Comic Strip of the Day.com

Only Disconnect

Bizarro touches on a nerve, because I'm never sure where my Old Anti-Tech Man intersects with common sense, but I really don't get texting ahead for a cup of coffee or for McDonalds.

Even if you adore technology, the difference -- as Wayno suggests -- between texting your order or just saying it is pretty small, though perhaps there's a benefit in ordering ahead so that your fries can get cold.

There are several Chinese restaurants in town that must have the same website builder, because they practically hide their phone numbers and encourage you to order on-line instead, and then want you to register for an account and choose a password.

Which you are likely doing on ... wait for it ... a telephone. 

I don't think I'm being an old crank for suggesting that it's quicker and easier to dial and say "two spring rolls and an order of orange beef" than it is to scroll through a menu clicking on them, especially if you have to log in to your account first. 

But I am an old man who doesn't embrace all the tech that comes along. In fact, I'm finally getting around to trading in my smartphone for a flip phone because I only need it to make phone calls. 

As often said here before, I'm at the computer for so many hours that taking the dog for a walk or just running to the store is a chance to not be connected. And, while your mileage may vary, back when I was a 9-to-5 office type, taking a break still meant not being pestered. 

Perhaps I'm a dinosaur. There's an ad on TV now for audio books that shows a woman blissfully walking through a meadow listening to someone read a book on her earphones. 

Well, thank goodness. You wouldn't want to hear birds singing or experience the sound of a gentle wind blowing through the trees.

Or just walk around thinking your own thoughts.

 

 Lowering the Barr

If I were of a conspiratorial bent, I would say that the whole Roseanne kerfuffle was planted by Putin to further divide Americans, but I actually think it's worse than that.

I don't think he has to.

Clay Jones broke the rules with this cartoon by not including Starbucks, a foot kicking Roseanne out or a Klan hood.

I thought we were overloaded on Kim and Trump pulling away the football over the past couple of weeks, but we've now got about three dozen variations on the same three images floating around.

Well, four, counting this morning's flood of Ambien jokes.

To which my response is that, when nobody comes up with anything terribly inventive, maybe there wasn't much to say, but Jones not only gets a laugh but has a pretty solid essay that is worth reading.

His main point is in a quote from Maya Angelou, who said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them."

That covers the Ambien excuse.

Ambien, or a bellyful of liquor, may loosen your inhibitions, but it doesn't introduce new ideas. It only induces you to say what's already on your mind.

On the other hand, if this incident hasn't brought forth a lot of inventive cartooning, it has shown a light on the divide not simply between racists and non-racists -- though it's sure brought those cockroaches out from under the fridge -- but between those who get it and those who don't.

Chip Bok picks up on one element that's floating around, which isn't so much of an argument as a statement.

Barr herself bemoaned the fact that she had cost a lot of people their jobs, though others use it as a reason ABC shouldn't have cancelled the show.

True, a lot of jobs ended, but so what?

TV shows get cancelled. That's just how the business works, though I'm sure that, being a top-rated show that was just renewed for another season makes this sudden change a blow.

That said, the era of 25 years and a gold watch ended a long time ago, and was never part of the TV industry.

And, if she had been hit by a bus, that would have been a tragedy.

However, when you hitch your wagon to a star well known for erratic, offensive behavior, you should be banking a portion of your paycheck each week on the assumption that it could all end any time.

More disturbing to me is the number of people who honestly do not understand that referring to African-Americans as monkeys or apes is offensive.

At first, when people complained that nobody got fired for calling Trump an orangutan, I thought they were making phony excuses.

I'm now convinced they are sincerely that ignorant.

Ignorance is no sin, as long as you don't stubbornly persist in it.

There's no competition involved. Learning is not a sign of weakness and is, in fact, a sign of intelligence.

We went through this in 2009, when a cartoonist used a news story about a rampaging chimpanzee to criticize Obama.

The outrage had to be explained to people who not only didn't see the problem but vehemently insisted that it wasn't offensive, despite what black people said.

They were convinced black activists were making it all up.

The newspaper did apologize "to those who were offended by the image," which emphasizes the point that it's your problem if you find racist tropes disturbing.

And now, given the public's two-week attention span, everyone has forgotten anything they may have learned then.

I had no sympathy for the cartoonist on that one, by the way. When you work in a profession, you are expected to know the tools: A screwdriver is not a crescent wrench, a spatula is not an egg beater and "ape" is an inappropriate way to depict black people.

That's a simple issue of professional competence.

I'm far more concerned with the number of average people who honestly don't get it and never ever will.

But who will vote in November.

 

Hitting'em where they are

I really like Steve Sack's commentary on the rollback of banking regulations.

If you remember back when post-Depression banking regulations were first eased under Carter and Reagan, there was a lot of talk about how it was okay because they wouldn't make the same mistakes that had been made in the 1920s. 

And we promptly fell into the S&L crisis and then, several years later, the 2008 market crash.

But now we can ease up on the new regulations, because, as Dave Granlund notes, it could never happen again.

The kindest explanation is that the people who promote deregulation have never had a junkie in the family or an abusive spouse or even a kid who brings home a bad report card.

Because the only explanations beyond that are utter stupidity or blatant dishonesty.

Though, if we flip from the editorial page over to the funnies, it does provide an answer to the question in today's Buckets.

We wear ties so that people won't call us on the transparently, obviously phony bullshit we peddle.

Because people in ties are successful and have no reason to ever lie.

Or maybe they do, but the things they lie about are complicated and often have long horizons: A bit of self-serving legislation here doesn't turn into a problem for months, maybe years, and the public's attention span is about two weeks.

 

Gary Varvel makes a point about gas prices and tax cuts that I don't agree with but which is a good example of how the public ignores the Big Picture.

