CSotD: Implausible undeniability
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I wouldn't know where to start if Ruben Bolling hadn't coincidentally snipped this bit from a previous Tom the Dancing Bug to run in his Super-Fun-Pak Comix feature today. Without bothering to research when the original, larger comic parody ran, this piece clearly is from the Trump era because it's made up of things foolish frogs were saying about Trump when he was elected.
And now here we are. Matt Davies distinguishes his work from the far too many "revolving door on the White House" cartoons by using the term but then depicting the experience. It's not just that there's a lot of turnover, but the experience of working there has got to be a meatgrinder.
I've stuck with a bad job while I waited to find a new gig and I've hung around waiting to be fired so I could qualify for unemployment. Neither experience is fun. But at least I wasn't being required to subvert my nation as well as insult my personal dignity.
It is particularly degrading and frustrating when your job stops being the thing you were ostensibly hired to do and simply becomes a futile, frustrating effort to protect those below you from those above you.
I know how stressful it is when it's simply your staff you're trying to protect, but I saw my father go through it when the objects of his concern were an entire town and I can only imagine what it must be like when your energies are going into a futile attempt to keep the nation safe from predatory, conscienceless power freaks.
But, as Matt Wuerker depicts, here we are indeed and good luck, Rex.
It's likely a relief for him personally, not simply for the relief of stress but also, as someone observed when Hope Hicks left, because these people are building up huge legal bills the more Dear Leader traipses through the swamp he promised to clean up.
It's wildly expensive simply to go through the vetting process for a position in the White House or towards the top of a Department. The cost multiplies when your position makes you a witness, never mind a co-conspirator.
And the Wild Rumpus goes on, which is at least reassurance that your sticking around wouldn't have helped and would have produced nothing but perhaps a coronary.
Though there is the question, as Aditi Kinkhabuala asked on Twitter yesterday, "On the show, doesn’t *somebody* get to stay on the island?"
(Kinkhabuala's actual job is as an NFL TV analyst, and perhaps the fact that she's assigned to cover the Cleveland Browns gives her particular insight into the Trump White House.)
Juxtaposition of the Day
The True Believers will never accept why Tillerson was fired, but it's obvious to the rest of the world and to David Frum, whose previously doctrinaire rightwing writings have been, in recent months, animated by serious thought and significant spine, and who provides here the best breakdown I've read.
On March 12, Tillerson had backed the British government’s accusation that Russia was culpable for a nerve-agent attack on United Kingdom soil. If Tillerson had been fired March 9, then his words of support for Britain could not explain his firing three days before. But if the White House was lying about the timing, it could be lying about the motive.
And since it now seems all but certain that the White House was lying about the timing, it looks more probable that it was lying about the motive too.
And the House Intelligence Committee has helped further this bizarre conspiracy to shelter the President from the consequences of his inexplicable loyalty to Vladimir Putin.
Or perhaps I should say, a conspiracy to keep the obvious inexplicable.
Pat Bagley isn't buying it, though, as the street sign suggests, the Deplorables will accept any explanation — or lack thereof — that Dear Leader provides.
However, the conspiracy theorists, particularly in light of the latest unexplained death, are beginning to suggest that maybe Trump is afraid his dear friend will turn things on him or his family. We know that Manafort owes millions to a powerful oligarch, and it may well be that some of those unpaid debts lie closer to the Trump family than that.
I don't like conspiracy theories, but I'm pretty sure it's safer to stiff a few carpenters than to mess with Russian oligarchs.
A fella might collude with an umbrella.
(Funny-not-ha-ha story: A GF who went to a private boarding school had a roommate who was a Mafia princess. She found the girl weeping in their room one day and wheedled the reason out of her — her brother had messed up an important job and there was now a contract out on him. However, that was her big moment of inconsolable grief. When, a few weeks later, he turned up in the trunk of a car, she was sad but prepared for it. I'm hoping our foreign policy is not based on something similar.)
Reassuring Juxtaposition of the Day
But, hey, maybe the guy is just a gutless coward who rolls over for anyone with money and power.
Phew. I feel so much better!
Meanwhile, Scott Stantis offers a little advice for those who have decided to stick around.
Meanwhile, on the funny pages
Here are today's and yesterday's Retail strips, as we continue the story of Cooper being named temporary store manager for a Grumbel's location that is being closed but whose management staff bailed before the final day.
I'll admit I didn't see the reunion of Stuart and Cooper coming and I'm really looking forward to this story arc.
Though, as suggested in today's Barn, satisfaction and glory on the comics page is fleeting.
The Old Generation salutes the New
(Posting early. Gotta go help my granddaughter get her materials
to school early for today's walkout.)
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