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What if they gave a war on truth and nobody came?

There have been a flood of cartoons about the Capital Gazette murders, but Marshal Ramsey offers the sentiment that matters to me.

I also like Liza Donnelly's quiet, controlled tribute, because she didn't overplay it, though she added a commentary that spoke of sorrow, which I appreciate, saying, in part:

 We don’t know yet the motive for the murders at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. But we do know that anger in this country is at an all-time high. We have to find a way to stop it. I drew this image on my phone as a tribute to the lives lost. 

Her sorrowful restraint touched me because she didn't claim a special status for her grief. She saluted them as hard-working people, but as victims, not as superheroes.

Yeah, we're sad, but, on the other hand, people at UPS are probably sad when someone shoots things up at their workplace, only they don't have the means of saying so as publicly as we do.

I do agree that, while this was apparently the work of a lone screwball with no political agenda, the fact that we have a fascist wannabe in the White House encouraging people to act out against the media was likely a contributing factor.

So I appreciate Clay Bennett's commentary and, like others in the industry, I hope this doesn't turn into a trend.

But here's why I like Marshall Ramsey's piece:

I was, needless to say, not working in the newsroom of the Plattsburgh Republican in September, 1814, when invading British soldiers smashed up the office.

But it is part of the history of the Press-Republican, where I did work some 175 years later, that they simply gathered up the scattered type and by-gawd published on schedule.

And, in 1997, when Grand Forks, ND, was flooded and the downtown in flames, the Herald, bless their hearts, placed their reporters on a hillside at the local university and by-gawd got the paper out on schedule.

They won a special Pulitzer, not because they were "heroes," but because they maintained focus on the mission of keeping the public informed.

And, yes, the Capital Gazette by-gawd got the paper out the other day.

Because that's the mission.

These days, it's not all print. I got a kick out of my former assistant editor who had become editor of a nearby weekly, and, when Hurricane Irene was tearing us apart, not only kept up a constant on-line listing of what roads were closed and where the fire departments wanted help and where they wanted people to stay away, but was leaning out the office window snapping photos of the raging Ottauquechee River as it swept away the pilings of the newspaper building.

Maybe you need to have ink in your blood to understand it, but the bottom line is this: Get the goddam paper out.

So, yes, I would rest more easily, knowing that they got the paper out.

But I am an old man and the things I believe in don't matter any more.

It used to be that every paper had an agreement with a rival, or a corporate partner, or someone, such that, if your presses broke down, you could get your pages over to them and they would print your paper for you and it would, perhaps late, but by-gawd, be on the streets.

Well, when an ice storm shut things down in 1998, my own paper got the paper out, not to very many subscribers because the roads were impassible, but within the city, by-gawd. But our rival on the other side of Northern New York did not, because ... well, I don't know why not. 'Cause it was hard?

And as Gwen was hanging out the window shooting into the storm, the daily in our market was calling things off because their press room was flooded. They have corporate partners within a two-hour drive, but, well, it was just too much of a hassle, I guess.

That scares me one helluva lot more than Donald Trump's War on Truth, because what if they gave that war and nobody came?

 

The Final Word

I've often shown this astonishing rejection letter, written pseudonymously by Hunter Thompson in response to one of my first submissions to a major publication.

The original is framed over my desk, because, after I picked myself up and resumed breathing, it tickled me a great deal more than a standard "does not meet our needs" letter possibly could have.

A few years ago, the story of the letter went a little viral and I blogged about it, including a copy of the story it was in response to, which, by the way, drew a lot of jeers from humorless hipsters who apparently never heard of Donald Barthelme or read John Lennon.

But, because Dr. Thompson's response made such big waves, I've only mentioned in passing that, a year earlier, when I submitted it with my samples for a writing workshop, Harlan Ellison praised it, calling it a "Marx Brothers landscape" and saying some other nice things I wish that I could remember, then concluding "The man has talent."

If you wanted to stage a curmudgeon contest, Harlan Ellison and Hunter Thompson would make a damn good cage match, but, while the furious humor of Thompson's response provided the most astonishing moment, it was Ellison's more serious, thoughtful encouragement that really made a difference to me.

I'm not a science-fiction fan and was never a reader of his work, but I've always kept a warm spot in my heart for a guy who gave a 20-year-old hack a bit of encouragement right at the moment I needed to decide if this writing thing was worth going all in on.

Harlan Ellison died yesterday. He was 84, so it was okay for him to tirer le rideau.

Thanks for the kind words, man. I'm doing my best to get the paper out.

 

Friday Funnies

Friday Funnies were never so welcome. For those just joining us, I've been posting humor-only on Friday, which not only gives me an excuse to use strips from the past week that didn't fit into that day's narrative, but provides one day a week when I do not have to gaze into the void in horror.

Never so welcome as this particular week, and let's hope we hold onto that record for a bit.

However, just because I'm laughing doesn't mean I'm not horrified, and Harry Bliss not only touches on something infuriating, but brings back the first time I saw one of these damn things, which, happily, contains a comic strip reference.

Granddaughter and I had just been to Hilary Price's Open Studio (each November, not to be missed) and stopped by a chowder place for lunch. We'd been there before, and the portions are a bit small but the chowder is quite good. 

This time, something new had been added, and after we had stood at the counter to give our order, preparing to carry our food back to our table ourselves, and I had provided my debit card, the hipster at the register flipped this screen around.

I said, "What's this?" and he all-but-sneered as he told the old hayseed that it was so I could enter my tip.

Which I did not.

I have seen the things since and I still don't tip counter help, at restaurants, at coffee shops, at the 7-11 or at Walgreen's, either.