I agree with that the tax cut can ease the panic at the pumps, certainly. But, when those cuts were proposed, I don't remember anyone saying, "I hope I get to turn mine over to Exxon!"

Gas prices traditionally go up around Memorial Day as production shifts for the tourism season, but gas averaged $2.26 a gallon on Memorial Day 2016, which is to say, the last in the old administration, and this year it's up to $2.97. Gas tanks vary greatly in size, but if your fill-up comes to 14 gallons of gas, it's gonna cost you nearly ten bucks more now than it did then.

Do that once a week and, if you make around $50,000, there goes two-thirds of your tax cut. It's likely more than that, if you're an old guy like the one in this cartoon, though if you're a rich old guy, you won't care.

And if nothing else goes up in price, you're still ahead of the game, as long as you don't do what everybody does, which is to "spend" those savings about a dozen times without keeping track.

But a Guy in a Tie said gas prices are way down and that, combined with the tax cut, they actually increase your spendable income. So it must be true.

As said, I don't agree with the message, but I agree that the cartoon reflects a substantial part of public opinion. 

Which brings us to our ...

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Bob Gorrell)

(Pat Bagley)

(John Deering)

And I could list a dozen more, though most of them would either repeat Gorrell's Klan hood typography or would tie Roseanne's fall from grace into Starbuck's afternoon of racial sensitivity training.

One of the themes I've seen on social media has been questioning why everyone is up in arms over this minutia when there are so many more important issues to address.

It's certainly true that there are a mind-numbing avalanche of Roseanne cartoons up there, and, yes, there are issues that matter a great deal more.

But people can grasp this one.

You can draw the most insightful cartoon in the world about Fed rates and feel good about yourself, but the only people who get it will be the people who already knew it. There's a reason Fed rates get about a 20 second voice-over at the end of the newscast while some baby squirrel gets a five-minute segment, and, yes, it's "ratings" but it's about people giving a damn.

Wee Willie Keeler built a Hall of Fame career by hitting'em where they ain't, but cartoonists and politicians have to hit'em there they are, and nobody is anxiously waiting to hear what you've got to say about Fed rates.

People know Roseanne and, because they only have that two-week attention span, they have completely forgotten the time she screamed the National Anthem, grabbed her crotch and spat on the ground.

Though, granted, she didn't drop to one knee while doing it.

She became a symbol of blue collar America, as long as you ignored all the reboots Deering cites, and that she never had the subtlety Bagley suggests would have served her better.

In any case, you won't convert the Deplorables, but you can't. We're hearing from the usual cloth-eared numskulls who honestly don't realize that there is a negative history in referring to African-Americans as apes or monkeys.

I confronted one, because I couldn't believe he was honestly that ignorant, and said that it would be like throwing an insulting "pawnbroker" reference at ... what group? 

And he didn't know.

I don't know how you can be that deeply dug into your own little corner, but there they are and thank god they're only a loud, unpleasant fraction.

Most folks are pretty decent, and I think it's worth putting forward small daily issues like this: Decent folks can see why Roseanne had to go, and even understand that ABC lay down with the dogs and got up with the fleas and was foolish to expect any other outcome.

 

And they're also humane enough to respond to this personal issue, brilliantly captured by Lalo Alcaraz.

It's simpler than Fed rates or banking regulations, and it's touched enough people that everyone in government has had to lie about it.

That seems to be the measuring stick, God help us.

 

Everything Old Is New Again

 

The Cosmetics of Comedy

Ann Telnaes' new comic, Mo, posted its second edition yesterday, as scheduled, but we were back in 1918 yesterday, so I held it.

I also clipped it, because the format is ginormous enough that you should go read the whole thing yourself. 

Constant Readers will know I'm a longtime fan of Telnaes's work, but this new thing appeals to me specifically because, while the Bartender (who will need a name at some point) is typical Telnaes, the title character and protagonist is not unattractive but not the perfect, put-together heroine so often cast in the main role.

It's not unprecedented: Lynn Johnston's Elly Patterson and Terri Libenson's Jill Kaplan are deliberately "average" women. This leaves them open to the hands of fate, as well as making a simple bad day more visually credible than it would be if they were drawn as "pretty girls."

And even that's not unprecedented, because Lucille Ball began in Hollywood as a chorine and had to dowdy-down for the role of Lucy Ricardo, which gave her a lot more space within to mess up in a believable way.

By contrast, Mary Tyler Moore, in her role as Laura Petrie, had every hair in place and was so doggone cute that she could only mess up in a doggone cute way. (Oh, Rob!)

Heroes can be perfect -- Juliet Jones or Rip Kirby or Mandrake or Brenda Starr. And, when they're in peril or just frustrated, a hair out of place indicates it, but we know they'll come through triumphantly.

By contrast, a character like Mo carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, and needs to be average at best and perhaps a little less so, in order that the reader can both identify and, to a small extent, feel superior. 

As said, Telnaes didn't invent this concept, but it's interesting to see her apply it, if only because her graphic universe seems divided between very attractive Good Guys and extremely unattractive, toadlike villains.

We'll get back to that particular toad in a minute.

 

By contrast, Doc and Raider is, while consistently thoughtful, also a constant stream of eye candy.

The other contrast is that, while the characters are sometimes foolish or ill-fated, they generally rise above, or at least manage somehow to sail above it all, a perfect example being the current storyline, which began back here when this chap found himself the recipient of an unexplained $130,000.

Sean Martin specializes in characters who are street smart but utterly clueless on the larger scale, and this political spoof is a perfect application.

The above is actually yesterday's installment, and you should click here to read today's.

(Warning: The characters in this cartoon are blatantly, unapologetically Canadian and occasionally even bilingual.) 

 

Elsewhere in the Funnies

Nobody is going to accuse Agnes and Trout of being too glamorous for their roles as hapless pawns of fate.

