Comic Strip of the Day.com

The view from the rice paddies

I sometimes get notes from people who point out that, while the web site is called "Comic Strip of the Day," I tend to deal with editorial cartoons a lot.

So we'll lead off today with Monty, a comic strip.

The joke, of course, is that the elections aren't rigged and we don't actually have re-education camps.

We don't need them.

We've done this to ourselves.

Orwell saw this nearly 75 years ago, though we should note that he was British and was writing about humanity in general, not specifically about the United States.

In fact, it's universal: What people want is not for this side to triumph or for that side to win.

What they really want is to be left alone.

I remember meeting a Vietnamese student at the University of Toronto in 1969, the first Vietnamese person I'd ever actually run into. She told me she was not in favor of a Communist takeover but neither was she supportive of the war, because it wasn't working.

Most people, she said, didn't care who was in charge or if the government was in Saigon or Hanoi.

What they wanted was to raise a crop of rice without tanks running through and destroying the centuries-old paddies.

That's not the logic of peasants. That's universal human nature.

 

New Hampshire Public Radio had a report yesterday about people in Sherburne, a little town that has proven a good political windsock. The reporter went to the Transfer Station, where there is a coffeepot and donuts each Saturday and people stop by to drop off their trash and talk.

And what he found was people who weren't necessarily thrilled with the President, but who were even more critical of the media.

Sean Reardon’s answer to my question - “How do you think the President did his first year?” - could stand in for almost every response I get. “I voted for him and I definitely think government needed to be changed a little bit,” Reardon says. “I do think the media is a little ridiculous with the, you know, seven hours of negativity a day versus fifteen minutes of positive.”

You can argue back, demanding "What are we supposed to do? Not cover it?"

But, just the farmer doesn't care whose mortars destroyed his rice crop, a lot of people don't enjoy an endless barrage of conflicting, toxic reports and aren't interesting in trying to sort out the ones that are accurate.

“Americans used to turn to the media to get what was going on,” Reardon says. “The truth, the weather - and you just can't believe anything anymore. No one knows what to believe.”

Again, that's not "peasant" thinking and shame on you if you divide the world into college graduates and stupid people. That's not on them; that's on you.

I'm a college graduate and I have no intention of turning on the TV on this Sunday morning to watch a procession of hand-picked, partisan talking heads repeating their committee-approved partisan talking points.

That's before we even get to the chaotic muddle of delusional amateur news sites, Russian troll postings and other confusing, indecipherable faux-news.

There may be a pony in there some place but I'm damned if I know how anybody, no matter how well-trained in evaluating news, can sort through and find it.

Mark Streeter nearly seems to be walking away, but I think -- I hope -- he's simply expressing frustration. 

Year One has been pretty horrible, and, in this NYTimes analysis, a history professor does not accept the "they all do it" shrug: He compares Trump's first year to that of the worst of our Presidents and finds the current holder seriously lacking.

And if you prefer your analysis in graphic format, go here and see how Ann Telnaes lays out the disaster in which we find ourselves embedded.

Not only is her analysis solid and trenchant, but, as a bonus, she links to a breakdown she did before the election, analyzing the Trump candidacy and explaining how that could have happened.

It's good stuff, though it's not fun reading.

As Marshall Ramsey notes, we want winners and losers, friends and enemies, and it doesn't have to be logical, consistent or ... god knows ... true.

Democrats ask why, since they control the halls of government, the Republicans can't pass this needed legislation, and the retort is that they need 60 votes, not 51, so it's the Democrats fault.

Which neatly ignores the transition we've made from viewing the other party as "the opposition" and declaring it "the enemy."

And, no, that can't be brushed away as "they both do it."

It was initiated back in the days of Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich and has metastasized into the current situation. You can play "whatabout" until the cows come home, but this was the goal of the GOP's rightwing fringe and they have since wormed their way to the center of the party (hence the stream of retirements).

Should the media report on this, or is it too upsetting?

Well, it's certainly complex and I'm not sure the majority of people want to sit through it.

It is clear, however, that a large part of the problem is an inconsistent President who has no sense of how to negotiate, despite his claim to be an expert deal-maker. Even Mitch McConnell admits, "As soon as we figure out what he is for, then I would be convinced that we were not just spinning our wheels." 

The alternative to figuring him out would be sitting him down for a serious conversation, but we haven't had serious conversations for years.

 

Meanwhile, however, while we wise men are sipping our sherry, enjoying our cigars and -- harumph, harumph -- reliving the battles of the Crimean War, the ladies, god bless'em, have gone for a walk.

And, as Kevin Siers notes, decided to change that walk into a run.

If this past year is what it took for that to happen, then it was a very good year indeed.

 

 

Irrational Exuberance

Over at L'il Donnie today, Mike Norton despairs of being able to come up with any satire more ridiculous than reality, and I can't blame him. The Donald is indeed making it hard for political cartoonists.

 

Darrin Bell takes the route of casting doubt on the strangely upbeat report by the White House physician.

As I've said before, I don't know how any competent, ethical physician could predict six years of excellent health for a 71 year old man who is borderline obese and taking a variety of meds for what we might call "fat old man disease," a wisecrack I can make because I'm more or less in the same position.

At one point a few years ago, my doctor asked me a general "how's your overall morale?" question and I answered honestly that it's a little depressing -- just in general, not clinically -- to be in the home stretch. He responded that I shouldn't be too pessimistic and that, with reasonable precautions and good choices, I might have another 20 years.

However, there is no way he would specifically predict where I would be at any point in the future. It would be unethical, but it's also stupid and unscientific and bad medical practice.

And even if the President's height and weight were honestly presented in his physical -- my bet is that they were self-reported -- it's impossible to take this quote seriously:

 Some people have just great genes. I told the president that if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old. 

You told him what?