Like most people who have worked the trenches, I tip rather well for service, but, goddammitall, I not only don't tip when I'm the one doing all the toting, but I sure as hell don't tip at any place that would pay to install these things so they can justify not paying a decent wage to the skeleton staff that simply rings things up.

If you can't remedy the policy, playing along is collaboration.

Is this political? No.

 

But maybe having Karl Marx do a standup routine explaining it is political, and, if so, I "sort of" apologize just like that guy "sort of" waited on me -- i.e., not at all -- and I recommend we take a break while you enjoy the rest of Karl's comedy stylings over at Existential Comics.

He's right. The proletariat jokes aren't as funny.

 

And speaking of Hilary, Rhymes With Orange scored twice this week and I'll lead with this one because it's also in the Horrible Things Companies Do, along with soliciting tips for people who have performed no service and generally sucking the blood from their workers, which is to pester you for feedback after you've given them money.

And not just then.

Last spring, I was looking for something in the grocery store that wasn't where it logically might be, and I asked a young stock clerk where it was, only wanting a suggestion, not to interrupt him and send him on a mission. But off he went and he had to really search the place before he came back with what I wanted.

When I got home, I went to the store's website to give him some positive feedback, only to discover that I couldn't just say this kid Jordan had been very helpful and is a good employee.

First, I had to provide multi-level evaluations of every freaking department in the store. (I didn't.)

A few weeks ago, I saw that Jordan has been promoted to checkout and told him of my experience, which made him laugh. 

However, three or four years ago, the manager there had told me that, if you do go through all that, and say that while everything is a 10 except only a 9 for the canned goods because there's a brand of beans you wish they carried, corporate would call the manager, scream at him, and possibly fire him for not getting all 10s on a survey.

That manager is no longer at the store. I guess he got a 9, probably for something over which he had no control, such as what brands they stock.

 

And here's the other RWO, and it doesn't set off too much of a rant because I like baby chicks and I also like business incubators.

My favorite business incubator of all time is The Flax Trust, which, at the height of the Troubles, helped young Catholics and Protestants in the ghettoes of Belfast start their own small businesses, as an alternative to sitting around idle in a place with no jobs and getting into the kind of political mischief that made headlines around the world.

I see they've grown a lot since I learned about them in one of the most transformative encounters of my life.

What was to be an interview turned into a full afternoon of sitting around digesting the world's woes, swapping jokes and absorbing wisdom from an extraordinary man.

Which tends to make me think of business incubators with perhaps more sentiment than they deserve, since most are just cubby holes that share a copy machine and a receptionist.

But speaking of incubation, I think the partnership between Hilary Price and Rina Piccolo has found its groove. It takes a while for new strips to find their feet, and a transformation like this can also wobble a bit at first, but lately RWO has been making me laff with consistency.

 

I like Fowl Language, but Brian Gordon often just riffs on minor parenting annoyances. Well, here is a major issue, and good for him.

You want your kids to get along in life, but you really need to help them learn where to draw the line on all that "fitting in" business, because one of the things they're apt to learn later in life is that there were people all that time who dug the way they did things nobody else was doing.

As for those who got along, that often turns out to be all they ever got.

 

Sometimes weird is a cool hand

I read the news today ... oh boy

Deflocked sure won the Serendipitous Timing Award this morning.

I was at the park yesterday with about a dozen dogowners and our pooches.

Somebody had brought ice cream to celebrate a birthday and we were having a lot of fun until a woman showed up who had just heard the news of Kennedy's retirement as she pulled in.

You'd think it would be hard to be somber with a choice of ice cream flavors and a dozen dogs of all sizes cavorting around, but the place just went quiet.

Now, it's true we're a college town, but the college is Dartmouth, hardly a leftwing bastion. I think it's more that people who can be at the park with their dogs at three in the afternoon are mostly old enough to understand the system, and what's at stake.

It's not that I don't want to see the editorial section ever again, but I'm certainly going to take a break from Facebook and Twitter for a bit, and I wish editorial sections -- whether left or right -- would discuss the situation in well-informed, thoughtful ways.

I wish we could have ice cream at the park every day, too, but that ain't gonna happen either.

 

Ann Telnaes comments, and it's nothing we don't know and, more important, it's nothing we didn't foresee and warn people about.

McConnell blocked the President's nomination from March 16 until Trump took office the following January, almost a full year, during which people warned that the next president would change the face of the Supreme Court.

During which the GOP nominated an unqualified fascist clown and We The People elected him president.

McConnell may indeed be a devil, but he isn't presiding over a majority of the Senate by happenstance, nor is he serving under an intelligent, reasonable conservative president.

By commission or omission, we did this.

 

Darrin Bell predicts all the things that will be retiring along with Kennedy and there isn't a surprise on the list.

Here's what seems depressing to someone of my age:

Lyndon Johnson promised that he wouldn't send American boys to fight an Asian war, so we voted for him and the son of a bitch sent American boys to Asia.

And then Richard Nixon promised to end the war and bring them home -- we didn't know he'd sabotaged LBJ's peace plan -- and so we voted for him and then the son of a bitch continued the war and as many names on the Wall died under his leadership as had died under Johnson's.

This time around, however, nobody lied. 

This time, the son of a bitch told us exactly what he was going to do, and we voted for him anyway and here we are.

And, no, I didn't vote for him. But I voted for a candidate I wasn't wild about, mostly because she wasn't him, and she certainly wouldn't have ...

Well, never mind. The fact is, America voted and this is what we chose.

And those who were too pure or too wise to vote agreed to let the others decide, which was, in itself, a decision.

 

As Jim Morin suggests, Osama bin Laden, in the afterlife, is celebrating his success.

While the Deplorables fret over paranoid, racist fantasies of MS13 gangmembers flooding America as unaccompanied minors or by posing as the asylum-seeking parents of small children, out in the real world ISIS and the Taliban are seeing concrete proof of their claim of an American War on Islam.