It struck me this morning that it hasn't been that long since cartoon characters were not allowed to fart, nor could dogs drink out of toilets, and now those are so common as to qualify as lazy, not edgy, gags.

I suspect this cartoon will not likely touch off a storm of angry protests, but, then, I suppose the readers of any paper that carries Agnes have either embraced the strip or have lost their capacity for outrage.

Or maybe they would have called to scream, back in the days when people answered telephones, but now get lost in the maze of "please listen closely as our options have changed."

The intensely dark humor of this strip plays upon the grim reality that kids accept the world we give them. Even when life hands them something obviously unpleasant and wrong, they assume the grown-ups are aware of it and that it's supposed to be that way.

In the strip, Agnes is much more hovered over by her grandmother than she realizes, nor does she understand the sacrifices being made on her behalf. And, meanwhile, Trout is in the unenviable position of being an abandoned child who still lives with her mom.

If Tony Cochran weren't so good at using despair as a source of humor, this strip would make Dondi and Little Orphan Annie seem like Hi and Lois.

And if you don't get a laff out of it, you must have lived a charmed freakin' life.

Or you haven't yet escaped.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Mike Luckovich)

(John Cole)

I don't know how much sense it even makes anymore to ask "What if a Democrat had done this?" but it's asked and answered in this pair of cartoons.

We can put aside the spin and blather and deliberate deceptions over what Clinton had on her private server, and what she should have known that previous Secretaries of State had not.

Because, jumpin' jeezus on a pogo stick, not only has it since been known, and admitted, that this lack of security was a very, very bad idea, but -- for all the many things of which he is cheerfully, willfully ignorant -- Dear Leader has addressed this exact topic in loud, hostile, repeated attacks on Clinton.

As John Cole notes.

And Clinton's electronic correspondence was within her official capacity: She wasn't using it to reach out babbling on a daily basis to the world at large.

It's like attacking her for leaving her wallet in the glove compartment of an unlocked car while you're strolling down dark alleys in bad neighborhoods with $20 bills hanging out of your pockets.

Still, I'm less appalled by Dear Leader's arrogance than I am by the continued loyalty of his "Four legs good, two legs better" sheep.

It makes you wonder if he could do anything that, if it came to impeachment, they would accept as a crime, or even as a fact.

 

Imponderable

Knight Life borrows enough from family that I don't know if Keef, his wife or one of his boys asked this.

I just know I can't answer it. 

 

 

 

 

Memorial Day 1918

Since Memorial Day cartoons seem predictable, I thought I'd go back a century and see what they were doing then, when it was still called Decoration Day. E.A. Bushnell kicks off our coverage.

 

The US was in the middle of the World War, on the verge of having a million men in Europe and not far from the Second Battle of the Marne, so the cartoons that reflected the day referenced the war, as Clifford Berryman does above. (CSPAN video about him here).

As you leaf through the papers from that day -- which was the 30th and not some adjacent Monday, by the way -- you find not only news of the war but admonitions to save food, with meatless days and, in particular, social pressure (not formal rationing) to conserve wheat by using other grains and by eating potatoes, as seen in this Ben Hammond piece.

There were more self-interested pleadings in the paper as well. Apparently, having something to chew was a big deal for our brave lads.

But, before we get to the political cartoons, let's look at some strips.

Many of them seem like one-offs, or at least, ones without a lot of legs, though you'll notice an early Freckles in there.

But it's hard to see where a strip like this could go, and it's not even signed. On the other hand, strips that consisted of guys sitting around a card table or out on the golf course talking were common, even without the wit, continuing characters and plotlines that would raise Our Boarding House above the rest. (Note that Our Boarding House cartoonist Gene Ahern was responsible for the Squirrel Food strip above.)

Interesting side note: Strips were mailed and didn't always show up in a timely manner, or perhaps the guys in the back shop couldn't be bothered. It's very common, in going through papers of a particular date, to find several different editions of the same strip. 

For instance:

Note that the one on top is for May 30, and the latter was from a week earlier. And McManus wasn't the only one this happened to:

(Which reminds me that you might want to be a little cautious about who you credit with coming up with the idea of a strip that could be laid out horizontally or stacked.)

And McManus wasn't the only superstar in the papers. There were well-known cartoonists like Clare Briggs ...




... and Fontaine Fox, twice  (and I love the contrast in facial expressions between cheerful little brother and horrified adult) ...

... and Rube Goldberg ...

... and Bud Fisher, with one of the few strips I saw that directly referenced the war, though he wasn't entirely alone.

F'rinstance, this Percy and Ferdie not only references the war effort, but joins in the mockery of "slackers" that was a strong element throughout the papers, in both editorials and cartoons.

In the strip, it was mockery, but there's little humor in this C.D. Batchelor panel, in which the Kaiser greets a slacker as an ally.

And the point of this strip may be that Petey Dink sure is one pretty gal, but she's doing her part for the war effort nonetheless.

This poster was a little more explicit about the contributions of women in the workforce, well before Rosey drove her first rivet. The suffrage movement, which had purposely halted during the Civil War and turned its hand to winning friends through volunteer work, was more torn on the topic during the First World War, with the more conservative work-within-the-system types once more stepping down in deference to the crisis and the younger, more militant wing declining to do so.

However, neither of them needed this, which I hope was only covered under the "get a load of this guy" category rather than as serious news.

Even Rose O'Neill's Kewpies were participating in the war effort, though plaster biscuits may not have tickled the palate of the head of the US Food Administration, Herbert Hoover. (Are you anywhere near Springfield, Missouri, at the moment?)

Laughs are good in hard times, but this apparently anonymous piece ran in several papers, emphasizing the genuine need for that effort.

While this McCutcheon panel urged support of the Red Cross ...

... and Gaar Williams took a lighter tack in promoting the purchase of Savings Stamps.

