CSotD: The Company You Keep
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Clay Jones posted this cartoon in December, reacting to Donald Trump's appearance on a Time Magazine cover as "Man of the Year."
In his commentary, he noted that the designation is for the person who most impacted the news, not for the person who has most improved the world, such that, while many wonderful people have received the honor, so have some real villains, including Hitler.
So maybe Trump shouldn’t get too excited, for indications from this list is he can contribute to mankind greatly or burn it all to the ground. He’d probably be OK with either outcome as long as he received some “terrific” compliments and Alec Baldwin didn’t mock him for it.
And then he started work on his next cartoon and life went on, except that he got an email suggesting he enter it in an international contest, so he did, and he won, and he joked about it on Facebook because he'd never heard of the contest.
And then he did.
Turns out the anti-Trump contest was put together by an Iranian group that periodically solicits cartoons on various themes friendly to the regime, including Holocaust denial.
At which point Jones publicly declined the award, and now has been interviewed by Michael Cavna, who quoted a passage from the blog:
I have an issue with a contest sponsored by the government of Iran that’s critical of free speech in the United States when they don’t allow freedom of speech, or freedom for the press in their nation.
That's a distinction worth noting, because Iran did, after all, imprison a cartoonist for using images from old folk sayings to compare Iranian authorities to animals.
And the cartooning group seems to be on the side of the hardliners in that fractious, fractured country: They also sponsored a contest for cartoons about the Holocaust, in line with the hardliners' view not that the Holocaust didn't happen, but that it is overplayed and does not justify the creation of Israel, which is also not going to win a lot of worldwide approbation.
And however you feel about any attempt to distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism, this is a good case of "lie down with the dogs, get up with the fleas."
Jones is wise to distance himself from this group, and to let the story include an element of perhaps being a little more cautious about accepting other people's suggestions.
Which is a bit of a stretch but still a segue to …
… today's Non Sequitur, the timing of which happens to coincide with my frustration over watching CNN. I recently bought a small "smart" television so that, instead of streaming movies on a laptop while doing dishes, I'm watching "The Situation Room" in the kitchen.
And I'd note, by the way, that the women on panels get a lot more chance to talk when Wolf Blitzer is on vacation, but that's not my point at the moment.
Rather, I have taken notice of the number of advertisements on CNN that aim to take advantage of gullible viewers. This actually seems to be true of all daytime TV, but it's less striking when the solicitations are tucked into Steve Harvey or the Price is Right.
As someone who put in a couple of years selling TV advertising, you'd pair "Meet the Press" or "Face the Nation" with high-end auto companies, with investment firms, with other businesses that sought an educated, successful audience.
But when it's no longer half an hour a week, when it's spewed 24/7, at dayparts during which successful people are out being successful, I suppose it's not surprising that the ads are an endless stream of offers to cheat you out of your negotiated settlement or the accumulated value of your life insurance plan or the equity in your home.
And insurance companies that promise wonderful benefits as part of their coverage but kind of slide past the part where those benefits aren't part of their base policies.
And diet plans that guarantee you'll lose the same amount of weight in the first week that you'd lose anyway, if you simply paid more attention to what you eat.
And all sorts of scooters and magical braces and other devices that Medicare will pay for as long as you find some quack who will sign a note for you and, if you can't, we've got quacks on call here to assist you.
Which made me think I should make one of two adjustments in my attitude:
A. I should stop being so judgmental about on-line news sites that are festooned with garbage clickbait and deceptive ads and realize that all media have to make a profit somehow, or
B. I should mount a revolution in the streets against the unrelenting warfare of capitalists to fleece gullible people in order to maintain a system of wage slaves.
I'll get back to you once I've made a decision.
Meanwhile, amuse yourselves with this chillingly Orwellian reality check. It fits both this segment and the one above it.
Two I like but have little to say about
Okay, the Christie-on-the-Beach memes were funny. For about a day, day-and-a-half tops. Now they're just tiresome.
But Steve Sack got a good laugh from me, and one of the few examples in which Christie's girth becomes a fair element.
It's also a fun celebration of the watchdog press getting in a good, if not Pulitzer-level, bit of sleuthing.
Mike Smith's take on the North Korea situation does a nice job of laying out the dilemma while too many cartoonists are simply drawing funny pictures of a fat little Korean kid with a silly haircut and a bad temper.
There is no easy solution to this, but having our own temperamental baby with silly hair in charge at the moment does not improve things.
Bearing in mind that, when Garry Trudeau penned this classic, there were grown-ups at each end of the conference table.
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