 

Here's a portrait of the fascist oligarchy we've built for ourselves, courtesy of Ruben Bolling.

Zero Tolerance for them. Unlimited tolerance for the oligarchs.

 

And Robert Ariail finds dark humor in the story of how Dear Leader's habit of tearing up memos and letters conflicted with the law about preserving records.

The joke being that Ariail drew this before Kennedy retired and insured that we'd no longer have to waste Scotch tape and glue trying to keep this old liberal anachronism in one piece.

 

While, as Tim Eagan notes, the editorial board of the Washington Post and a number of other progressive commentators remind us to be polite as we watch the bits of our system swirl around the drain.

Pinkies up, everyone!

 

Well, perhaps Mike Luckovich will get his wish, as the Parkland kids and their allies join with HeadCount in an effort to register young voters.

I've told the story too often but you're gonna hear it again: A decade ago, I sat a booth at the Washington County Fair, across from a booth for Visa credit cards and next to one for the Army National Guard, and, for a week, got to watch young people flood the Visa booth to sign up for a card and get an American Flag beach towel, then not just walk past but actively steer wide of the National Guard's display.

Though I oppose military adventuring, I have nothing against joining the armed forces, and, in fact, I wish we'd bring back the draft for both sexes with few deferments, but offer other choices of national service, like Peace Corps and VISTA, or providing teaching or medical services in under-served communities. 

Honestly, if you don't mind.

Other countries require national service, after all, though Dear Leader's grandfather was deported from Bavaria for draft-dodging, and apparently passed along his sense of patriotic duty.

But Step One in a functioning democracy is that people vote, and, while the Parkland kids focus on gun control, I don't care, because we were focused on ending the Vietnam War, but still somehow walked away with some serious environmental laws, educational funding and other social benefits that went well beyond that initial purpose.

And, of course, before the Antiwar Movement there was the Civil Rights Movement, in which desegregating buses, lunch counters and schools took the headlines, but registering voters formed the base.

One of the great lies of history is that the activists of the 60s did not love America, but America's enemy was always apathy. 

Wednesday Rants

I wasn't planning to revisit the topic of civility so quickly, but here we are and I like Joe Heller's commentary for a number of reasons, the first one being that the owner of the Red Hen is its owner, not its caretaker. So there's a contrast right there.

Another is that Heller distinguishes between denying people because of their race, sex or ethnicity, and denying individuals. 

Not every commentator does, so that, in their view, asking a table of loud drunks to leave is the same as refusing to serve black people. Either they haven't thought it through, or they are racists, or they are liars.

The other thing I'm seeing is a form of whataboutism that equates Maxine Waters with Donald Trump.

With all due respect to her long service, Waters has said some damn silly things over the years, no doubt. But she is hardly a powerful force in Congress. The Democrats have Waters, the Republicans have Ted Cruz, not to mention Steve King.

Sometimes a Waters quote leaps into the headlines, just as Santorum quotes did, in his days. There seems no particular reason except that you get clicks, which is okay for the daily news but I'm not sure we need to drag it out into a major issue among the commentariat.

Bottom line being, if Republicans don't have to justify Steve King or Ted Cruz, Democrats surely don't have to justify Maxine Waters.

Anyway, I said my piece yesterday.

Clay Jones has a most excellent rant on the topic today, to go with this cartoon, and, if you get more laughter than horrific sense of dread from reading his thoughts, I'd suggest you go here and read what Fintan O'Toole thinks of it all, because I promise you won't chuckle over that.

In fact, it might make you need your teddy to sleep with tonight.

 

On a much lighter matter

July marks the 50th Anniversary of the release of "Yellow Submarine" in Britain, and, while the animation makes it somewhat relevant here, I wouldn't have mentioned it if I hadn't stumbled across this absolutely brilliant article in the New Statesman.

I enjoyed the film, but, as noted in that article, it came along well after the Beatles had moved on from light-hearted piffle into more heady work and were, in any case, on the brink of breaking up anyway.

Boy, weren't we all?

I've always thought the British Invasion was wonderfully well-timed, coming along as I was turning 14 and thus in the target zone for the jangly fun rock of the early Beatles, Kinks and Dave Clark Five, and just turning self-important enough for the snarling blue-collar attitudes of the Animals, Yardbirds and Stones.

Which, as Tom the Dancing Bug declared in 2007, means that this is the best music that ever there was, though he was two years off. It's 14, not 12.

I can prove it, because I was 14.

However, by the time Yellow Submarine came out over here, I was on the verge of 19 and, like the Beatles, had put the days of piffle behind me. 

Wikipedia describes it as a children's film and that was how we saw it: As a children's film that was fun to watch if you were really stoned. 

And I will confess that the phrase "My little glovey-dovey" has remained in my repertoire of things to say to the dog when no-one else is around.

The New Statesman piece, however, tracks some cultural references that resonated in Britain but went over our heads in the USA.

It makes the film more impressive, but the bottom line, in my mind, is that it was a fun, frothy light show and a lot of people thought Peter Max was somehow involved but he wasn't.

My major problem with the film not being its lack of substance but the way it turned a reasonably thoughtful song, "Nowhere Man," into the theme of a Jar-Jar Binks level character such that, like Opus, a song I once liked now drums up some really stupid, irrelevant images.

Oh well. The Beatles have not aged as well as those other groups anyway. I think you had to be there.

And 14.  

 

As long as I'm in "Old Man Reminiscing" mode, it seems Wal-Mart has made an agreement to sell affordable comics to small people, and it's causing some uproar in the industry, as I've been watching at ComicsBeat, here and also here, and that DD Degg has tracked in even more places.