With so many Civil War veterans still alive, and so many others well-remembered by their children and grandchildren, it's not surprising that the original impetus for the holiday was called forth often, here by Williams ...

... and here by Magnus Kettner

 
... while Gibbs repeats the citing of all past wars.

As did Bob Satterfield, and, when I saw this, I said to myself that he couldn't really bring his little bear in on something like this.

Only to discover a few newspapers later that he was using his trademark bear in one-column filler cartoons.

And here's a cartoon that is a bit grim, and which I include because the cartoonist, James Montgomery Flagg, became somewhat more famous for another of his works, done two years earlier, which was simply a remake of a 1914 British poster featuring Lord Kitchener ... kind of sad, given how much good illustration work he hadn't intentionally copied on commission.

We can't end on that note, so here's a cartoon by Roy Grove about the lighter moments of a nasty war, next to which perhaps combat wasn't so bad.

 

If nothing else, it was a chance to see something of the world.

 

Cultural Notes

Start with the news, from DD Degg at the Daily Cartoonist via Tom Heintjes of Hogan's Alley, with the smiling, self-posted face of Mark Parisi, who won the "It's Not Actually A Reuben" award last night in the category of Newspaper Panels for Off the Mark.

Here are the rest.

Only the big one at the end is the actual "Reuben" but the term has bled over into all the National Cartoonist Society Awards and only pedants fret over it.

And a last reminder that, if you're anywhere near Philly, you should saddle up and get on over to this event.

 

Deflating Juxtaposition of the Day

(Nancy)

(Andertoons)

I doubt either of these were specifically timed to run during the Reubens, but it is certainly true that humor is subjective, which is true of all art, and, boy, the collecting of cartoons for this blog is feast or famine.

There are days when I feel inundated with great gags and other days when I wonder if everyone took the day off, but there are also days when I come in looking for a laff and days when I come in looking for a fight, or, at least, not in an open, cheerful frame of mind.

I've learned to avoid social media at least until I've run through the humorous strips and am ready to get into the editorial cartoons.

Sometimes Facebook and Twitter make me actively furious at dishonesty and deliberate ignorance, and other times they just depress me with the way stupidity, sloth and self-interest seem to overwhelm all other instincts.

 

Second Juxtaposition

(Pearls Before Swine)

(Prickly City)

The thing is, despite Pig's attempts to Bring Us Together, I'm almost -- no, I think I am -- more comfortable with the honesty of Prickly City, in which the point of a chess game is not to match wits and strategy but simply to destroy.

Even when we find something we can apparently agree on these days, it somehow seems to take on an aggressive, triumphalist atmosphere of hostile competition.

Someone says that a television show isn't particularly good, and we all chuckle, and then someone chimes in that he doesn't have a television and spews his dubious moral superiority all over an otherwise innocent conversation.

Oh, and he never eats at McDonald's. Heavens forfend!

At which some even greater moral force pops up to say he has never ever eaten at McDonald's.

Which is not only not about television but also means that he doesn't know a goddam thing about McDonald's, either.

But he does have an opinion to express.

If people only commented on things they understood, or linked articles they had actually read, or videos they had actually watched, social media would be a lot quieter.

Anyway, if I avoid such people until after I've run through my comics lineup, I'm far more apt to laugh at the jokes.

I suspect the effect goes a little deeper than that, but this is the world we live in (wo-oh-oh) and these are the hands we're given.

 

Juxtaposition #3

(Gary Clement)

(Rubes)

The nice thing about Harvey Weinstein -- and there's a phrase you don't hear very often -- is that, like Bill Cosby, he didn't leave us a lot of gray areas to ponder.

We all want things to be cut-and-dried, that the fellow in power says, "Have sex with me or you're fired" or not promoted or not cast or totally blackballed in the industry.

Just as it's easier all around if "rape" involves a beating or drugs, rather than a few glasses of chardonnay and an indefensible misunderstanding.

The Morgan Freeman situation is more cloudy, where some dubious jokes and intrusive hugs crossed a line he probably didn't realize was there.

Which doesn't let him off the hook, but maybe it should let him off the gallows.

Today, a lot of guys are walking around thinking about their pasts and wondering what damage they may have unwittingly left behind.

And that's just the guys who get it.

Which brings us to Rubes and the familiar archetype of the caveman dragging a woman around by the hair. 

I like the cartoon, but the archetype is bullshit.

True, in a number of pre-industrial societies, raiding other communities to find mates did happen, but they also raided to replace other family members who had died and to generally shore up their numbers with compliant captives. In pre-industrial North America, most of the women who ended up as wives seemingly entered as servants, and often as children.

And most hunter/gatherer societies here were at least matrilinear if not matriarchal. Women didn't often have the universal power they held among the Iroquois, but even in the patriarchal groups out west, they had a lot to say about who married who, while divorce laws tended to be generous.

It's First World patrilinear societies in which the "drag'em off by the hair" stereotype was invented and persists.

Part of the tradition began with bad science and the belief that the sperm was a fully formed "seed" with the woman being the "fertile" ground in which the father's children grew. (Which is why royal brides had to be virgins -- didn't want any seeds from past plantings coming forward later as happens so often in gardens.)

Meanwhile, back in Hollywood: If nobody is accepting Weinstein's defense of the casting couch as tradition, nobody seems to deny its continued prominence in the industry.

And it's not just that.

It's more nefarious and more deeply embedded in our culture: It's the standard scene in which our hero kisses the struggling girl until she yields and admits she loves him.

And we grew up on songs written by men to be sung by women, and songs written by women who succeeded because they accepted the prevailing cultural norms.

It's not as simple as who wrote, or recorded, what:

 

This Lesley Gore hit was written by a pair of women.

 

While this one was written by two guys.

