CSotD: No excuses
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I held back a few days on the Bill Cosby conviction because I wanted to see the cartoons that would emerge. Steve Breen has, I think, the best take.
Attempts to be humorous — to cite Jell-O pudding pops or contrast his flamboyant sweaters with prison garb — seem to fall flat. Had he been convicted of tax fraud or something similar, there could be room for jokes, but I don't think a light touch plays well, given the appalling nature of his offenses.
I also passed by the #MeToo cartoons because this wasn't a #MeToo phenomenon.
Women — many too many — have been accusing Cosby of sexual assault for at least 15 years and while it's possible, even likely, that the awareness raised by the #MeToo movement helped sway the jury away from forgiving him, it's almost coincidental.
#MeToo is far more nuanced and varied, and we are all being educated through it.
The accusations within the movement have included everything from forcible penetration to clumsy passes to bad dates, and I think women and men are using it as a needed opportunity to talk about consent issues, about workplace and power matters and even about simple etiquette.
There is no nuance in what Cosby was convicted of, nor in the similar pattern of the other assaults of which he has been accused. They don't even have the fig leaf of "we were both drunk."
It was purposeful, deliberate, pre-planned rape, using drugs instead of ropes. You can't sugar-coat it or offer explanations or mitigation.
I would suggest that it is so clearly an issue of forcible rape that it's not a particularly good example of all but a few cases within the #MeToo fold. Most of those cases, even some of appallingly creepy behavior, have some element of not understanding the rules.
The rules against drugging and raping women are impossible to misunderstand.
But what has emerged in the days since the verdict have been some attempts at mitigation, some discussion of separating his private life from his body of work.
Well, Jerry Sandusky was a terrific football coach, Jesse James loved his mother and Hitler was an affectionate dog owner. I'm not denying it, but I'm not buying it as something that excuses appalling, criminal behavior.
It's not unusual for artists — in fact, for powerful people in any endeavor — to be deeply flawed, and it's possible to argue that their drive for the top may be a subconscious attempt to compensate for their shortcomings.
You have to choose. Byron is something of a poster child for perverted artistry, and Lady Caroline Lamb was not joking when she described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know."
But she went ahead and had an affair with him, and his poetry seems, for the most part, to stand apart from his horrific personality
Response to Woody Allen is more tangled. I still consider "Annie Hall" a masterpiece, but I can't watch "Manhattan" for the obvious signalling it contains, while a friend who is a survivor of child sexual abuse cannot watch anything with his name attached.
Understood.
How people respond to Cosby's work will be similarly divided, I suppose, but I was a fervent fan beginning with his debut album in 1963, which I memorized, and "I Spy" was appointment television. I even saw him in concert in '68.
But gradually a certain hostility in his humor began to put me off, beginning when he added a tagline supposedly addressed to his kids: "I brought you into this world and I can take you out."
I saw it, too, in loveable ol' Cliff Huxtable's sarcasm with his kids and his wife and in his inability to ever be wrong.
I stopped liking him before there was any reason to hate him. That's probably just me.
Anyway, I'm with John Deering: Justice can take a break with a pair of welcome victories under her belt.
Though she shouldn't snooze too long.
Juxtaposition of the Favorite Prop
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Ann Telnaes wins the "Best Use of the Red Tie" again. She has used Trump's too-long tie as a specific prop several times, but other cartoonists use it as a signifier and it makes you wonder.
Of course, I quoted Telnaes the other day as saying editorial cartoons don't bother Trump because he doesn't read and so never sees them, so that's part of it, though he did see the Vanity Fair profile years ago in which his hands were described as small, and he reacted to it violently enough to make it part of how he is depicted.
I don't know that his hands are actually any smaller than anyone else's, but that kite tail around his neck is definitely his own fault.
Started right out on the first day in office.
And it is quite a contrast with a pair of considerably more natty heads of state.
A couple of observations: First is that, however many of these things he owns, they look garish and cheap. They may be pure silk and hand-loomed, but they look like they came off the rack at K-Mart, which is part of his appeal to the Common Man.
Second is that they didn't come off the rack because — and I say this as a robust fellow myself — for someone with his gut, an off-the-rack tie would end about mid-chest.
It's a fat-guy tie, and he could afford one the right size but this appears a little longer than necessary. Or he doesn't know how to tie it, which is certainly possible. A Windsor knot would help cinch it up.
But here's the critical factor: It's not that much longer. It's the garishness and the fact that he never buttons his jacket.
Perhaps vanity keeps him from ordering jackets that fit.
But it's sad that there is no fashion-conscious woman in his life who cares about him enough to lean over and say, "Button up, honey. Cameras."
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