First of all, let me say that Superman looks really stupid in this cover. I don't mean it's a stupid way to depict him. I mean he looks like he'd turn to Wonder Woman and ask her to tell him about the rabbits again. 

Beyond that, I think putting comics in the hands of young readers is an excellent idea, particularly since these are apparently "best of" compilations, so that, when the kids are hooked and want to spend more money on the real stuff, they'll have to go to the comics stores.

Anyway, I grew up on cheap comics from the spinner rack, dagnabbit, and it did me good!

 

Finally, now that we're older than in the days of Yellow Submarine and spinner racks, we can go to the Hays-Adams Hotel in Washington, DC, and order a "Mueller's Trump Card," a trendy new drink (they say) that is "a combination of a Moscow mule and a Dark and Stormy," proving that bartenders like to come up with clever names and that their customers will drink anything.

Well, I gave the kids next door 50 cents for a small glass of Country Time Lemonade yesterday, and that's my limit in terms of overpaying for bad drinks. 

But it comes on this coaster by Kal Kallaugher, and I'd happily ask the bartender to set a Manhattan atop one of those.

And then I'd explain how to make a Manhattan.

Damn kids.

Is it polite to whip your head around after a swirly?

Mike Luckovich goes there.

But it's okay, and has been since Charlottesville, when the nazis declared that, yes, this is who they are, and Dear Leader gave them his blessing.

And Godwin's more recent thoughts on the subject are well worth reading.

Now, in all fairness, Trump shouldn't be expected to grasp the parallels, given that he is so supremely ignorant of history that he thinks Frederick Douglass is still alive, that Andrew Jackson was around during the Civil War and that our opponent in the War of 1812 was a nation that wouldn't even exist for more than another half century.

But, first of all, it's painful to defend your nation's leader by insisting that he is every bit as blissfully unqualified as he appears.

Second, whether he is consciously patterning himself on the fascists of the past seems less important than the clear fact that he is a bully at heart. 

And so thoughtlessly self-centered that his calls for civility include baseless insults to a member of Congress and utter lies about the restaurant where his Minister of Information was asked to leave. (For the record)

Which reminds me of when my father came home from a school board meeting chuckling over a hearing for a kid who'd been suspended for punching another kid in the boys' room.

The poor lad explained that he had no choice: He was giving the other kid a swirly, and, when he let him up, "He went like this (whipping his head around) and got it all over me."

Dad never said whether the board broke up in laughter over this explanation, but they confirmed the suspension.

Unlike the Trump loyalists who not only accept that sort of excuse but would have moved to suspend the head-whipper.

 

Nick Anderson asks for a more civil society, and I'd like one, too, but I'm going to disagree with him here because I find it hard not to side with the head-whippers, nor do I find that this discussion falls under the "whatabout" category.

It is illegal to refuse to serve someone based on their race, creed or ethnicity, but it is legal to deny service to a specific individual based on their behavior.

(It should be noted (again) that the US Supreme Court did not rule that it is legal to refuse to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. They ruled that the baker had not had a fair hearing. And they've sent Arlene's Flowers back to the Washington State Supreme Court for review, though court-watchers expect it to return, giving us a more definitive ruling on the overall topic.)

The question that Anderson raises politely, and that others have raised by flinging insults at the restaurant, is whether we advance things with this sort of behavior.

Sometimes even the whatabout response is pretty compelling.

It's not particularly valid to point out, for example, that the Obama administration also separated children at the border, because to make the whataboutism work, you have to ignore the fact that, first of all, the numbers of times this happened were far less and, second, that the major reason is that his administration was not treating misdemeanors as felonies.

Besides the fact that they hadn't proclaimed an intention to terrorize families with this policy.

And, in any case, what Obama did or Bush did before Trump did something comparable or not comparable is irrelevant in this discussion, which is about how people can respond when there is an imbalance of power.

The topic is how to respond to the more powerful, and blaming the head-whipper for getting water on the bully seems kinda foolish.

 

Bob Englehart's cartoon echoes my response, with this proviso:

Spitting in her food is silent protest, while asking her to leave is a visible protest that could sway other voters to step up in November.

Granted, when the imbalance of power seems overwhelming, a silent protest that doesn't get you fired or worse is a tradition that can be satisfying.

Spitting in the food of the oppressor is a leftover from the Jim Crow days, and not the worst. (Don't drink the coffee in a whites-only diner.)

Back then, you could be lynched for overt resistance to the bullies' system, and such things were a way to vent but stay alive.

They provided some relief, but they didn't bring about change. Change only came when people stood up to the bullies.

And maybe whipped their heads around as they did so.

 

Finally, here is a Michelle Goldberg column from the NYTimes, which I add because Goldberg makes some salient points, countering the "Can't We All Play Nicely?" argument.

But mostly because it's the best photo I've seen in just ever so long. Nielsen looks like she's watching out for teachers while Sanders gives the press another swirly.

Pardon me if it makes me shake my head.

Vigorously.

 

Saturday in Vermont

Hat tip to Mike Lynch for pointing out this event coming up Saturday in Bennington, VT. 

If you're anywhere nearby, you can purchase tickets here. It's a little vague on details: Tells you exactly what they're serving for dinner but says "100 Cartoons 20 Cartoonists" without saying how many of those 20 will be there.

However, I'm sure it will be a jolly gathering. I'll see you there if you come, and probably not if you don't.

 

 

Call it a family tradition

As a way of whipping my head towards the bullies who are piling on the Red Hen, I bought a gift certificate to the restaurant, which I don't live close enough to use.

But I am thinking of sending it to a fellow on somewhat-nearby Pennsylvania Avenue, to commemorate my uncle's college buddies who, back in 1962, chipped in to buy Gov. Ross Barnett a subscription to Ebony.