And don't get me started on Hal David:

 

The Fire Next Time

I've criticized -- perhaps even "railed against" -- young cartoonists for either misinterpreting history or presenting it as some new discovery when it's always been there for anyone who wanted to know it.

It's only fair, then, to praise this piece from the Nib, "1968: The Revolution That Almost Was," by Julia Aleksayeva, who looks at 1968 and gets it right. You should go read the whole thing.

As I was carrying it around in my mind and thinking about what I might say here, and before I looked into her bona fides, I began by thinking of an almost-comic event in which a fellow I knew in college was picked up by the Soviets in the crushing of the Prague Spring because he and his friends -- on break from their sophomore year abroad in Austria -- were taking pictures of the tanks.

They were held for a few hours because George wouldn't sign a form in languages he couldn't read, but things turned out all right, though they never got their film back.

That made me think of Philip Kaufman's film adaptation of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," and the chilling scene -- spoiler alert -- in which Tomas, having fled Prague, decides to come back.

He hands over his passport at the checkpoint, but, when he reaches to get it back, a faceless hand enters the frame and simply finger-wags a "No."

But Prague is home, and Tomas needs to be there with the thoughtful, determined young photographer, Tereza, in contrast to the joyously libertine artist, Sabina, who winds up free but rootless in the wide world beyond the Iron Curtain.

When I went back and looked into the cartoonist's background, I found that she is a Soviet ex-pat whose family left Ukraine when she was a very small child. Though she was born two decades after 1968, she has solid roots, and a perspective that allows her to bring some grit and reality to her analysis of a tough but critical year.

And, yes, the revolt came up a little short, but, as she notes, it planted a lot of seeds.

It reminds me, too, of an interview I did with Arlo Guthrie back in 1989, in which he talked about playing "Alice's Restaurant" for an audience that wasn't born when the song debuted.

"I think it was a fabulous time to be alive and it was a fabulous time to be a teen-ager. It was great; there's no doubt about it."

But that doesn't mean that there is nothing interesting going on right now, he noted: "It just isn't going on in the United States. For other young people, in other places, this may be the generation their children wax romantic over.

"I think what's going on in the Soviet Union right now, and what's going on in China right now, and what's going on in Poland, for those young people, this is that time," he said. "It's not like it's dead, and it's not like it only belonged here."

Moreover, Guthrie said, the various movements towards freedom and democracy will continue to inspire young people in other places, just as they always have. "There were people in other countries in the world who, 20 years ago, were looking this way. Younger people, I think, shortly, will begin to look elsewhere and see that they can participate in what's going on."

It's up to people like Julia Alekseyeva to make sure the stories -- of 68 or of Tiennamen Square or of the Arab Spring -- are told right, and that new generations are inspired to build upon those revolutions that almost were -- including ones that came before that.

Yes, I've added another book to the stack on my nightstand.

 

Coffee break's over; back on your heads

Meanwhile, back in the here and now, things have become bad enough that we could use a little revolution.

Matt Wuerker comments on the NFL crackdown, which seems trivial in the grand scheme, but is one of those things that is so trivial that it illuminates the larger issues, becoming another straw on the camel's back.

Fascisti are now blatting about how players are employees and must obey their employers' rules, but players are hired to play football, not to participate in political demonstrations.

If you demand that they make an overt political statement of any sort, as Wuerker suggests, you have opened the door and challenged their First Amendment rights.

You want to take politics out of the game?

Take politics out of the game.

 

But, as Joel Pett suggests, maybe we've come too far to do that, because everything is political and political in the literally iconic sense in which statues and flags and slogans are worshipped while their meanings and origins are forgotten.

This weekend, there will be millions of little plastic flags handed out, and there will be flags on napkins and paper plates and t-shirts, and in advertisements, and I'm betting that, when Tuesday comes around, those flags will not be respectfully burned in a solemn ceremony.

And, to give Pett his own private juxtaposition of the day, the chief celebrant will be Cadet Bone Spurs, who last year gave a stirring speech to the Coast Guard Academy graduates in which he revealed that he thinks they have aircraft carriers.

You do not have to have served, though it's better to have simply not served than to have taken active, dubious steps to avoid service.

However, you do have to be willing to acquire some knowledge of the service before you open your mouth, and, certainly, before you make decisions about those who do serve.

 

And before you make assumptions about who they are.

Here's something else: The fascisti and the ammosexuals may be loud, but they aren't a majority.

And the new majority -- those you ignore and marginalize -- may spark another 1968.

For instance, because you didn't make it stop at Parkland,  it won't stop at Parkland. 

They're smart, they're motivated and they're getting organized.

Friday Funnies

Heart is a cute little kid whose irrepressible pretensions are adorable. One of my favorite strips.

Because she's about seven years old.

By junior high, it becomes silly.

If it persists into adulthood, we're talking delusional and creepy. 

The unseen driver at the end is that guy, getting the hell out of town but now with the germ of a novel in mind.

Speaking of novels, Gary Clement offers a tribute to a novelist, in place of an obituary cartoon.

I heard newscasters refer to Roth as "a great novelist" in announcing his death, which didn't sit well, because I reserve that adjective for the timeless giants and I think it takes a couple of generations to prove out. 

But he was certainly a terrific, important and massively influential novelist. 

You could do worse. And this is a nice, small, personal compliment to him.

  

The Catch

The Lockhorns takes me back half a century, to a world of landlines and charges for long-distance calls.

When I was living in a big house in Boulder, the issue of phone charges came up regularly at house raps. It was easy to tell when someone called home, but "Who called Toledo?" questions were omnipresent and often unanswered.

So someone suggested we put in a payphone, a familiar parental threat in those days, but, in our case, a serious proposition.

The catch, we learned, was that the phone would have to be immediately accessible to the public. We could put it on the front lawn, but not inside.

