Kim Warp bats lead off today because we're celebrating intelligent humor and her New Yorker panel stands out among a plethora of lesser Facebook gags.
When I speak of "intelligent humor," I don't mean jokes about advanced physics or great unread classics. I mean jokes that indicate that the cartoonist has been paying attention and is riffing off what is, not foolish cliches and popular misconceptions.
If the members of Congress aren't familiar with Facebook, that's nothing new or unexpected. It's been a dozen years since Sen. Ted Stevens went off about the Internet being a "set of tubes," and I don't know why anyone thought a group of 60-somethings who didn't get it then would get it now that they're 70-something.
And anyway, good lord, there's nothing breakthrough in a gag in which a small child is called upon to handle technology for an old fart.
But what is driving me bats in this whole matter is the sudden revelation that, golly gee willikers, our privacy is being compromised!
Y'don't say!
Look, there's a reason you go skinny-dipping at a pond back in the woods rather than in the municipal pool downtown.
To paraphrase Franklin, "Two billion may keep a secret if 1,999,999,999 of them are dead."
Constant readers have heard my rant about how the more they collect, the less they can analyze, and back when they were targeting radicals, civil rights workers, drug dealers and random freaks, they already had more data than they could sensibly use.
I couldn't be happier, because now that haystack is humongous, largely because so many of those two billion users seem as clueless as Congressmen about how it all works.
As suggested in Warp's panel, Facebook does issue some cautions, it does have privacy settings, and it is, therefore, possible to at least try to confine your skinny dipping to that pond in the woods.
However, it's a long walk and the municipal pool is so much handier.
BTW, I've noticed that not only is the Troll Factory stirring up hate against the Parkland kids, but they're also resurrecting the Hillary/Bernie divide.
And you thought only the backwoods pond was full of leeches!
And another familiar rant:
Matt Wuerker becomes my hero with a panel that illustrates both the concept that there are intelligent, responsible gunowners and my opinion that about 90 percent of the Barney Fifes and Walter Mittys and Stolen Valor gun-totin' wannabes are pathetic fakers.
You've heard this before, but I sat in a booth at the Washington County Fair for several days, watching young men and women sign up for a VISA card at the booth across the way in order to get an American flag beach towel, and then veer around the National Guard tent with its armored cars and cammo nets as if the recruiters there were carrying the plague.
But here's another point: I've also noted in the past that my childhood buddies grew up with deer rifles, and about half of them went off to Vietnam when the others among us went to college or straight to the mills and mines.
My friends are country: They say "crick" and "chimbly" and their subjects and verbs don't always agree, but here's a secret a lot of cartoonists and commentators haven't stumbled on: They're not all Trump supporters.
Some of them are good ol' union boys who know when they're being ripped off. Others are simply intelligent, compassionate people who vote for intelligent, compassionate candidates.
And the continual depiction of Trump supporters as ignorant rubes who say "crick" and "chimbly" and bring home a deer for the family larder each autumn is not going to endear you to the blue-collar folks who are decent, thoughtful people.
A lot of the people I saw picking up those beach towels were well-dressed, nice-looking, trim, well-spoken people, and I'll bet a lot of them voted for Trump, if they bothered to vote at all.
Jeezum crow, Matt, you got this'un right.
This ol' dog will hunt
Scott Stantis breaks through the stupidity barrier simply by knowing that the people who are closing in on Trump and his cronies at the moment are FBI, and further elevates the conversation by suggesting Trump's objections to them may be a bit self-serving.
Granted, Dear Leader has been insulting the FBI and law enforcement nearly as long as he's been in office, but his assault on law-and-order has ramped up, and his lapdog, Devin Nunes, who ran the House Phognus Bolognus Pretend Investigation Committee, has succeeded now is having the FBI hand over unredacted documents for him to share with Dear Leader.
My concern in the cartooning realm, however, is more with the flood of "Mueller is searching Cohen's office" cartoons.
He's not.
The people drawing those cartoons are ignorant buffoons whose lazy willingness to illustrate unexamined talk radio blather spreads paranoiac, inaccurate nonsense.
Speaking of those who want a flag to wave but decline to serve the country.
Stantis is a thoughtful conservative. We could use more of those.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Paul Ryan's retirement announcement has inspired a lot of cartoons, and Ann Telnaes is being her usual sarcastic self, I'm sure, both in suggesting that Ryan gives a damn about finding his soul or that the baggage he has burdened himself with is that small and portable.
The key is the empty eyes. Paul Ryan looking for his soul is like a fish looking for his shoes, and this is a case of mocking the pretense, not of depicting the reality.
Bell, meanwhile, echoes Ryan's own words: "I have accomplished much of what I came here to do."
He'll pick up a lobbyist or consultant gig and pad his bank accounts some more. His kids will be fine and screw yours.
When this mess finally ends, there will be nobody left but the cockroaches and the One Percent.
But I repeat myself.
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