CSotD: Sunday Short Takes
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Let's begin where we left off yesterday, with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's bizarre boycott of their own cartoonist. See yesterday's blog posting for background, see JP Trostle's cartoon above for a response I like.
And here's Rob's latest cartoon. What the hell, if his own paper won't print them, I will. And they're still paying him, last I heard, so it all works out.
You can keep up with his work at GoComics, so here's that link and he'll get, I think, a ha'penny if you (all) click on it.
If and when more details emerge, I'll let you know.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(
(A pair of British cartoonists had an oddly similar metaphorical response to Dear Leader's announcement of tariffs, though the motivation they attribute to him is based on two quite different aspects of arrogance.
Jennings depicts a straight out "up yours" attitude, and I particularly like the way, in his panel, Trump's tie hangs below the girder.
It does in both cartoons, but, in Jennings' piece, it raises the real-world question of whether he has to toss it over his shoulder at urinals to avoid peeing on it.
And the fantasy-world question of whether he'd enjoy a ride in Isadora Duncan's roadster.
However, on the whole, I prefer Peter Brookes' take, because, in his panel, the arrogance is more a matter of indifference and laziness than of malice.
I really don't think that, for all the pain he causes, Trump has evil intentions. I doubt he thinks things through far enough to foresee the damage he does, and to have any feelings about it one way or the other.
Most people learn to at least fake good manners, but he's never even come that far.
His lack of empathy does not stem from malicious motivation, but it's equally toxic in the end: The boy throws rocks in sport, but the frogs die in earnest.
Which makes his system of tariffs more like this double-edged, blindly wielded sword in Stuart Carlson's cartoon.
Trump is hardly the first president to discover with joy the powers he didn't know presidents have.
Theodore Roosevelt was frustrated with a reluctant Congress that didn't see the need for conservation, until he discovered that he had the power to set aside federal land without their advice and consent, whereupon he happily set aside a number of wildlife sanctuaries and national monuments.
The current president is using the same powers to undeclare all that, so the commercial exploitation and destruction TR sought to prevent can go forward.
But I digress.
There are a couple of reasons I particularly like Graeme MacKay's response to Trump having declared our free trade arrangements with Canada a threat to national security.
One is that, having grown up not far from the border and having researched and written a kids' story about the War of 1812, I'm familiar with the re-enactment here proposed.
Mr. Madison's War proved that, not only was a well-regulated militia not necessary to our security but was, in time of war, a genuine detriment to it.
The only thing that saved us was that, while we had some astonishingly horrible officers on our side, most of the marginally competent British commanders were back in Europe dealing with Napoleon, such that the War of 1812 has been described as an attempt to see who would screw up the most.
And ended, essentially, in a draw.
Meanwhile, I was a business reporter on the border as the Free Trade Agreement between our two countries was being drawn up, and I was admittedly less gungho a few years later, when we changed FTA to NAFTA and brought in Mexico, because our economies, labor laws and environmental rules were way out of congruency and it seemed a far less natural fit than with Canada.
However, it went through and the EU went through and a whole lot of other consolidations and trade pacts and things went through and there have been factory closings and openings and realignments based on it, and, Donnie, it's not like failed marriages or failed businesses: You can't just sign some papers and then pretend it never happened.
Brexit is not a model. It's a warning.
Juxtaposition of a Summer's Day
(The summer I was eight, I was very much like Wallace. Bobby and Keith and I alternated between flying fighter planes on the huge neighborhood swings, making spears with our jack knives, and playing that our planes had been shot down and, after bailing out — several times — we had to survive in the woods armed only with spears.
We also picked out a particular tree in the woods and, when we had to pee, would run back there and pee on it. By September, it was dead.
Summer was for learning.
These days, I'm more inclined towards Danae's view, except that, at my age, if you lay back in the grass to enjoy the sunshine, somebody sees you and panics and you wake up surrounded by EMTs.
Origins
I wasn't going to link to Wayno's blog again, because you should know to go there on Saturdays, but I really like his discussion of how the attorneys fussed over the Popeye reference.
And thank god there's no Popeyes here because I should avoid fried foods.
We just have KFC which no longer stands for "Kentucky Fried Chicken." They say the change was to emphasize health and I say it was to avoid false advertising.
I remember when the Colonel got pissed and went back and returned everything to his original recipes and methods, but then he died, they backslid and now the Colonel is as phony as the nasty crap they sell.
But Popeye's rocks, and not just the chicken but the dirty rice and jalapenos and everything.
And if they say they named it after Popeye Doyle, well, that just gives me a not-to-be-missed double video closing.
Here's the famous scene:
And here's how it came about:
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