Thereby helping, in their small, wise-ass way, to make America great.

 

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

 

Choosing your burdens

In "Anne and God," Anne Morse-Hambrock breaks away from the lighter questions she normally poses to confront the Deity with this more fraught issue.

The obvious answer is to repeat the well-know koan of the two monks and say, "Put her down; I did a mile ago."

But, as she says, she already knows that the burdens she carries are not helpful or productive. It's the putting-down that has her frustrated, because there is a tangle of what she can't do with what she won't do.

It strikes me in particular because of a social media posting I saw recently of a video from the security camera of a diner in which a belligerent customer, after making several unpleasant remarks, walks over to a booth and physically assaults one member of a gay couple. 

The victim posted the video with a commentary about how he was no longer going to keep it to himself, which was fine with me, until I realized the incident had happened three years ago, which made me wonder how often he had replayed the scene for himself, not just in his mind but on his computer screen.

He had not only preserved the memory, but also the video itself.

Which made me think of my son's comments on a related topic: As an ER nurse, he's seen his share of homeless vets, but, as a vet himself with his own burdens from the experience, he has wondered if maybe part of "putting it down" might include no longer wearing cammo on a daily basis.

This is not so much a judgment as a puzzlement, and, while the old monk is an instructor and thus expected to judge his student over what is, indeed, a passing incident, we are not afforded that luxury.

The same teachings that tell us to "put it down" and move on also instruct us not to be judgmental.

And it both starts and ends there.

Anne is, after all, seeking to stop judging the long-gone bully so that she can drop the burden of resentment.

By posing the question, and raising the issue, she is already ahead in the process.

 

Writers are continuously working through what it all means, but, in today's Between Friends, Kim faces the issue of, as the phrase goes, putting her business in the street.

There is the old rule of thumb, either invented by Ann Landers or the Buddha, "Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary?"

The hole in that well-worn phrase is that, so long as it's true, then, if it is also necessary, it is kind, whether the kindness is immediately obvious or not.

And, if it's not true, then it cannot be necessary.

But, of course, it can be both true and unnecessary, in which case, it is almost certainly not kind.

The karmic struggle is in defining necessity, and the poster boy for that is Truman Capote, who was, ultimately, shunned by a good many people who didn't quibble with his sense of truth but were deeply wounded by his definition of necessity.

As a journalist, I was more concerned with a professional, ethical breach, and, when I heard about the movie "Capote," I wondered if it would address that conflict.

Boy, did it.

Capote, in his ground-breaking non-fiction book, "In Cold Blood," failed to disclose his romantic interest in one of the two killers, which was known in prison circles but generally hidden from the public. 

The book was therefore not true, and thus could not be necessary, or, certainly, kind.

The rest of his gossip can be passed off as coming from a nasty little man who spoke ill of everyone but himself, which is a karmic burden of his own, though there is a second karmic burden for those who happily gobble up such betrayals.

Which suggests that, if the Buddhists are right about re-incarnation, then the people who predict that cockroaches will be around long after humans are gone are also correct.

And there I go being judgmental.

 

And here is Darrin Bell, being pragmatic in Candorville.

Sometimes a cartoon needs to be treated as a snapshot rather than a sermon. 

As someone who is also an editorial cartoonist, he could apply this directly to the plight of cartoonists like Rob Rogers and David Horsey, who lost their staff positions for being more like the fellow on the left than the fellow on the right.

But, given that not all rich people are evil nor all evil people rich, it's better to take the money in this cartoon as a metaphor for a variety of "profits," which brings us back to Kim and the issue of speaking your mind, and perhaps losing friends.

As noted on the sign, silence is tacit agreement, and the question is whether, when someone expresses a hateful, untrue opinion, you shuffle your feet and stare at the ground or speak up and risk a friendship.

Which in turn asks the question, was that friendship true, kind and necessary?

 

Jen Sorensen poses the issue even more metaphorically, with the comic twist being the sudden snap back to reality and truth in the fourth panel.

Is there a difference between silence and apathy? 

And, if we speak up, how can we do so in a way that merges necessity with kindness? Because simply raising hell and creating bad vibes is neither necessary nor kind, even if it's true.

So we have now begun beating each other up over whether you can publicly praise and enforce a policy that primarily hurts Latino families and then walk into a Mexican restaurant and expect to be greeted politely.

But let's not forget our conversation over whether you should be able to purchase an iced tea and a bag of Skittles without being treated rudely.

The challenge is to speak truth in a way that gathers friends and allies, at the risk of losing those who were neither.

 

Random Sunday

We'll start with the most random musing of the day, touched off by Vintage Juliet Jones Sundays, which is not too far into a new adventure.

I would look at anything Stan Drake did and I'm glad they are shooting from the black plates and not trying to reproduce the full-color version, because his work stands out better this way.

This particular story arc touched off an odd memory from much earlier in history: When I was doing a historical feature for the paper where I worked, I discovered a lot of cheesy circulation promotions around the turn of the century which involved buying the paper and having your friends do so and turning in coupons.

One, at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush, guaranteed that the winner would be outfitted, transported to Alaska and given tips by Joe Ladue, one of the original boomers of that event, who was a local fellow. (The eventual winner decided at the last minute against going.)

Another slightly later contest involved being one of the stars -- one male, one female -- in a movie to be shot in town, in which the locations would be delightful local places, lots of wonderful local people would be involved and the script, I'm sure, would be something that could be used again in whatever next place the film company landed. 

I couldn't find a surviving copy of the film, and it isn't on that list of Great Films to be digitized and preserved. Which is surprising, since it was ultimately produced and screened and pronounced truly wonderful by the paper that had sponsored the contest.

IIRC, it was called "Blossom Time in Plattsburgh," which summons up visions of Max Bialystock and leads us back to this Juliet Jones story.