In case you ever wondered.

And you may not have. One of my young writers is named Sylvia, and so, at a workshop, I greeted her and her mom and made a reference to "Sylvia's Mother," which neither of them were familiar with.

I emailed them a link to both the Dr. Hook recording and this piece on the origins of the song, which delighted and satisfied Sylvia because, while she hadn't known about long-distance toll calls, she liked the song and was very much aware of Shel Silverstein.

We connect where we can these days.

 

Juxtaposition of Generational Humor

(Brevity)

(F-Minus)

I'm trying to come to grips with the fact that the world is no longer catering to my demographic, but, while I wish Netflix was more aware that "Caddyshack" is not a classic film, I'm okay with stepping aside and letting the bulge in the bell curve pass me by.

Still, one difference is that, in my day, we took the line from the song, "Doing things we used to do, they think are new" as a sentimental reference to small, innocent children. We did not realize that, once they 'discovered' these things, they'd announce them as "Life Hacks" and take such great pride in a process that -- as Marianne Faithful sang -- has been part of adulting since before adulting was a word.

It works both ways: There's currently a burst of chit-chat on-line about how these youngsters don't know how to boil water, which is also a load of timeless hooey. Not many of my generation set out knowing much about cooking either.

But we had a clue and I think it's because of two factors: One is that we had fewer latch-string children in our generation, and, two, those of us with parents at home had fewer distractions to lure us away from them. Not only did we not have TVs in our rooms and in our hands, but people didn't schedule a million meetings and practices and other things to keep families from ever eating together.

Which meant that, while we didn't necessarily know how to cook something, we'd seen it done. Part of our daily lives included hanging around the kitchen while dinner was made.

I placed a lot of those long-distance toll calls in my 20s, asking Mom for the details on particular recipes, and then my kids did the same when they got out on their own, but we knew the basic steps. We just needed to know the specific measurements and spices.

I'm sorry current youngsters missed out on that, but, come on, gang: When you figure out how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, don't put it up on-line as if you'd discovered radium.

 

For further reading
I got my copy of Terri Libenson's hybrid "Positively Izzy" and can recommend it both for any middleschool kids in your orbit and for you, too. 

Combined with her first book, "Invisible Emmie," Libenson has established a style not so much of O.Henry or Guy de Maupassant, because her surprise endings aren't ironic.

They're more along the line of "The Sixth Sense" where it all appears to make sense and then there is a big "Wait a minute! What?" reveal that sharpens things to an intense focus and changes the entire premise.

And that -- like "The Sixth Sense" -- sends you back again to figure out how you missed it the first time around.

Good, thoughtful stuff that will stick with you, which certainly isn't always the case in this genre.

 

Or get some books here

The National Cartoonist's Society is having their Big Do this weekend in Philadelphia, including handing out Reubens and all that insider stuff, but is holding a public event Sunday that, if you are within driving distance, looks like a worthwhile trip.

I'm about six hours out and so probably won't make it, but, if it were only four, I'd be there for sure. And I'm not positive that I won't give it a shot anyway. 

That's a lot of really good artists in one place.

 

Slow Children Playing

I'm not supposed to deal with politics on Fridays, but Mark Streeter's cartoon beautifully satirizes Dear Leader's childish, semi-literate letter and overall inability to behave like an adult.

Since I started today by mocking young women who should have outgrown self-important pretension in the third grade, why not end things with a bit of musical scorn for self-centered, immature male cowards?

 

 

Days of Whine Neurosis

RJ Matson best sums up Trump's call for the special prosecutor to stop looking into his campaign and for an investigation of why the FBI is doing its job.

This whining seems particularly bizarre coming from the side of the spectrum in which police mistreatment of black people is blamed on black people acting suspiciously. Like waiting for a business partner at a Starbucks or having a barbecue in their yard or carrying a large amount of melanin on their persons.

But it's likely to work, because the guy who questioned Obama's birth certificate is now peddling a paranoid delusion about a dark shadow government to a basketful of deplorables who will believe anything as long as it's not being told to them by the mainstream press and gives them the sense of being in on the secrets.

It's interesting, in a disengaged theoretical sort of way, to speculate as to whether Trump actually believes the preposterous horseshit he shovels or is simply doing it to shore up his base.

But the problem isn't that he says these things but that he's got people believing them. There's a quote going around that he told Lesley Stahl he attacks the press so that people will stop believing them, and he has -- purposefully or not -- succeeded in undermining faith in nearly everything.

He is the result of this process, not its inventor: A few decades of promoting a sense of unjust repression of the Silent Majority has resulted in a Republican congress that is delighted to line up behind Dear Leader and take advantage of his mania.

November will tell the tale. Either the people will rise up or they will settle in.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Dwayne Powell)

 

(Matt Davies)

 

(Drew Litton)

Meanwhile, there are several truly unfortunate aspects of the NFL owners decision to fine teams if their players do not either hide in the lockerroom or stand at attention for the national anthem.

Other cartoonists have weighed in on this and I'm sure more will, because it's more fun to comment on things like football and the Yanni/Laurel thing than to dig down into more complicated issues, but we ought not to be fooled by the idea that this is a "sports story."

In fact, I'm reminded of when some sportswriters complained that the news side was taking the OJ Simpson murder story away from them, to which someone responded that, if Julia Child killed somebody, it would not be covered in the cooking section.

Powell is right that it is a sop to the pressure Trump placed upon the NFL, Davies is correct that it is hypocritical to demand that people not exercise the freedom the anthem represents and Litton is right that the whole thing could have quietly diminished if everyone had just been cool like little Fonzies.

To that last point, there was talk some months ago that the league would take steps to address the concerns of players who were protesting police brutality against visible minorities, which makes it regrettable that the owners then came up with this policy without bothering to consult with the players union or announcing any specifics of their plan to fund community relations programs.

