer amusing.

Someone said the President's staff had given him 100 pages of briefing notes before his summit with Putin, to which my response is, "Well, there's your problem right there."

Shit, I wouldn't have read 100 pages of briefing notes, and I know how.

Next time, sing him a little song. 

 

Putin's Poodle

Most fair-minded observers anticipated bromance.

Clay Bennett posted this one a few days ago, which didn't seem much of a shocking prediction but mostly made me wonder when young dorm-dwellers switched from a tie to a sock as a sign that there was a romantic event going on that should not be interrupted.

Probably when most dorm-dwellers stopped owning ties, I suppose.

In any case, there were plenty of cartoonists expecting canoodling at the very least. Peter Schrank was out front with an early version of a number of balloon references (we'll get back to that) and also was firm in his analysis of the relationship, not so much a bromance but, as I note in the headline, subservience.

Historic Note: "So-and-so's Poodle" has come into common parlance for a toady, but, as far as I know, began as "Nasser's Poodle," a reference to Anwar Sadat, a slam not only at his subservience to Nasser but a reference to his hair and thus his black African origins.

However, it remains a good term even without the racist insult, given that poodles are generally seen as prancing little dandies of no particular value as hunters or protection. (Yes, I know they were originally bred as retrievers. A long time ago. Maybe that's part of it, too.)

In any case, Schrank not only references the Trump Baby balloon but immediately picked up on the absurdity of Trump's confident statement going into the summit. I'm more inclined to salute his creativity than his insight, however, as the statement stood out to nearly everyone.

Except for Trump's poodles.

 

Gary Varvel  also anticipated the summit, and, given his recent writing about the president, likely more specifically than he expected, though, even in that column, he expresses reservations over the Russian probe.

This cartoon appeared in advance of the press conference, but, if it was originally a whatabout, it turned out to mirror the bizarre, unresponsive answer Trump gave to a question about Russian meddling, in which he never addressed that issue, but, instead, rambled on about missing servers and, yes, her emails.

It seemed to raise more questions about his psychological stability than his patriotism.

One more pre-summit cartoon, this one by Dwane Powell, suggested that Trump envies Putin's tyrannical power, which would be a liberal slam if Trump himself had not so often expressed his desire, and even his intention, to sue or jail journalists who insulted him, who praised white supremacists and who openly endorsed a policy of caging children as hostages to frighten aliens out of seeking to enter the United States, even if they did so legally.

As Steve Brodner says in this post-summit cartoon, it suggests that Trump has never read, and certainly has no understanding of, the document he swore to "preserve, protect and uphold."

Trump is not the first president to resent and dislike the press, certainly. Even Jefferson, who wrote so eloquently about the importance of a free press in keeping the public engaged and updated, hated not just the Sally Hemmings coverage but a lot of other oppositional writings about him.

But one of the first things he did as president was to sign repeal of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which, as the Library of Congress summary says, "increased the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to fourteen years, authorized the president to imprison or deport aliens considered 'dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States' and restricted speech critical of the government."

John Adams had, at least, the excuse of having come out of a bitter, divisive and bloody revolution, only the second head of a nation still finding its feet. 

Even at the time, that LOC page notes, it was not universally hailed, with Madison writing to Jefferson that "The Alien bill proposed in the Senate is a monster that must forever disgrace its parents. I should not have supposed it possible that such an one could have been engendered in either House, & still persuade myself, that it cannot possibly be fathered by both."

Well, I'm sure Trump never heard of it anyway, given his, to use the word used by former CIA Director John Brennan, "imbecilic" statements yesterday.

"Our relationship has never been worse"?

He's certainly old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis or any of the Berlin crises; apparently he's not bright enough.

No surprise: His grasp of American history and government is appallingly non-existent.

 

But he should at least be able to grasp this: A photo array of journalists who have disappeared or been murdered during the reign of his buddy.

 

Then again, as Mike Luckovich notes, Putin was only doing what Putin does, and what all great deal-makers do: Take whatever they are willing to give you.

 

And, as Pat Bagley observes, Trump was willing to give plenty.

Wouldn't you like to see one of these legislators, when somebody disrespects our Constitution, say, "Get that son of a bitch out of the White House right now, out, he's fired. He's fired!"

 

Well, don't hold your breath, because Darrin Bell goes back to the very beginning of a moment I've cited several times.

I remember the slow-motion chase, and feeling sad that OJ Simpson was soon to be pulled over and arrested, at which point he would confess his crime and be put in prison for life, which I think was the response of a lot of people who had admired him, as a football player, as a comic foil or simply as a Hertz Rent-A-Car spokesman.

Instead, of course, he simply brazened it out, denied the obvious and persuaded a jury to let him walk free.

Not something I want to see again, certainly not in our government.

But here we are.

Assume nothing.

 

Except, perhaps, that, as Bill Bramhall suggests, there was at least one time when Dear Leader told us the absolute truth.

Stay tuned.

And, Nick Anderson warns, be afraid.