 

And today's Rhymes With Orange struck a responsive chord because we're coming to that.

I certainly understand the etiquette of wiping your sweat off gym equipment, though I think there was a time when you just carried a towel and people didn't fuss so much about it.

Now people freak out rather than just grumble about these things, and we have hand sanitizer dispensers about every 20 feet wherever you go, and no wonder everyone is allergic to everything, because nobody is exposed to anything.

Of course, part of the joke here is that kids don't sweat a lot and trees and rocks aren't covered with slick Naughahyde anyway, but the main part is Get Over Yourself, in defense of which message I include this sign which adorns the park on our village green.

At least the RWO sign is polite.

This sign makes a charming contrast with the ones in the neighboring towns that merely say, "Please pick up after your dog -- It's the law" and the unofficial ones with the photo of the dog manipulating a poop-scooper himself.

As with the sweaty people in gyms, there's a certain futility to posting reminders in the first place, in that most people are going to do it and the thoughtless few who aren't probably won't anyway.

But there is a particular foolishness in posting these huffy, uptight signs that tell a lot more about you than about the problem you claim to be addressing.

Nagging simply proclaims the bad vibes hanging over the place and every time I see our town's hostile signs, I can't help but think that the kids are more apt to get sick from exchanging germs on the playground equipment anyway.

Only I keep my mouth shut lest I motivate some overly hygienic nitwit to demand plastic glove dispensers, hand sanitizer, paper towels and disagreeable signage over in that part of the park.

 

Mike Marland offers this commentary on the immigration checkpoints being thrown up on I-95 in Maine that have everyone's knickers in a knot up there.

Somebody went absolutely ballistic on Facebook about the unconstitutionality of these checkpoints, insisting that they're only allowed within 100 miles of the border. Perhaps predictably, it took me all of 30 seconds on Google Maps to learn that the checkpoints he was screaming about were between 63 and 81 miles of the border.

And there are lots of roadside lawyers advising drivers on the best ways to antagonize the Border Patrol at these roadblocks because instead of telling them what they want to know, moving on in five seconds and then writing to your legislators, why not turn a momentary delay into a major event? 

The drivers behind you will surely be inspired.

Which doesn't mean I like the New Hostility, but, first of all, it's not new: We had these in Northern New York on I-87 back in 2004, which date I can pinpoint because that's when the first bus slammed into the unexpected stoppage, though nobody was killed in that accident, only seriously injured. The fatalities occurred the second time it happened.

But they resumed the stops in 2014 because it's important to keep vegetables from being picked, and, besides, this one time they caught a guy with a couple of keys of marijuana, so the tax dollars and deaths were worth it.

Meanwhile, out on the West Coast, they locked up a girl who was visiting her mother in British Columbia, went for a jog and inadvertently went too far south and was captured on a beach in the state of Washington.

There apparently were no signs designating the border, and so they held her in jail for two weeks on suspicion of being brown.

(I committed the same dastardly crime while researching this story, and I did it on purpose: I walked from the Eccles Hill monument, past a wooden stake in the ground over to the Richard farm rather than driving around. Come get me, Donnie.)

Well, maybe Marland's type of roadblock could take hold and we could separate some of these brainwashed jingos from the influences that keeps them in a state of racist paranoia.

Because Lt. Cable is right: You're not born that way. 

 

(February 14, 1952)

Delta Force

Michael de Adder spins Melania's husband's TIME cover, marking her part in our shattered dialogue, but don't laugh too hard.

If you dare to think you're not part of the problem, then you're surely not part of the solution.

It's not just a jacket. It's a fashion statement about us, and about the society we've built, that goes nearly as far back as Melania herself, who was only eight years old when Bluto smashed that guitar.

Let's remember that Flounder and Larry only went over to the Delta House because at the Omega house they were considered as undesirable as minorities and the disabled.

What an insult!

The all-white, American-born Deltas didn't want fat people, either, but had to take Flounder as a legacy.

Good thing, too: Larry and Flounder and all of us would otherwise have missed out on the joy of racist, sexist, cruel partying, set in a time when the uptight squares were supporting JFK.

The Deltas really didn't care. Did you?

Because after all the laughs were over, Bluto became a Senator with a big car and a hot wife.

The joke was that he'd been a rich preppy frat boy all along.

You might wonder how a crude, racist, sexist pig like that could get through a decent college and rise to such heights, but, then again, at least they didn't suggest that he'd made it to the White House.

What did we think was so funny?

If you want a depressing look at our world that doesn't forgive anybody for having laughed, go to Netflix and stream "Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead," the story of the National Lampoon, Animal House, SNL and the rest of the preppy, elitist gross-out humor movement.

Meanwhile, Melania didn't spray-paint that jacket herself. It's an off-the-rack item.

Which, as this Ellis Rosen cartoon suggests, doesn't let her off the hook for having worn the thing.

I used to defend Melania as a victim, dedicated to protecting Barron and little else, but she's lost me here.

I have no explanation for why she wore it, except that her spokesperson's statement that "It's just a jacket" and has no meaning is as stupid as wearing the damn thing in the first place.

As for being tone deaf, I'm not sure why a First Lady would be wearing clothes with slogans of any sort -- it seems a bit déclassé unless you're attending a Super Bowl or something -- but then I'm not sure why a 48-year-old would shop at a teeny-bop place like Zara, either.

Unless it's because she likes "sheriff" shirts and handbags with Indian good luck symbols. 

But beyond any of those issues, there remains the question of how someone in the public eye could wear that particular slogan even in good times, let alone in a time of crisis?

Well, the fact is, we're all Deltas, and not giving a damn -- Lalo simply translates the Spanish company's jacket into a potentially more vulgar Spanish term -- is stylish, and as humorous as leaving a bunch of frightened young white college girls in a bar full of scary, scary negroes. 