Complimenting the players for their own social activity neither addresses the issue nor shows true concern and, if the owners intend to follow through on developing programs, they need to make those plans public immediately.

Stand up, or stand aside, because we've already watched you stand in the doorway and block up the halls.

Now, as Good Morning Football cohost Kyle Brandt said this morning, a league that can't decide the definition of a legal catch has taken on the task of interpreting the First Amendment.

The fact that Dear Leader inserted himself into the controversy adds to the problem because it's no longer an issue between players and owners, or the league and the public.

Whether Trump stirred it up or simply ran out in front of the parade and pretended to be the drum major, he'll get credit for -- and will joyfully misrepresent -- the policy.

Again, Trump is not the cause but the result: The NFL began conflating football and patriotism back in the first Gulf War, and ratcheted things up after 9/11. 

Specifically after September 11, the NFL debated canceling games, with the argument for playing them being that people needed a chance to come together.

To which then-Jets coach Herm Edwards suggested they come together at churches and not at a football game.

Here's how he remembers things:

I had a meeting with my football team. I said ‘We don't have to get on the plane and go play the Oakland Raiders. If you guys decide you don't want to play, we won't play.' And I said ‘I'm going to leave, and you guys vote on what you want to do.'

I came back 20 minutes later and they said ‘Coach, we don't want to get on the plane.' I called the owner and told him and said ‘You better call the commissioner. We're not getting on the plane.'  He said, what if they don't cancel the games. I said, ‘Well, we're going to forfeit.'

That was my first year as a head coach. I was 0-1 already. I was about to be 0-2 but didn't care. It had nothing to do with the game. What had happened to this country was bigger than that football game.

And for me to be a head coach, I had to take a stand and say, ‘No. We're not doing this.' Eventually, the league, by Thursday, said they were cancelling all the games.

Instead, the team got on buses, went to the site and handed out supplies to the first responders.

I wouldn't insist that the NFL Commissioner be a man of color, or a man who has played the game, but I'd suggest he be a man of integrity, compassion and sound judgment.

But, then, I feel that way about the presidency, too. 

It's just not that goddam complex.

 

Burning issues

There seems to be a bit of dissension among British cartoonists over the government's plan to limit wood stoves, and Patrick Blower evokes memories of classic Punch or at least of C. Aubrey Smith, who wouldn't put up with such balderdash.

(Though it's worth noting that this is how the C. Aubrey Smith crowd also responded to proposed fox-hunting bans, and the days of dashing through standing crops on horseback in order to watch the hounds tear little Reynard to bits have come to an end.)

Meanwhile, Mac (Stanley McMurtry) expresses equal dudgeon from the other end of the economic scale. 

(As long as we're noting things parenthetically, it's worth noting that only the British express dudgeon, unless you count those pretentious New Yorkers who also wait "on line" or, worse, who "queue up" for things.)

(I'd also note that you don't encounter nearly so much "high dudgeon" anymore, which is too bad because the singing was so lovely.)

We have similar, though less stringent, limitations on use of renewable resources in this country, and perhaps that phrasing betrays the fact that I've met a fair number of loggers in my time.

"Restrictions" are fine, and when those wood-burning boilers  -- little outhouses in which a wood fire heated water that then ran into the house in pipes to provide heat -- first came into fashion, I remember some genuine fury from neighbors because they were very smoky and being downwind was unpleasant, regardless of whatever health risks it posed.

Part of that problem has been since dealt with by required modifications, but the other part has to do with whether your neighbor uses well-seasoned wood or whatever is on hand, because green wood doesn't burn cleanly end of discussion.

Or not the end of the discussion, because British regulators are also concerned about people stacking their wood outside where it becomes "wet wood," and we could have a lovely argument over whether seasoned wood burns any less cleanly when it is wet, but I'm sure there would be some very expert experts arguing either side and it's easier to just stack the stuff in your garage and avoid the whole topic.

My own preference is for pellet stoves, which not only burn far cleaner than wood stoves or wood boilers or, certainly, fireplaces, but provide a secondary market for bark, branches and other logging waste.

This not only puts a little more money in the pockets of loggers and mill operators, but cuts back on biomass wastage and -- for those who were not aware that trees grow like corn only more gradually -- that means cutting fewer trees.

(It's worth noting that several schools have added wood boilers to cut their heating costs. Pellets are more expensive than chips, but chips are not as clean and, over time, will leave tiny beads of silica on the burner from melted sand that will ultimately require difficult and potentially expensive clean-up.)

(It's also worth noting that you can sure learn some odd facts by covering school board meetings.)

 

Anyway, we also have environmental regulations in our country, but we're not supposed to pay attention to them, and, as Nick Anderson notes, if you try to report on the EPA's meetings, Scott Pruitt's goons will grab you and throw your ass out.

(It's worth noting that you shouldn't try to sit next to him on an airplane either. It makes him very upset.)

Scott Pruitt being the exception to the rule that Americans are incapable of dudgeon.

 

Speaking of Cowards

While Scott Pruitt is hiding behind his phalanx of guards in his bullet-proof limo running lights and sirens to expensive restaurants, mere Congressmen are limited to duck-and-cover protection, as Michael de Adder suggests.

Trump said it himself: They're afraid of the NRA.

That's one time the man didn't lie.

Meanwhile, watching the Parkland kids reach out to the Santa Fe kids is a beam of hope in an otherwise dark world, not for their compassion so much as for their dedication.

I was looking for a quote from Davy Crockett about how a little fella can always beat a big fella if he knows he's in the right and keeps on a-comin', but couldn't find a source.

Well, the Parkland kids already know that anyhow, and they're keepin' on a-comin'.

They've allied themselves with HeadCount and have been asking musicians who express sympathy with the movement to set up voter registration tables at their concerts. 