Some people do have great genes, true, and it's too late for him to go back and un-eat all those cheeseburgers, so your prediction can't actually be put to the test, but, even so, WTF kind of thing is that for a physician from this planet to tell anyone, much less to repeat in an on-the-record report about the President's actual health?

Sure, Doc: If he hadn't eaten all that junk food, he might have lived to be 200.

And if his arms were three inches longer, he'd be able to fly.

 

And speaking of flying, some people will believe anything, and some of them swing large enough bats, as Steve Sack suggests, that they are able to influence the stock market.

"Irrational exuberance" was the phrase coined by Alan Greenspan during another inexplicable upswing, and this looks like a whole lot of that.

Trump supporters are joyously claiming that the uptick in the markets is because of Trump, but there are a couple of problems with that, the first being that, while the market has certainly gone up, Trump is hardly setting any records, and is in fact, middle of the pack, according to this spanking new analysis from Forbes.

The other being that stock prices are nearly independent of what's going on in your kitchen. Stock prices are based on what major traders think the stocks are worth, and there is both a circularity and a strong element of self-deception at work.

If you want to talk about "fake news," the earnest explanations of why stocks rose and fell on a particular day are as fake as it comes. It's because of the storms in the Northwest, one pundit writes, while another insists it was an announcement in Europe and a third is sure it had to do with the latest report on new home construction.

The stock market is not unlike the oddsmakers in Las Vegas who are currently taking bets on the Super Bowl. The odds do reflect some sober analysis of probability, but they're set by what the bettors think is likely to happen, such that, if too many people begin to bet on one team, they will change the odds to encourage bettors to put some money on the other side of the ledger.

Stock prices aren't manipulated that directly, but they do reflect a combination of factors of which actual sober analysis is only one.

Moreover, your pension funds may be invested in the market, but you have no control over them, and when the One-Percenters tell you that you have a part in the whole thing, they are lying. 

If you don't personally own 20 or 30 percent of a company's stock, you have nothing to say about it.

I love Judy Holliday, but this clip is as accurate as "Solid Gold Cadillac" ever gets -- a single voice questioning the corporate bafflegab and being ignored. The part where she rounds up the proxies of small shareholders and brings the board to heel is a pleasant comedy, not a serious lesson in How Things Work.

For the average person, Sack's cartoon should bring to mind the old poem:

Birdie, birdie in the sky
Dropping whitewash in my eye
I'm no baby, I don't cry,
But boy I'm glad that cows don't fly

On accounta now they do.

 

And Matt Wuerker is hardly the only observer to wonder what it could take to shake the faith of the True Believers.

The same people who apparently have no problem with Trump dallying with a porn star while his (third) wife cares for their newborn child continue to attack Hillary Clinton for being married to a noted tomcat, even though she hasn't been a candidate for anything in more than a year.

Moreover, when Barack Obama proved to be a solid family man, they attacked him for having a wife who felt children should eat healthy food.

I remember when Nelson Rockefeller's divorce was predicted to make him unelectable. 

It turned out most people didn't think divorce was such a bad thing, which was encouraging.

I'm not encouraged by the idea that most people don't have a problem with this degrading soap opera.

 

And as Mark Parisi suggests, they apparently don't.

And if you think we've seen domestic terrorism now, just wait until Dear Leader is impeached or even if he simply gets voted out in 2020.

 

Might need a few more this time

 

Warm thoughts amid the snowflakes

I felt like we'd had enough politics for a while and so was delighted to find a funny little cartoon about a rat ...

And, boy, is he right. 

Trump finally announced his awards for "fake news" and they don't stand up to much examination, being, for the most part, mistakes the press quickly recognized and for which some reporters were suspended or fired.

As the Washington Post fact checkers suggest, "If the president admitted error as frequently, he would earn far fewer Pinocchios."

His claim of under-reported achievements is a bit more argumentative, since they involve both the question "Is it true?" and "Was it covered?" as well as the well-established political issue of the rooster taking credit for the sunrise.

Trump may be the most frequent, outrageous liar to ever occupy the Oval Office, but he's certainly not the first to take credit for things he had nothing to do with.

 

Jeff Stahler covers the more interesting phenomenon, and the use of the familiar three-monkeys image would not be half as apt and amusing if the GOP were represented by a different animal: That third elephant, by anatomical necessity, changes "Speak No Evil" to "Smell No Evil" and I'm going to stop a moment for a brief round of applause.

Jeff Flake's speech the other day was inspiring, but, as much as we might admire the Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness, it's means nothing if you don't use your vote to back up all that high-minded, patriotic verbiage.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of odd insults being flung around by rightwingers, odd because suddenly it's they who burst into tears at every slight, and not only are they behaving like the snowflakes they despised just a year ago, but they've adopted some liberal phrases that they don't quite seem to understand.

It's like hearing your parents trying out teenage slang when they talk to your friends at the mall. 

The official government network accused Cory Booker of "mansplaining" to Kirstjen Neilsen the other day, which is simply wrong.

That wasn't "mansplaining." It was "getting schooled."

And now the tearful little snowflakes are weeping because those mean ol' liberals are "fatshaming" the President.

I'm not fatshaming him. How could I? I weigh 11 pounds more than his reported weight, and I'm five inches shorter than his reported height.

And I look pretty much like he does, only my pants aren't on fire.

I'm truth-shaming him because there is apparently nothing on this planet that he won't lie about, including something the truth of which could be readily proven by simply stepping on a scale.

But, my goo'ness gracious, I wouldn't ever fatshame him or mansplain anything to him, because the last thing we need is to make Dear Leader's courtiers cry some more.

As it is, it's gonna take one hell of a Republican caucus race to dry off all their tears.

But enough: We've had all the snowflakes we need these past two weeks, and not just in the Northeast.

In Arkansas, too. Will you meanies please stop writing letters that make little Tommy cry?

(Lest we forget, this is the guy who wrote a letter to the Iranian government undermining our national policy.  But that was diffo, I'm sure!)

