... if you can keep it

 

I'm going to start with Scott Stantis's take on Scalia, in large part because it cracked me up.

But it mostly cracked me up because he nailed Scalia with a level of mockery that doesn't diminish the frightening fury behind the pair of childish, petulant temper tantrums His Honor let loose in his emotion-laded dissents.

Granted, Scalia dangled some inviting bait, with his invitation to ask a hippie about marriage and his invoking of "jiggery pokery," and cartoonists should, perhaps, not be faulted for having some fun with it.

Perhaps. But when someone holds power, there is a threat behind their mean-spirited humor that we shouldn't make light of.

As I've noted before, W's bestowing of nicknames on people may seem laughable on the surface, but it is a familiar bullying tactic for diminishing opponents, which is obvious if you picture him back in the schoolyard, surrounded by a clique of his sneering preppy pals.

Which, by the way, is kind of how he served his eight years in office.

And Maine's gubernatorial embarrassment, Paul LePage, laughed this week at Boys State, as he told the teenaged son of Bangor Daily News editorial cartoonist George Danby that he'd like to shoot his father.

Even without the obvious parallel to real shootings of cartoonists, it was classless and appalling. 

But that's Governor Paul LePage, who began his term by removing murals of labor leaders from the Department of Labor, another bit of grandstanding for the booboisie, and then signed a law that eased restrictions on child labor so that minimum-wage kids could take the places of adult workers trying to feed their families -- at which latter point the hostility goes from insulting, grandstanding gestures to actual harm.

In a well-ordered universe, these swaggering high school bullies would end up as Biff #2 in "Back to the Future," not as the boss, but rather as a loser who is lucky just to have a job washing cars. 

But we don't live in a well-ordered universe, largely because, like George McFly, we'd rather knuckle under or at least become invisible, than stand up and confront the bullies.

Which brings us to ...

 

The Juxtaposition of the Day

(Mike Luckovich)

(Matt Davies)

It was inevitable, in the haste to comment on a landmark decision, that some cartoonists would come up with the same idea, and I offer this juxtaposition simply because it would be splitting hairs to choose one over the other.

The real "juxtaposition" is that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced that he didn't intend to allow same-sex marriage based on the Supreme Court decision alone, though, the candidate having made his statement for the record, there was a quiet admission that the blowhard was just playing to the bigots the state would of course comply with the law of the land.

Jindal didn't really mean it, any more than LePage really meant that he was going to murder a cartoonist.

But Louisiana has a history of recalcitrance that, as Nast recorded, looms large in our national history, having provided the wedge that belied Lee's surrender at Appomattox, ending Reconstruction and bringing Jim Crow to power.

That state provided the reportedly-purchased electoral votes that -- well before modern ballots had chads to be counted -- put Rutherford "His Fraudulence" Hayes in the White House and removed federal troops from the South.

This is part of the history they don't teach: Federal troops were not in Louisiana on a lark: Over 1,000 murders in less than a year to repress black voting is not simply reluctance to accept change.

I've seen several columns lately comparing our Civil War to the invasion of Iraq, saying that the South may have disbanded their armies, but they never surrendered or stopped fighting and, as in the current conflict, were able to win simply by exhausting the opposition.

So we have textbooks that call it "The War Between The States," which doesn't simply remove the onus of disloyalty suggested by "Civil War," but dignifies the legitimacy of secession and feeds the pro-Confederate mythology that denies that slavery was at the heart of the conflict. 

Add in the idea that Jesse James was not a psychopathic killer but a romantic free-spirit, and that Scarlett O'Hara single-handedly saved Tara despite being surrounded by foolish ex-slaves who didn't know nothin' about birthin' babies and, well, gosh, what are a few lynchings among friends?

 

David Horsey makes the point that even a 6-3 court decision doesn't derail the effort to snatch back affordable health care, or at least the effort to exploit it as a campaign promise.

And he argues persuasively that the decision in fact strengthens the GOP because it prevents them from having to face voters who just lost their coverage.

Their cause, of course, is advanced by the snarling, mocking defiance of a Scalia, for the same reason that a George Wallace or a Huey Long or a Joe McCarthy may seem like absurd, contemptible blowhards to the majority of citizens, but not necessarily to the majority of voters.

Because the majority of citizens and the majority of voters are two different things.

Simple truth: It's easier to get angry people than happy people to the polls.

And as the President mused -- and his opponents purposely mis-construed -- if we did require everyone to vote, we'd have a government that more accurately reflected the people.

So here's the final bit of synchronicity: Tuesday will mark the 44th anniversary of the day Ohio ratified the 26th Amendment, making it official and giving 18-year-olds the vote.

But, while two-thirds of 30-plus voters turned out in 2012, only 41 percent of those 18-24 bothered to show up.

Everybody is happily turning their Facebook profile pics into rainbows, but they're celebrating a 5-4 victory. 

Yes, it's a good thing. Yay, us!

But now get back to work: You'd have to be kind of foolish to think that Ruth Bader Ginsburg will remain on the court from Inaugual Day 2017 until the elections of 2020, and utterly delusional to think she'd make it through the (likely if not inevitable) second term of that incumbent.

I don't think the haters and screwballs are a majority of citizens.

But they may turn out to have the majority of motivation.

I guess we'll see what a 5-4 decision looks like then.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Dave from Phila]

For the life of me, I do not understand why Justice Ginsburg did not retire during President Obama's 2nd term.

[Nickelshrink]

I've mentioned before, not sure where (maybe usenet), that we were given an exercise in our North Carolina elementary school, c.1965, of pretending to be Civil War era southerners writing a defense of slavery. But because I can be kinda slow, I'm slowly realizing that it proves more than one thing. Not just lingering support for white supremacy, but a tacit admission that, by damm, it really was about slavery.

[Richard J. Marcej]

My only criticism of Stantis's comic is I don't think he needed to put Scalia's name on the robe. I think his drawing, the character's indignant punch and the "How was your week Antonin" is good enough to get it across that this is Scalia. (but maybe I'm just nit-picking)

[Murdoch]

I hadn't realized that slavery wasn't just a practice -- it was an ideology:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/

The South was gung-ho to spread it west and south. The Civil War clamped down on that, at least.

[Mary in Ohio]

The South was gung-ho to spread slavery to Cuba - and Mexico - even after the war "ended."

As Faulkner pointed out : "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

[Mary in Ohio]

Oh, and the Weavers' song is a nice reminder of Ronnie Gilbert, a fighter on so many levels - who died recently. "I'll see you in my dreams."

[Mike Peterson]

The article Murdoch linked goes through the whole "let's take this abomination on the road" plan. The mythology of the South is not simply bad history -- it's genuinely toxic propaganda.

And I thought it would be nice to have some socialists who loved the flag sing that song, and I liked the images that had been added. Ronnie having been married to a woman was only a bonus.