If we thought that was funny -- and leave us not bullshit one another on that count -- why wouldn't it be clever to visit imprisoned children with a jacket proclaiming that you don't give a damn?

None of which forgives Melania's insensitive cruelty.

Rather, it is intended to suggest that we look deeper and not pretend that she's out on the edge far away from the rest of us.

We're all Deltas, and even those of us who didn't vote for Bluto didn't summon up enough votes against him.

We figured the worst he would do would be to spew mashed potatoes over the table at a state dinner.

 

Meanwhile, way too many of us have wet our pants and run away over the news that little Yanela Sanchez was not actually taken from her mother and that the pair have -- lucky them! -- been imprisoned together.

This, our one-time allies on social media now declare, means it was wrong to use that heartbreaking photograph as a symbol of the fear children experience when confronted by authorities at border crossings.

(Psst -- I think this TIME Magazine cover was Photoshopped, too. Horrors!) 

When the first "oh dear, this picture isn't real" messages popped up on Facebook, I assumed they were coming from Russian bots and I'm not sure some of them weren't.

But plenty of them are coming from real people who had previously decried the inhumane policy but are now somehow convinced that, because the particular child in this particular photograph is not a victim of the specific full-blown policy of separation, her fear and upset cannot represent those who were.

This is the stupidest goddam bullshit I have encountered in a very long time.

If someone had taken a picture of a kid pitching a fit at a Target store and published it as an example of kids at the border, that would be bad.

But this is a frightened refugee kid responding to a confrontation between border agents and herself and her mother, and to suggest that she is reacting any differently, or less authentically, than the kids who ultimately end up in cages assumes that these kids know what's going on at the moment and what will happen next.

Mostly, it's a chickenshit excuse to do nothing.

Most soldiers never fire their guns and most of us are content to find any excuse to let the other fellas fight the battles.

But quit cowering in your foxholes: As soon as we saw the photo, we all knew what would happen next:

The fascisti would begin nitpicking it to deflect its clear and obvious impact.

And you bought it.

Welcome to Delta House.

If you're looking for an excuse to wring your hands and do nothing, you've found it.

But, even if you're not looking for an answer to Melania's question, you've found that, too.

 

 

Friday Funnies

I'm not too sure about parchment paper, but bulldog clips -- as seen in this Barney & Clyde -- are the greatest. For the cost of one of those plastic bag clips that will break the first time it is dropped, you can get a whole jar of bulldog clips that will hold bags closed and will last forever.

But, of course, that's not what they're for, so you shouldn't use them that way.

I guess.

Thank god I live alone.

Back at the dawn of time, when "The Apartment" came out, someone wrote a column defending Jack Lemmon's character for using a tennis racket to drain spaghetti.

I can't defend the actual practice, because back in those days, O Best Beloved, tennis rackets were made of wood and had to be kept in presses to avoid warping in moist air, and their strings were gut, which wasn't actual cat gut but which would respond to boiling water more or less as the pasta had.

So that was a joke.

But the gist of the article was that you shouldn't get hung up on what things are intended for if they work for what you need them for, and I'm firmly behind that.

And I do have some parchment paper because the last time I visited my kids in Minnesota, my daughter-in-law showed me a recipe that makes fried fish without deep-frying, which I would point out is also not how God intended it, but, since that only calls for the parchment paper as a pan-liner, you don't need to further defy God's will by using bulldog clips to hold it in place.

(If you head for Staples based on this recommendation, be sure to get all medium-sized clips. They like to package them in mixed sizes and those little ones are good for nothing except holding paper together and who the hell circulates documents on paper anymore?)

 

Timing on the current Sally Forth story arc was excellent, because Denver Comic Con was this past weekend and I had a reporter there who -- bless her heart -- took lots of cosplay photos but focused her actual article on interviews with artists.

I have no problem admitting that I don't get cosplay, and I certainly agree with Ted that I don't get it for extended periods in hot, crowded venues. But, then, I'm not sure how much I get Comic Cons in general because they seem radically off-topic, what with all the movie promo stuff and so forth.

Also I'm not sure we're even allowed to call them Comic Cons anymore, but I'll let them sort that out. 

Years ago, I wanted to go to San Diego Comic Con, but was told even then that the shark had done been jumped, which is a shame because now I've got free housing in the area.

But, anyway, if I went, I'd go as myself. 

Though, granted, when you do that, it makes the answer to "Who are you supposed to be?" a lot more complex.

 

Still on the topic of costumes, Mark Anderson expresses some definite truth.

In fact, this cartoon could spark a whole posting, because the metaphors are tremendous which is why the fable has lasted all these centuries.

On a literal level, if a wolf could dress as a sheep, he'd be successful. White dogs -- komonodors, pyrenees, anatolians -- tend to be for protection, because the sheep accept them as "one of us" and stay close, while dark dogs -- pulis, border collies, kelpies -- are drovers, because they're avoided by the sheep as "other."

So, if he dressed like a shepherd, he'd have to pursue his meal rather than having it lie down beside him, so there's that. But, as he suggests, if he rounded them all up, he could eat them at his leisure.

Metaphorically, we call this "dressing for success," but nobody talks about that anymore because those who get it don't have to be told and those who don't get it never will.

Which is also something that has lasted down the centuries.

 

And it's probably not best to follow a discursion on sheep-eating with this Rhymes With Orange, because it does kind of suggest a practical solution to Noah's logistical issues and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intention, though there may be some level of awareness here, given that only other herbivores are depicted.