 

Anyway

Watson takes a shot at the latest fad in our continuing effort to gobble up bandwidth for no particular reason.

I have not downloaded this app, in part because my smartphone experiment is about over and I'm ready to go back to a flip. Having my email chase me to the dogpark has not been valuable and I miss having a phone that fits comfortably in my hand and holds a charge for more than a day.

But the laugh here is that Watson looks about as much like Marmaduke as any of the photo/painting matchups I've seen posted online.

Last night NPR had a story about how certain states block the app, and the anchor was trying it out on the air -- a very valuable activity for radio -- and she didn't like the first match so she tried again and then got one she liked.

Keep trying, Watson, until you get Lassie or Rinty. 

 

Don't put off your closing date, pal

The tiny house saga continues in Betty, and I'm hoping we keep following through on how much this inexpensive little house is going to cost him.

As it is, I wouldn't expect the strip to be able to keep up with the breaking news, but he may burn through his bitcoins and have to think about selling off some Beanie Babies or tulip bulbs.

 

Where Dreams Go To Die

And the store closing rumors continue at Retail. I noted earlier that Marla had a dream of opening her own place, but she nails that coffin shut today.

Worst part about a dream deferred is that she can't guarantee that she'll find anything with health care anyway.

 

And to make things worse ...

She'll probably run into the same thing shown in today's Mr. Boffo.

It's a funny gag, but these collections of occupational bafflegab are also a warning: The hiring here is being done by Human Resources.

This interview could never happen, which is the point of the PSA.

HR screens candidates strictly by a resume checklist the significance of which they don't understand, routinely turning away interesting people that the person that person would actually work for will never see.

Run away.

They're telling you that the place sucks before you even write that cover letter they won't read.

 

Juxtaposition of Nature Facts

(Sherman's Lagoon)

(Dogs of C Kennel)

Sherman's Lagoon ratchets back and forth from domestic comedy to true ocean facts. This ridiculous arc is based on the latter.

And DoCK makes a gag of something I've heard from biologists and fishermen in Maine: The loons know about catch-and-release, and that tired fish are easy hunting. 

 

And now a song for Tommy Cotton and all his little friends:

 

Dealing with Details

 

Editorial cartoons are aflutter with responses to the President's physical, not many to the credit of the profession.

The rightwingers are delighted with the news not because it means their President is fit but because it dismays the leftwingers, while the leftwingers are attacking the cognitive test he took.

And in the middle are a handful of less petulant, more interesting, takes, like this one by Clay Jones who has joined the girther movement to express doubt over Trump's weight.

Yesterday, I compared the President's physique with that of a professional athlete who is the same height and weight, but his supporters have noted that fat weighs less than muscle, which means that a fat load like Trump might be considerably larger than a buff dude like Alex Roderiguez.

Fair enough, though it doesn't explain why a 6'3" president appears to be the same height as a 6'1" president.

My doctors' waiting rooms have signs saying that they must actually weigh and measure you and will not rely on self-reported stats.

Just sayin'

And there's this: While I'm three years younger, I share roughly the same health issues as the President. My doctor is not in a panic over anything, but, while the White House doctor has reportedly declared Trump fit to be President through a second term, mine certainly doesn't project where I'll be that far into the future.

Maybe the White House doctor is a member of the AARP. According to the AARP, any 90-year-old with a grain of character climbs mountains and runs marathons.

(Interesting that the stories in the AARP magazine are all about those 90-year-old mountain climbers while all the ads are for people who can no longer bend over to tie their shoe laces. But I digress.)

Anyway, that any competent physician would project what a 71 year old man who is overweight and has cholesterol and blood pressure issues that impinge upon his cardiac health will be like at 77 boggles the mind.

But then, this has been a mind-boggling administration.

 

Meanwhile, in the social wars
Darrin Bell braves the prevailing winds.

For those who missed it, comedian Aziz Ansari was accused of sexual assault or at least something approaching assault in a posting at babe.net, and you really have to read that in order to comment intelligently on the topic, but it has sparked some interesting pushback from some unexpected directions, including a lot of people who support #METOO.

The basics are that this woman had a first date with Ansari that included a quick dinner and then several types of sexual contact at his apartment, after which she complained that it had gone too far. He then apologized for misreading the signals. 

I'm not being dismissive -- that's what she reported.

And then she went public, or, semi-public, because she identified him but not herself.

So this wasn't #METOO but, rather, #SOMEBODYTOO, a point I make because, while I support not identifying victims of sex crimes without their consent, the #METOO movement is based on women having the courage to stand up and normalize the bad things they have endured. In fact, some women have given their own names, but then said only "my boss" or "a friend."

Her complaint is disheartening because the anti-feminist response to #METOO was to speculate that women would start making the kinds of accusations in this screed, which is basically a description of a first date gone bad. 

Again, you need to read it to get this point.

I've stood back a bit on this topic because I'm of a different generation. I hear that oral sex is apparently something you do when you don't want to have intercourse, but that wasn't my generation's experience.

However, I'm willing to accept that getting naked and performing oral sex on each other is not an indication that intercourse is necessarily welcome.

Still, I don't think the message of saying "Stop" and putting your clothes back on has changed, nor have the meanings of "Take me home" or "I'm leaving" been altered.

Confession: I went through a short period -- maybe six weeks -- of pushing too hard and being a jerk and I've thought about that throughout the #METOO.

I am ashamed to admit, I wasn't hearing anything much less explicit that "Stop" and "No."

It wasn't the only regrettable thing happening in those six dreary weeks, but that doesn't excuse it. I was being a jerk.

I wised up mostly by moving to Boulder where I was happier to begin with, but also where women were more explicit in setting limits and expressing intentions.

In fact, the first woman I dated out there was a radical feminist who insisted on splitting the tab on everything.

And who stayed the night on our first date because she wanted to, not because I wheedled. The relationship faded -- I was Willie Yeats to her Maude Gonne -- but the point is that she took responsibility for herself. Her clarity was refreshing and healing.

She railed against the patriarchy, but she never used it as an alibi.

Times, and sexual mores, may have changed, but "no" still means "no," and it still requires that you actually say "no" and not some nonverbal nonconfrontational clairvoyant nonstatement.

 

Elayne Boosler shares my take, but we're roughly the same age, so maybe that doesn't count.

And Friend-of-the-Blog Sean Stephane Martin, whose Doc and Raider deals intelligently with sex and relationships on a regular basis, posted a strongly worded takedown on Facebook which is worth your time.

Counterpoint: There was also an opinion piece supporting the Babe account at the New York Times, but the comments are more interesting than the piece itself.

I'm not making excuses for sexual assault. As I have said before, some men are astonishingly clueless.

But the genes for cluelessness are not found exclusively on the Y chromosome.

Male or female, you need to know when it's time to just pull up your pants and leave.

 

 

Intelligence

  Juxtaposition of the Stupid, Part One

(Frazz)

(Grand Avenue)

(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

It's only fair to start by admitting that I have no idea what SMBC is talking about, because, when I took physics back in the Dark Ages, we just had to memorize some formulas about water displacement and things falling down.

That was pretty much how high school math worked, too.

We seemed to be in a kind of post-Sputnik transitional period, where everyone knew we had to step it up, but we hadn't quite figured out how, and so Farmer Brown's apples were still the exemplar and our teachers were better accountants than they were mathematicians.

I say this because, by the time my kids took math and physics in high school in the mid-80s, they were actually learning why solutions were framed the way they were.

Our teachers only wanted us to show our work to prove we hadn't cheated.

But my kids could come up with the right answer and have their teacher say, "Okay, that works for now, but here's why we do it this other way ..." and provide both the theory and a little preview of upcoming problems in which instinctive methodology would leave you high and dry.

Other places apparently were somewhat ahead of us: I think tiny rural schools like mine and underfunded inner city schools shared a problem in attracting hip, up-to-date faculty, because my college classmates seemed far more clued in on this stuff than I was.

But let's not pat ourselves on the back yet, because Farmer Brown's apples are still important, and I see two sources of foolish on-line whining on the topic.

The first is a general whining about "word problems," which is either a failure of teaching or a perceptual problem I simply can't grok. If Farmer Brown has five apples and he sells them for 20 cents each, how hard is it to figure out how much money he ends up with? 

You don't need a lot of mathematical theory to know that multiplication is just a quicker form of addition. Line up the damn apples, put two dimes next to each one and add them. 

I have trouble with abstract problems, but if you can reduce it to apples, I'm cool.

Maybe that's just me.

But then you've got people proudly crowing that they haven't used algebra since school, which shows that they not only didn't learn how it works but they didn't even learn what it was.

Maybe they have a high enough income that they can just pile groceries into their cart without comparing prices of similar items.

And maybe, when they paint a room, they buy their paint one gallon at a time and just keep going back each time they run out.

And they never have to double a recipe because, when they need more food, they just throw another frozen dinner into the microwave.

But they still shouldn't go on Facebook and boast about how little they know. 

I don't understand all the theories behind physics and calculus, but I understand the theory behind trying to cover up your ignorance instead of making it a point of pride.

Which brings us to ...

 

Juxtaposition of the Stupid, Fatal Version

(Kevin Siers)

(Jack Ohman)

On the national level, we've reached the stage where we've essentially got trolls running the government, because, as Cory Booker and Kamala Harris and others pointed out yesterday, you can't possibly be that stupid and therefore you must think that we are.

I am not comfortable with a head of Homeland Security who honestly believes that only foreign terrorists matter, and who doesn't find our homegrown white supremacists a threat.

But I am reassured when she also says, under oath, that she doesn't know if Norway is a predominantly white country.

I don't feel any safer, mind you. But at least I know we're dealing with a deliberate, contemptible liar and not merely a dimbulb incompetent.

Though Cory and Kamala and I could all be wrong.

Maybe "I didn't notice" and "I don't remember" are honest responses from that whole crew.

Booker may find it impossible to believe you could hear vulgar, racist garbage pour from the mouth of the President of the United States and not notice, but then maybe he just hasn't been in the right meetings. 

Perhaps they didn't hear anything noticeable or memorable.

The Troll Army -- in government, in media, on social media -- has seized the argument that there is nothing offensive in calling Africa and Haiti "shitholes" because other presidents have used more vulgar terms elsewhere.

For instance, they note, Joe Biden called extending healthcare to the lower middle class "a big fucking deal." That was more offensive, because "fuck" is more offensive than "shit."

And also because extending healthcare to the working poor is more offensive than deporting refugees.

I am perfectly willing to believe that they are so used to hearing open, blatant hatred of black people and Latinos expressed in their meetings that Trump's statements genuinely didn't attract any notice.

Gosh, I feel better already.

Just as I feel better knowing that the President is cognitively perfect.

And, as Mike Luckovich notes and the doctor reports, that he weighs 239 pounds.

Which means that Donald Trump is the same height as Alex Rodriguez, and only nine pounds heavier.

(Alex is the one without the hat. Fun Fact: His family is from
Hispaniola's other shithole country.)

The bottom line is what I said about Martin Luther King Jr the other day: The mission is not to convert bigots, because you won't. The mission is to awaken the decent people who need to get up and speak up and hit the polling booths.

That's an important mission, and you won't get any help from this government in carrying it out.

Because it's not an issue of intelligence. As Jen Sorensen neatly points out, this is not an Idiocracy.

It's worse.

 

Don't let nobody turn us 'round:

 

Tuesday Short Takes

I don't know why the funny comes in bunches, but it seems to be feast or famine around here and, while yesterday was a holiday, today is a feast day. 

So we'll start with Agnes to which I have absolutely nothing to add. One ought not to gild the lily.

 

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

By contrast, I could go off on a true rant over today's Loose Parts.

Back in the days before on-line dating sites, I answered a classified in the Montreal Gazette because it said she didn't mind a little baggage but no steamer trunks. We went out a couple of times and it didn't catch fire but she remains one of the most entertaining and interesting people I've dated.

Funny, attractive, creative, smart -- no wonder we didn't click.

My experiences with Match.com were not as positive and mostly left me grateful for the ridiculous stories that resulted, and I'm sure that's a factor that works for both genders. I'm inclined to view "BaggageClaim.com" as truth in advertising.

I did correspond back and forth with a woman who was separated but not yet divorced and I finally suggested that she wasn't clear on what was happening in her life and might want to pause and rethink.

Two or three years later, I was doing a teacher workshop in another city and a nice looking woman approached me, introduced herself and thanked me: She'd taken my advice and she and her husband had reconciled.

I wish the others had such a nice ending but -- phew -- not the case.

People do meet on-line and hatch wonderful relationships, but not on dating sites. They just meet the way nice, non-desperate people meet in real life, serendipitously and through shared interests.

Though I get a kick out of the low-level clerical workers on Match.com whose favorite places are Greek islands. See "Agnes," above.

And this 45-minute documentary on Ashley Madison is worth the time because it's so laughably bizarre.

Not the idea that someone hacked a database of people looking to have extra-marital affairs -- that's just karma -- but the fact that the overwhelming majority of willing, lovely female clients turned out to be bots programmed to get foolish men to pay money to talk to them. Essentially, a salacious Eliza.

Anyway, I met my wife because we lived in the same apartment house and I met my two long-term post-divorce relationships at work, by happenstance.

Meanwhile, those Ashley-Madison bots seem to have migrated to Facebook.

 

Juxtaposition of the Apocalypse

(Clay Jones)

(Dave Granlund)

The Hawaiian fiasco reminds me of the weekly tests at the radio station when I had my talk show. 

I'm not adept at remembering which switch goes up and which goes down and while management didn't mind me screwing up volume settings or leaving hot mikes enabled, my inability to successfully complete a test of the Emergency Broadcast System inspired the hiring of an engineer for the show.

So I'm sympathetic to the poor slob who hit the wrong button. 

And wotthehell anyway. When I was doing that sort of thing, it was in a studio through the window of which I could see Cheyenne Mountain. If there were a nuclear attack, we were gonna be jelly and whether or not we knew it 20 minutes before it happened was largely immaterial.

No matter how thick the door or how much dirt we piled on top of it.

Though I'd note that Dave Granlund is making a historical reference, given that radar did pick up the Japanese planes prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor and misidentified them, failing to sound the alarm.

The lesson that day being that, if you're gonna screw it up, a false alarm is better than none at all.

 

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Tank McNamara begins the annual search for "Sports Jerk of the Year," with an acknowledgment that it's less a crowded field this year than a field greatly overshadowed regardless of how many potential nominees there are.

I mean, the word "spurs" makes a lot of people think of a jerk, but it doesn't necessarily makes them think of San Antonio.

 

Now I don't have to write this

I've mentioned the partnership formed at Rhymes with Orange between strip creator Hilary Price and former Tina's Groove cartoonist Rina Piccolo, but I never got back to deliver any details.

Never mind: This Smashpages interview more than covers things, at greater length than I'd have had space for.

It's a good read, and, if it leaves you with any questions, Rina's currently doing an Ask Me Anything session over here.

 

Other Juxtaposition of the Day

(Reality Check)

(Soup to Nutz)

I told you it was a day full of laffs, though these fall under the Dark Humor category. At this stage, I'll take whatever laffs I can get. 

We've talked many times of how the Internet has let bigots and other under-the-rock types find each other, but having a leader who is not only a conspiracy buff but who is not firmly anchored to even his own statements has really brought the Cliff Claven know-it-alls to the forefront.

Never mind "mansplaining." Let's talk about "trollsplaining."

The difference being that a mansplainer carefully, condescendingly explains in great detail something you already knew, while a trollsplainer uses the same patient, dutifully rational manner to explain in detail something that you would have to be both utterly uninformed and completely out of your mind to believe.

I prefer the ones who froth at the mouth and flail on the floor. 

Meanwhile, don't worry: These days, a sense of impending doom is the rational response.

 

So consider the alternatives

I don't know where Piranha Club is going with this, but, given the current state of the world, they sure sparked a welcome flashback:

Here's a bit of an update on Shelton.

 

For our readers who prefer cartoons in audio format:

 

Ladies' Day

(Pajama Diaries)

(Sheldon)

This juxtaposition amused me before I'd come up with a theme for the day, but it starts us off well.

In both cases, the wife is mocked for a fascination the husband can't grasp, and both are affectionate rather than hostile.

The first, by Terri Libenson, works on a self-deprecating "Yeah, I know, but humor me," level, while the second, by Dave Kellett, is more of an "I love you, but I don't get it" gag.

But, as I was reading Pajama Diaries, I was thinking, "Yes, Rob, it's ridiculous except that you'll notice the difference tonight and, if you don't, that's on you."

That's different than "Sheldon," which suggests that Kellett's wife is piling up so many pillows that some have to be put on chairs before anyone can get in bed, either because there are just too many of them or because some are decorative pillows rather than bed pillows.

That opens up the question of whether you are decorating a house for yourself or choosing a decor for your family and is a topic unto itself.

When seven-eighths of the house looks like Laura Ashley designed a dreamhouse for Barbie, but one room in the basement looks like a 12-year-old's favorite Budweiser commercial, that's a couple who is simply sharing rent.

But people do have systems and part of the back-and-forth between husband and wife is respect for systems and a respect for rejecting systems.

Jill's system sounds -- even to her -- slightly ridiculous, but she has reasons for it and, if Rob wants to listen, he'd appreciate them, even if he doesn't think it's worth the fuss. Moreover, the exchange in that final panel is not an argument but simply her suspecting maybe she's a little over the top with it and his "thank you for noticing."

And if he has a pegboard in the basement with his open-ended wrenches hung in size-order, he has a right to want anyone who uses a wrench to hang it back up, but if they borrow two wrenches and don't return them to the right pegs, he should only sigh and fix it, not blow a fuse.

Because systems are okay, but being a hostile, obsessive jackass -- or jenny -- is not.

This is the type of relationship that leads to man caves and frou-frou.

It's also a movie that I had a girlfriend walk out on. I said, "But that's how it was. It's a movie about relationships in that era," to which she responded, "But why would I want to watch it?"

Helluva good question. Ruined one of my favorite movies.

I've been thinking about women and comics, in part because of the #METOO movement but for other reasons as well, and, on his blog, Tom Falco notes the Smithsonian's LoC's exhibit, "Drawn to Purpose: American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists," (Correction -- it's at the Library of Congress, but much information is in Smithsonian Magazine) which has opened in Washington and will be around until October.

And here's what I've been mulling over, which is still unsettled in my mind:

In the business world, one of the early keys to promotion for women was to act like men, perhaps best symbolized by the blue suits and string ties of the 1980s and 90s. It was a much harder transition to the top for women who didn't happen to be a little brusque and sharp-elbowed.

So how did -- does -- that play out on the funny pages?

Dale Messick and "Brenda Starr" are prominent in this discussion, and Falco notes that Messick changed from "Dahlia" to "Dale" to get her work even looked at, which raises the question in my mind of "Was she published because she cartooned like a man?"

It's not that Brenda Starr didn't feel like a "woman's strip" -- it always did to me -- but there was a similar feel for the male-written "The Heart of Juliet Jones," a strip about a smart, tough woman who spends a lot of time in and out of romance.

I'm not suggesting that Messick consciously "sold out" but rather that she happened to be in tune with the prevailing culture.

A more stark example:

One exhibit at the Smithsonian LoC is this 1943 New Yorker cartoon by Helen Hokinson, for which the caption reads, "Remember that shy Alice (illegible last name) who never had a date? I hear she's on her third husband."

Granted, there were plenty of colleges then where women pursued MRS degrees, but if this weren't signed by a woman, there wouldn't be much of a clue that it was drawn by one. 

 

Googling images for her work, it seems her characters were universally silly, spoiled, upper-middleclass women, though I came across this reference to one of the Seven Sisters.

Still, the focus remains on the intentionally ditzy, wealthy mother, rather than on the intelligent, plain, flat-chested daughter.

The exhibit moves forward to Lynn Johnston, however, who paved the way for humorous but respectful takes on daily life from a woman's perspective.

Her work, and the works she inspired, are not a matter of pursuing an overt feminist agenda so much as being a feminist in the core sense.

And, from my male perspective, I like Jill's struggle to convince Rob that there are systems which make the bed more comfortable, because I'm sure it's a subtle difference but that she's right.

But here's my question:

If jokes about wives who wreck cars and can't balance checkbooks are sexist drivel, what about cartoons about women, by women, in which the punchline is an obsession with shoes and chocolate?

Lame, yes. But condescending sexism, or just the female equivalent of men's jokes about golf?

I'm asking. I don't know.

Maybe I should go to Washington and look into it.

 

Meanwhile:
Ann Telnaes -- who is featured in the exhibit -- has a sharp, funny little book about Dear Leader just hitting the shelves.

Bado has a preview and, while Amazon is only offering a paperback edition, you'll get a hardcover copy for the same price if you go to Fantagraphics.

Amazon offers Kindle, but friends don't let friends read comics on the phone.

Be not a Meathead

People keep saying that Trump is a feast for political cartoonists, and this past week has certainly offered plenty of fodder.

But too much easy living can leave you fat and lazy. The week's cartoons offered more laughs than insight.

On the other hand, some cartoonists have maintained their edge despite all the low-hanging fruit.

For instance, regular readers know how much I disliked "All in the Family" and may therefore guess how much I like Steve Breen's cartoon.

I was just 21 and didn't watch a lot of TV when it debuted, but we tuned in to watch this new breakthrough show.

For about the first half-dozen episodes.

However, the notion of spending 20 minutes listening to some bigoted jackass shoot his mouth off for the pleasure of having his children contradict him in the last three minutes seemed like swimming in a cesspool for the pleasure of taking a shower afterwards. 

I honestly didn't get it and assumed it meant that Norman Lear and his pals lived in a golden world where such people didn't exist and, like rich, spoiled Carole Lombard in "My Man Godfrey," thought it amusing to go slumming among the proletariat. 

I had many friends who lived on other people's couches because, unlike Michael and Gloria Stivic, they refused to use finances as an excuse to live in an atmosphere of unrelenting toxicity. So my appreciation of Michael's impassioned little weekly sermonettes was well offset by my contempt for his gutless, parasitical existence.

Which  contempt I later transferred to St. Norman of Lear when he didn't sue to shut down the people who sold "Archie Bunker for President" gear.

If he ever honestly thought he was fighting bigotry, the elevation of Archie to folk-hero status should have convinced him that he was, instead, celebrating it and encouraging it to crawl out from under its rock.

So here we are, and how do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mister Lear?
Clay Bennett suggests a remedy, but the fact is that hatred, bigotry and unbridled stupidity are not impeachable offenses.

It would be nice to find something that is, but it'll take more than the handful of dirty laundry that forced Spiro Agnew out of office, because Dear Leader is firmly ensconced and has friends in high places eager to keep him there.

Perhaps a power snake, but a simple plunger isn't gonna move this blockage.

 

And as Scott Stantis notes, don't expect a lot of cooperation from the man who pledged to be too busy to play golf and predicted he wouldn't even leave the White House because he'd be working so hard.

 

And who, as Steve Sack points out, pledged not to allow his personal holdings to interfere with his duties as President of all the people, especially the ones who live in swing states presided over by his avid supporters.

Florida could become an interesting place as more displaced Puerto Ricans take shelter there after the hurricane that Dear Leader has declared all better now, and gubernatorial candidates there are scrambling to distance themselves from the insult to their other immigrant citizens.

With the exception, as of 8:30 this morning, of Rep. Ron DeSantis, the candidate whom Dear Leader has endorsed.

Sack also commented on the shithole remark with what passes for restraint, given the number of cartoons depicting Trump's mouth as an anus.

Such restraint matters, because, while returning insult for insult is better than rolling over, Trump loyalists are already turning the focus on the offensive language in order to glaze over the far more offensive intent.

What I've seen on social media is an argument that, while "shithole" is a nasty word, Joe Biden was overheard to drop an F-bomb at the signing of the Affordable Care Act.

Which neatly sidesteps that Biden was expressing delight that people would get healthcare, while Trump was expressing his racist contempt for black and Latino people.

The takeaway being that one ought not to feed the trolls.

As Lear has proven, intentions don't count: Two minutes of "Oh, Archie -- You're so wrong!" does not cancel 20 minutes of enthusiastic laugh tracks following the "lovable bigot's" every statement.

 

Speaking of feeding the trolls, I really like Nick Anderson's commentary but it reminds me of a conversation in the park the other day about whether you should have to tramp out into the woods to scoop when your dog has pooped in 18 inches of well-off-path, untracked snow.

The argument against being that people aren't going to walk out there and it will be gone by spring.

The argument in favor coming from an owner whose dog would very likely hurry out there in search of poopsicles.

Application to this cartoon: It is best to clean up everything, because trolls will eat anything.

 

Meanwhile, and on a considerably more lofty plane, Joel Pett marks the upcoming holiday with a reflection on values.

You just can't let the "shithole" comments go unanswered. It is absolutely necessary to drag them out into the light, regardless of how dirty you feel even dealing with them.

But a constant drumbeat of personal insults only stirs up the True Believers and increases the sense of persecution among the "Archie for President" crowd.

Arousing active opposition -- getting decent people to the polls in November -- means keeping them aware not just that we have a vulgar clown in the Oval Office but of what we're losing as a nation.

Here Pett takes advantage of the holiday to highlight the best we can be, in contrast to the current lack of effort to behave decently and to live up to our ideals.

Cartoonists need to avoid the temptation to simply draw the obvious cartoons this buffoonish bigot serves up.

What Sheridan said of writing applies to their craft as well:

You write with ease to show your breeding,
But easy writing's curst hard reading

 

This was on the stereo while Archie was on the TV

 

Profiles in Discouragement

Sometimes even when you work weeks ahead, you manage to drop the right cartoon at the right time, and Scott Stantis did that with this morning's Prickly City.

When the Washington Post reported Dear Leader's outrageously racist remarks yesterday, there was a flutter of people getting the vapors on CNN, and a surge of cartoonists on Facebook and Twitter recognizing that a day's work had just become obsolete.

Down in Brazil -- which I assume is one of the shithole countries -- Rice Aurajo may have penned the best possible response.

I like it: It's vulgar and to the point, without simply being "Fuck you."

Newspapers and TV stations are having enough trouble dealing with "shithole" and don't need to add the burden of the succinct response that I'm sure crossed a lot of minds.

Well, a lot but not all, because Fox & Collaborators sprang to Trump's defense, explaining that he was only voicing what "the forgotten people" say in bars.

I would point out that this is why they are in bars and not working or perhaps at home with their families, and that it is precisely why we have tried so hard, as a nation, to forget them. 

Lawmakers have condemned the comments, or, at least, Democratic lawmakers have.

Orrin Hatch commented that he wanted more information, which I guess means he needed a specific list of shithole countries or maybe he hoped Trump prefaced the quote with "We don't want to sound like the racist scum who would ask ..."

 However, the most depressing response was the reaction to Republican Representative Mia Love, who roundly condemned the statement and was then attacked on social media for not having -- in the 90 minutes or so between the revelation of the quote and her demand for an apology -- also voted against something Trump wanted, resigned from Congress and perhaps set herself afire on the Capitol steps.

Proving the point of the Prickly City cartoon: We've long since abandoned any pretense at sharing a common humanity.

And proving that Trump and his groupies are far from the only people who now divide the nation not into Democrats and Republicans but into Friends and Enemies.

There have been other cartoons on the topic, but this issue has to sit, I think, before we really know what the impact is, beyond pissing off some people and delighting others.

The cartoons I've seen so far on it seem rushed and, while some are better than others, the reason I featured Aurajo's is that he managed to express the appalled, insulted reaction of an outside observer with some very good artwork that was disgusting without being simply vulgar.

And the fact that it comes from abroad reminds me of my sister's response to the assassination of Dr. King, which was, she said, that she just wanted to walk up to random black people on the street and apologize. 

Similarly, I know what I think of us. I'm more concerned with what other countries must think of us, not simply people in the shithole countries but people in all countries not led by insane racist morons whom they freely elected.

Which I think is pretty much all of them, if you include the "whom they freely elected" part.

The hardcore talk-radio Trump loyalists talk about an "apology tour" that Obama took, but the repair work our next president will have to do is going to make that look like an Olson Twins travelogue.

And an overflowing toilet is not a bad metaphor. It isn't stopping.

Yesterday, Dear Leader began his twittery by repeating some drivel he'd seen on Fox & Friends which contradicted his own stated policy on FISA surveillance. Apparently Paul Ryan phoned him in a panic and Trump then added a PS to semi-walk back his foolishness.

But he hasn't modified this other ridiculous tweet he sent out, about why he has cancelled his trip to the UK, which is not a shithole but which still wasn't looking forward to his visit.

Responses to this PeeWee Hermanesque explanation included a number of people pointing out that it was George W. Bush who ordered the relocation of the embassy.

And here's the point:

He can complain about disloyal Steve Bannon and lying Michael Wolff portraying him as a dumbass who refuses to think or listen or learn and who shoots his mouth off like a petulant five-year-old, but the person who most advances that view of him is still in the White House.

 

Before and beyond the quick-draw responses to yesterday's outrageous, openly racist remarks, cartoonists like Jack Ohman were picking up on a distinct, if not distinctly courageous, level of disengagement by erstwhile Republicans.

Jeff Stahler puts the growing movement in starker terms, which may well be justified, it seeming less a thoughtful reaction than a mindless panic. 

For cartoonists, and for the rest of us, this points to a more measured, valuable response than being angry at Mia Love for her immediate reaction.

Granted, she's hardly the first dogmatic conservative to find her heart when partisan bigotry strikes a personal target.

The question, however, is not anyone's immediate response to a revelation, whether achieved nobly or through a personal affront, but what they do after that epiphany has struck home.

Representative Love has to answer for her part in thus far enabling this travesty of good government, but mostly to her constituents and her own conscience.

She's started the process, now she has to complete it, and I'd support her spiritual odyssey, just as I'd support Jeff Flake and Ron Corker if they had the guts to stand up in order to do more than simply scurry out of the room.

Meanwhile, pointing out that Donald Trump is a moronic, unapologetic racist does not advance the process of reclaiming our nation.

Tell us something we don't already know.

Ask the dogs why they lie down with this fleabag.

And demand answers.

 

Meanwhile, we'd all do well to stand up to Mia's name:

 

Firing Lines

Retail has been playing in the rumor mill this week, with dubious predictions of store closings and Marla wondering if those rumors are true and, if so, might her store be on the hit list.

While actually closing the place down is, perhaps, specific to the retail industry, the overall concept of cutbacks and layoffs is familiar in these days of disembodied management making decisions that have nothing to do with local conditions. 

I've wondered what would happen if a newspaper management team took over, say, Home Depot. They would notice that the store in St. Paul had sold X-number of snowblowers last month and would put out a chain-wide memo demanding that everyone match that total, and then would begin firing managers in Florida and Hawaii for not meeting quota.

And if they took over McDonalds, they would decide that food should be sold in the restaurant but given out free at the drive-thru. Then they would begin firing managers if their inside sales figures declined.

Today's open-browser gag reminded me of a morning in 2002 when I walked through the newsroom and saw one reporter's screen open to Lee Enterprises, which at the time was a 22-small-paper chain based primarily in the Missouri Valley.  Having been in the job market just two years earlier, I was familiar with Lee but also appalled that he would reveal his job searching so carelessly.

Turned out he was looked up Lee because our little 16-paper chain had been acquired by them. But 38 newspapers of roughly the same small size was still manageable, though I was sorry to go from privately-held to publicly-traded ownership.

But then, three years later, Lee acquired the Pulitzer chain, including the 450,000 daily St. Louis Dispatch which every sane person assumed they would spin off (A) in order to recoup some of the choking debt that ensued, and (B) because the massive daily was way out of their area of expertise.

They did neither, nor did they even have the sense to realize that, ungainly as conference calls had been with 38 papers, to continue to try to schedule them in a chain of 58 was, well, a warning about what else the stable geniuses in Davenport, Iowa, had planned.

When I first began purchasing stock through their employee plan, the shares were worth about $40 each. Shortly after I left in 2006, they dropped to $4 and they only went down from there. They are currently worth $2.40 each and I've seen them at less than half that.

Like Cooper, I have a strongly heightened sense of schadenfreude for disembodied corporate overlords, and so was particularly delighted that, when I dissolved my 401k, the timing was such that, after they gave me all my money but apparently before they closed the account, there was a distribution and so technically I still own a fraction of a single share.

This means that, over the past decade-plus, they have had to keep sending me proxies and Chapter 11 notices and other things, the postage each time costing them about three times the value of my holdings.

Keep hoping, Coop. Time wounds all heels.

 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the briny, Alex has been updating new compliance rules in British markets, making the strip a little obscure for American readers. However, the current arc about robotic management is universal and fits my memories of corporate life.

As much as people may joke about "being awarded the cardboard box," it's a humiliating event, particularly when it comes out of the blue.

The ideal situation is to jump before you get pushed, but I had a friend at the NY Daily News who was called into a meeting and was not even awarded the box -- while she was being told the bad news, her phone number and email were being canceled and security marched her straight from the boss's office to the sidewalk.

She had to have friends gather her personal effects later.

The punchline being that she was only dismissed in a financial cutback, not for poor performance.

I guess it's funnier in a cartoon strip.

 

And if you think freelancing would spare you all this, the Oatmeal points out the fact that you still have to deal with clients and collaborators. 

There are warning signs, of course, and you can decline a project if you pick up on the vibe in time.

Unless you want to pay your rent or perhaps purchase some groceries.

My first major freelance job managed to combine idiocy with mendacity, and I had to go to court to get paid, which meant figuring out the cost of suing versus the cost of giving in.

I was willing to go full Winston on that.

 Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

The avoidance of which is why you get half the money up front. 

And why you try to bargain such that "half the money" is at least two-thirds of what you'd have done the whole thing for anyway.

 

Three minds with but a single thought:

(Clay Bennett)

(Gary Varvel)

(Drew Sheneman)

The Banishment of Bannon struck several cartoonists as worthy of comment, and inspired this unfortunate three-way head-on.

I'm amused by Juxtapositions, when two cartoonists pick up on a similar theme, but this coincidence I point out because it illustrates a point: There's very little plagiarism in the business, but sometimes more than one person has the same idea.

Granted, it's not the most breakthrough concept: Panhandlers with signs are a standard cartooning image.

But here are three top-flight cartoonists and three well-drawn cartoons that appeared simultaneously.

If you open your window, you can hear the sound of three heads banging on drawing boards.

Shit happens, guys. Tomorrow's another day.

 

Sometimes the originality is in the delivery