And they've expressed solidarity with the kids who got busted for staging a sit-in at Paul Ryan's office.

And they're urging support of candidates who pledge to refuse NRA contributions.

They're doing all this without needing advice from their grandparents' heroes.

Though I did come across something Crockett said after his opposition to Jackson's Indian Removal Act had cost him his seat in Congress:

I would rather be beaten and be a man than to be elected and be a little puppy dog. I have always supported measures and principles and not men. I have acted fearless and independent and I never will regret my course. I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized.

 

We need to put a few Davy Crockett types in the Senate before Ginsburg or Kennedy step down, because Matt Wuerker is right and that's what happens when fools say "They're all the same."

Merrick Garland would not have cast a vote to keep workers from confronting violations of employment law in a meaningful, practical manner.

And an honest Senate would not have allowed his nomination to be blocked.

We shouldn't dwell on the past but, then again, we'd be damn fools if we didn't learn from it.

And the thing to learn from 2016 was that a lot of people didn't bother, and that a lot of people assumed it would work itself out.

Let's hope their indolence works to the advantage of those who keep on a-comin' in November.

 

 

The Willis Administration

What are we gonna do with this guy?

His nonsensical insistence that law enforcement not look into lawbreaking and his posturing as an imperial power "demanding" their obedience is drawing forth think pieces about how "The Constitutional Crisis is Here" and comparisons to Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre.

Ann Telnaes makes the most dramatic (American) mockery of him, and I've also seen a couple of cartoons comparing him to the Queen of Hearts in Alice. 

Which you would think would be enough to get him laughed off the world stage, except that, while he is a man who has no idea how the presidency operates, he was elected by people who bought his nonsensical posturing, and they have no idea how it works, either.

Here are the two things that help me understand what's going on:

One is that I have either had corporate blowhards as clients, or worked my way up the ladder far enough to report to them, or have sat as a reporter in board meetings and watched them froth and fulminate. 

Donald Trump is not a particularly unusual example of a bullying, marginally competent corporate bullshit artist.

People point to his record of bankruptcies, lawsuits and stiffing of contractors and say that, if it weren't for Daddy's millions, he'd have never succeeded.

True, but not the point. If not for Daddy's millions, he'd be posturing and bullying in obscurity, and running some widget factory into the ground.

We know who he is because -- like Paris Hilton, like Lizzie Grubman -- he inherited enough money to put himself in the limelight. You can blame the Gotham City media and their obsession with gossip and glitz, but it hardly matters. Here he is.

The other is that I've watched some really cheesy TV and movies, in which soldiers and doctors and detectives act the way stupid people think soldiers and doctors and detectives act. Bruce Willis and Chuck Norris have built entire careers based on the unschooled fantasies of stupid people.

And Donald Trump is behaving the way these barroom clowns think a president acts.

And as long as barroom clowns represent a substantial voting bloc and a marketing demographic worth pandering to, the fact that Trump is a bully, a blowhard and a fraud doesn't matter in the least.

 

Steve Greenberg notes the litany of nonsensical contradictions Trump represents, and it's a well-curated collection of hypocritical inanities and betrayals.

But don't look for a mob with torches and pitchforks, because there isn't one. And there won't be.

Check out the reviews of "Live Free or Die Hard," in which Bruce Willis is able to jump on and off of moving jet fighters.

Critics Consensus: Live Free or Die Hard may be preposterous, but it's an efficient, action-packed summer popcorn flick with thrilling stunts and a commanding performance by Bruce Willis. Fans of the previous Die Hard films will not be disappointed.

It's all harmless fun until that same level of judgment is applied to the real-life President of the United States.

 

And so here we are, as Dave Granlund depicts it, under the rule of an absurd narcissist. 

We might wish that, when Bruce Willis wanted to make a movie in which he jumps on and off of fighter jets, the studio heads would laugh and throw him out and make another "Sophie's Choice" or "Citizen Kane" instead.

We might wish that the Republican Congress would step up and put some restraints on the Head Nincompoop In Charge.

But when your goal is to sell tickets, or to attract voters, decision-making operates on a less idealistic level.

 

And the fact that the whole world is watching doesn't matter. In this case, Stephff is watching from Thailand, from where he can see both China and the United States with a level of clarity you're unlikely to find in either place.

The whole world is watching, but the whole world doesn't get to vote.

It comes down to a meme that was around about a year ago, that said that, if you've ever wondered what you would have done in Germany in the '30s, now you know:

You'd have done what you're doing right now.

 

Comforting the afflicted:

If it's any comfort -- and it certainly is to me -- Ann Telnaes has just launched a weekly comic at GoComics called "Mo" about a waitress by that name with a friend who is a bartender.

And we could all use a friend who is a bartender about now, so I'm looking forward to it. 

Here's a snippet of the first episode, the rest of which you will find here.

 

In case all that's not depressing enough

On what he admits is a tangential but important connection, Tom Spurgeon linked to this story about the fellow who created the cover art for Jethro Tull's Aqualung, and about the definition and limitations of "Work For Hire."

As Spurgeon says, it contains some important lessons for cartoonists as well as album-art-designers, because you have to understand what you're selling when you take on a gig.

I feel bad for the guy more because it's upset him so much than for what actually happened.

That may be because I've done so much work for hire that I kind of assume you're going to see other people profit from your efforts.

Besides, as I go through my clipfiles, for every piece that stands out as true quality, there's a lot that doesn't stand out at all and then probably as many as in that first category that were crap.

It all evens out.

However, when I started writing serialized children's stories for newspapers, I was careful to establish with my paper that these were mine, and specifically not work for hire.

I also gave my artists a commission on all sales and copyright to their art.

For a few years, we all made some modest but welcome money.

Then newspapers did what newspapers did. 

 

yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell