CSotD: Thursday Short-Takes
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We'll warm up with this bit of gallows humor from On the Fastrack, which happens to coincide with a spate of layoffs from McClatchy papers in the West, primarily at the Sacramento Bee, where 15 newsroom employees and 8 production types are being cut.
But, of course, it could have run any time and coincided with layoffs somewhere in an industry that has been taken over by stock swappers to the point where it seems nobody in charge has ever actually gotten printers' ink on their hands, including, I suspect, from actually reading a newspaper.
The nice thing about being an incompetent executive at a newspaper company is that you can blame the Internet for your failures. It's like living next to a busy highway, but not fencing your yard or keeping your dog on a leash and then blaming the highway when he gets run over.
It's true, but only to the extent that you let it happen.
Here's a story about going-away cake: At one place, they wanted to replace me with a part-timer, so they loaded me with irrelevant work and took away most of the fun stuff I did and basically ground me down until I quit so they didn't have to fire me and pay unemployment.
I told my fellow workers I didn't want any last-day celebration, but they got a cake anyway. I told them to go enjoy it but that I wasn't coming, until the editor assured me that the publisher was out of town and wouldn't stand there thanking me out of the smiley side of his face for my years of service.
It was pretty good cake.
And here's another: A school I worked with had a teacher retiring and the staff and faculty threw her a big last-day party, not to honor her years of service but because she was a foot-dragging burned-out crabpatch and they couldn't wait to get her out of the place. So they had a big cake and some punch and she packed her stuff into the car and drove home.
Where she found a message on her answering machine from the district business office, informing her that someone had miscounted and she had to teach one more year.
Not Funny Newspaper Story
In my recent coverage of the Satire Symposium, I reported that the cartoonists were particularly pleased that Hustler v Falwell had confirmed their First Amendment protection in light of what their fellow cartoonists face in other countries.
Yesterday, a Turkish Court completed a show trial of staff members from Cumhuriyet, a newspaper charged with complicity in the 2016 (alleged) coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.
The 14 staffers got an average sentence of six years, with cartoonist Musa Kart receiving three years and nine months. An attorney for the defendants pointed out that the actual coup participants had received lighter sentences than the journalists.
Musa Kart accepted the inevitable, but told the court sentencing him,
I’ve been drawing cartoons for over 40 years. I have witnessed different political eras and leaders in these years. In terms of law and justice this is the worst period of all. Since my release I have talked to many people, not one described this as a non-political trial. During this trial these rooms have witnessed the dignity of honourable and honest people. Those who tried to victimize us in a smear campaign did not know that our fabric does not stain. I have no further demand for myself here in this final hearing. I have to say again, the picture that shows opposition journalists, politicians, academics, and students in prison does not suit my beautiful country.
Juxtaposition du jour
An interesting pair of commentaries on the Macron/Trump meeting, which came out after the "breauxmance" began but before Macron spoke his mind before Congress, though I'm not sure that speech would change either piece very much, my interest being more in the differing targets of their hostility.
Not that the meeting got any less critical treatment over here.
And then there's this
Walt Handelsman offers a view of the DNC's lawsuit that surprised me, though I certainly don't disagree with him.
I like the idea of the lawsuit primarily because it will force some discovery that, while Mueller is likely turning over the same rocks, may well become more public. I think the lawsuit is credible if not winnable, and I also think there is plenty that the Democrats should be careful of rehashing.
I was frustrated by the freeze-out, not just of my man Sanders but of an entire field of candidates you might have expected to vie for the nomination. It was clear that the Establishment had chosen their candidate and, if a few people like Martin O'Malley didn't pick up on the word, most Democrats got the message and backed off.
But I was less dismayed by the fix than by the aftermath. The boil over on social media was distressing, and, in any other election, Sanders' clear call for his followers to support Hillary Clinton would have been trumpeted rather than ignored and often denied.
I'm convinced that the "Bernie Bros" were Russian trolls and would like to know how many of the screams of misogyny that followed any criticism of Clinton were also issuing from Petrograd.
If digging into the record can shine a little light on the mess, I'm all for it.
But ain't nobody gonna come out looking good.
And then this
If Trump furnishes cartoonists with more material than they can use, he's not the only nitwit in the country, and Keith Knight picked up on this ludicrous incident.
The good news was that the cops handled it sensibly, declaring it not their job and walking away.
The bad news is, this is just one more example of how things are. This one made the news, most of them don't.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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