Also, one assumes that the lead time on the comic means it is not an obscure reference to Venezuela's latest plan to fight hunger, summed up thusly:

“There is a cultural problem because we have been taught that rabbits are cute pets,” Urban Agriculture Minister Freddy Bernal said during a televised broadcast with Maduro this week. “A rabbit is not a pet; it’s two and a half kilos (5.5 pounds) of meat that is high in protein, with no cholesterol.”

Maduro's critics are ridiculing the plan, and I'd have to suggest that, if Noah has pairs of lions and tigers and wolves and such on board, depending on two breeding rabbits is equally impractical.

 

And this Ben may have puzzled Yanks who live very far from our northern border, because it's a distinctly Canadian gag: Canada quit making pennies in 2012, though they're still out there in some stage of atrophy.

It's hip to hate pennies, but I don't, unless I'm behind someone in line at the grocery store who insists on giving the cashier exact change, and then it's not the pennies themselves that I hate.

Fact is, there are very few places where I use cash: My barber, who is old school, and then places like the bakery outlet because I feel guilty costing anyone a bank charge for something under five bucks.

Even the laundromat has card-readers and my jug of coins has barely grown nor diminished in months.

I have a feeling Ben's grandson's kids will be totally puzzled by all the colors and sizes of those metal disks.

 

Though some folks will never grow tired of them ...

 

Long, long division

Steve Benson notes that Trump has made a U-turn, and, suddenly, a lot of current political cartoons are outdated.

I won't miss the recurring Statue of Liberty images. It was an excellent way to show our rejection of America's core values, and then it was a reminder and then it was just an indication that editorial cartoonists don't look to see what their compatriots are doing.

Ditto with baby Jesus being snatched away from Mary and Joseph. I featured one because it referenced the actual story from the Bible. Most others didn't.

They could have: the Bible tells how the Holy Family fled to Egypt to escape a murderous government, and the Egyptians didn't turn them back the way some fascist, racist, heartless country might.

But nobody reads that book. They just use it to flatten ganglion cysts and whack each other over the head.

In any case, we are apparently no longer putting kids into cages.

Now we just need to make sure the kids already in cages are let out and returned to their families.

I say that not just as someone who distrusts Dear Leader but as someone whose hometown iron mine closed and was declared a Superfund Site in 1978 and given a few floaties to contain the oil leakage in the river, but not until this year finally saw the gummint  tear down the remaining structures.

They'd better move a little faster with these kids, or we're gonna need bigger cages.

 

Meanwhile, as Ann Telnaes indicates, it's not as if we've seen anything more than the simple reversal of a specific policy. 

We're still stuck with a graceless, despicable, would-be tyrant at our helm, rallying his followers for the big Kristallnacht celebrations and denying all responsibility for the mess he blundered into.

I guess I didn't expect him to go on TV and say, "I was lying. I ordered this, and I could have stopped it any time I wanted to."

But it seems that, aside from never admitting having been wrong, he's also eager to preserve the hatred and division he has been stirring up, and you've got to admit, he's done a helluva job of that.

Note that "division" requires two sides. As prominent people from the right began to finally speak up and criticize the immigration policy, they were met on Facebook and Twitter not with welcome but with derision and hostility.

By November, we'll likely have people -- people, not just Russian bots -- sending a clear message on social media that, if you didn't vote our way in 2016, we don't want your goddam votes this time, either, you fascist assholes.

Swell.

 

Meanwhile, Darrin Bell blows up the executive order so we can read what it actually says, and my guess is that Dear Leader will get his wish and, by November, this will be long in the past.

 

And, as Kevin Siers suggests, if the entire crisis has not been forgotten by then, Dear Leader is hoping the cause will have been, and we'll remember only that the insane pyromaniac reversed the policy he claims someone else started.

One of the more bizarre oddities in all this is that Trump justified the policy for weeks by saying that it was out of his hands, that only Congress could fix it, that it was all Obama's fault ... and then he fixed it, but, golly, it turns out that it was still everyone else's fault:

It is unfortunate that Congress’s failure to act and court orders have put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law.

Almost makes you weep for the poor little fella, don't it?

He lied his way into it and he's lying his way out of it and the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Bottom Line: Psychologically, the Deplorables can't admit they were lied to and that they backed the wrong horse and, just as he doubles down on his outrageous lies, they will double down on their loyalty, even if it requires believing that the videos of kids are doctored or that the kids are actors or both.

And Elvis is alive and so is Bigfoot and the tax break has made me wealthy, despite what libtards like Bob Gorrell want you to believe. (If the irony of that wisecrack escapes you, check out Bob's other cartoons.)

Unfortunately, the impact of our Trumped-Up trade war will not really hit America until after the November elections, and those who haven't noticed what gasoline prices have done in the past two years are not likely to notice what happens to the prices of everything else when the retaliatory tariffs kick in.

 

But I still got a kick out of Chan Lowe's cartoon and I only wish it would come true in time to spark some of those "They're all the same!" non-voters to get out of their Barcaloungers and help reverse the skid.

 

Again, it's not just the Deplorables.

Miriam asks the right question in today's Non Sequitur, but the idea that she had any special gift is ironic humor: Anybody who bothered to look past the sound bites and blather would have known exactly what was at stake and what we were risking in 2016.

But it's not as if people are going to suddenly become wise and thoughtful in the next few months. They will forget this family-separation crisis entirely, or they'll buy the idea that it was invented and fake or they'll just ... fade back into their cloud of self-satisfied apathy.

 

Mike Luckovich is right about the separation, but, unfortunately, Trump is not the cause but the effect.

This frightening documentary, made in 2015, will convince you of that, and, depressing as it is, you should buy it or pop up to Amazon and stream it, because it leads, sadly, into our

 

Juxtaposition of the New World Order

(Michael De Adder)

(It's not a cartoon, it's reality.)

 

Here's a trailer for that documentary: