So, yesterday, I commented on Clay Jones posting a boatload of sketches because political cartooning has become such a target-rich environment, and this was only a few days after I posted the first of several Ann Telnaes sketches from the impeachment hearings, and commented that they were as good as some people’s finished cartoons.
Now Telnaes has combined that pair of observations with a cartoon series that begins with the above panel and then continues for several more, which you will see if you click here and which you will not see if you’re one of those people who just scrolls through looking at the images and ignoring the text.
Which serves ya right.
And leads us to our
Juxtaposition of the Day
Like the pages of a flip book, these are the days of our lives.
When Dear Leader first mentioned a willingness to testify, I assumed his handlers reacted the way the advisers in Phil Hands’ cartoon did. I’m not going to go look it up, but I seem to remember that the last time the topic came up, his courtiers talked him out of it, calling it a “perjury trap.”
Which brings to mind that old piece of advice which says that, if you always tell the truth, you don’t have to worry about keeping your story straight.
But also brings to mind that expression, “If he tells you it’s raining, you’d still better look out the window.”
If I were one of Trump’s advisers, I’d tackle him before he could get to the committee room.
Perjury trap? Once he’s sworn in, they could ask him anything and, by the third question, he’d have spun some outlandish fable that would nail him on the spot.
Which is why, as Bramhall suggests, his offer comes across as something that happens when pigs’ fly, the issue here likely being that, since the first go-round, he has stripped the White House staff of anybody with the cojones to tell him not to do it.
(And, by the way, when I flipped on my computer this morning, I got an advisory from Amazon that my copy of “Warning,” the anonymous White House expose, had been delivered to my Kindle. And just in time, because it’s hard to reveal secrets when the facts are flowing from the White House like water from a colander.)
Mike Marland then wraps things up by pointing out that Dear Leader is already on the hook for having (allegedly, reportedly, possibly) lied in the Mueller investigation, when he was able to respond in writing and have someone look it over to correct the spelling and remove the fabrications.
Mark Twain observed:
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
In this case, the cat has burned his tail and learned nothing: He’s not only unafraid to sit on a cold stove, but he’s volunteering to sit right back down on a hot one.
If there were any remaining suspicion that he is deliberately lying, that should eliminate it.
If his lies were deliberate, he’d have the sense to either avoid taking an oath or to selectively curb his flights of fancy.
His lying is a compulsion, not a choice: The man is genuinely incapable of telling the truth.
Now here’s a
Juxtaposition of the Day, Goldilocks Division
There is a three-bowls-of-porridge element to these three commentaries on last week’s witness intimidation:
Zyglis is too vague: The accusation is valid, certainly, and he nails the hypocrisy of the way the Republicans have been mewling and puking and whining, yet eagerly dishing out the very abuse they claim to suffer. But he doesn’t demonstrate the effect of the actual — and potentially actionable — witness intimidation.
However, Carlson overstates it, and his use of the Twitter bird and corresponding bird-shit imagery is the problem.
Marie Yovanovich stood up to the intimidation, admitting it bothered her but not allowing it to shut her up. This leaves Carlson with the options of depicting a splat on her shoulder to be acknowledge but wiped off — which is less than what happened — or the complete coverage he chose, which is too much, since it implies that it worked.
Ohman gets the “just right” and it’s due in large part to his foregoing symbolic imagery — which often adds a humorous implication — and simply portraying witness intimidation as the bullying gangsterism it is.
No funny elephant, no funny birdshit. Just a threatening back alley thug.
Yovanovich shows apprehension, perhaps even fear, but neither panic nor a thought of turning back.
Just as she did in the hearing.
The world is changing, and courageous women are stepping forward.
There was an immediate contrast between Yovanovich’s straightforward testimony and Elise Stefanik’s portrayal of an old-fashioned, mean-girl teacher’s pet.
But I’m also remembering the first Congressional candidate I ever voted for, Pat Schroeder, and how, when she dropped out of the Presidential race, she teared up a bit.
I always loved her combination of humanity, wit and intensity.
But instead of acknowledging that competent women could bring a human dimension to what has been an all-boys’ game, Saturday Night Live and others reduced a quarter-century of groundbreaking political work to a mean-spirited snicker at those tears.
I hope we’re done with that.
I’d like to think that the little girls James Thurber spoke of 80 years ago are finally here, recognizing villains and dealing with them as they should be dealt with.
Wait — before you go
There’s a political cartoon of the year contest going on in Great Britain that features eight cartoonists whose work has appeared here, one of them rather often. It only takes a moment to vote.
Guess my Christmas gift to myself will have to be a subscription to the Washington Post, if only to see all of Ann Telnaes work.
I found it hard to vote. I found myself leaning toward editorial cartoons about Trump. Not sure that was appropriate. This is a British contest. But – I voted.
The Washington Post link works in an incognito window!
Yeah, Mark, but who wants a stove covered in cat fur?