CSotD: Catching Up
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The first order of business on this delightfully non-eventful day — unless you're reading this after Stormy's been on 60 Minutes — is to offer belated congrats to Clay Bennett for winning the Overseas Press Club's Nast Award, which he did several days ago while I was obsessed with other issues.
The above is a cartoon from his entry packet, but it is hardly out of date, which is not good, since (A) being evergreen shouldn't be the goal of a political cartoonist and (B) we shouldn't have a president who kisses up to Moscow.
Which isn't the frightening part. The frightening part is that we could find out tomorrow that he's deeply in debt to the oligarchs and that the pee tape is real, plus whatever Stormy has to say, and his remark about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue would hold true.
Fox News would explain why it's perfectly okay and the Republicans would block any attempt to remove him from office.
Here's another, and you can see the whole entry packet at his home paper.
And Michael Cavna has a good write-up on it.
Much as I dislike awards, it's always good when a good cartoonist wins one because it increases, though doesn't guarantee, continued employment.
(Pulitzer Prize Winners sometimes do get laid off, because some newspapers are owned by people who don't read, and who, unlike Boss Tweed's illiterate supporters, can't understand them pictures, either.)
And I'm giving John Cole my own award for this commentary, not because I care (except in a general good-of-the-nation sense) about Pennsylvania's redistricting decision, but because his Jabberwocky take-off actually scans.
I do not have to give out many such awards.
I suppose there is some logic in the idea that a person who can draw well enough to be a professional cartoonist might not be much of a writer, but most attempts at song and poetry parodies in cartoons make my teeth ache.
Thing is, many cartoonists have wives and they've almost all got editors, goddammit.
One or the other ought to step in and let them know when their doggerel is running around off leash.
Another rare cartoonist who understands scansion is Ann Telnaes and thank god for that because she did an entire book, albeit a short entire book, in verse.
Moreover, she recently produced this animated commentary on Dear Leader's talent for distraction, based on the classic quatrain:
Little man
So spic and span
Where were you
When the shit hit the fan?
Which admittedly has a little wobble here and there, but it works: It's the scansion equivalent of imperfect rhyme.
Also on the literary front, Mr. Fitz got a laff with this, in part because I also hate silly "rules" of grammar and usage, which are generally prescribed by people who could not write their name in the dirt with a stick, and in part because one of the tasks I have as editor is to break down the perfectly sensible paragraphs of my young writers into the single sentences called for by newspaper style.
I don't instruct them on that point because I'd rather they learned to write well. They can learn the "rules" of journalism later.
And speaking of my young writers, I went out to Denver earlier this month for a workshop with them, and my boss put out a letter to parents about where we were meeting, in which she said something about the "west side of the building."
My initial reaction when I saw it was similar to Jill's in this Pajama Diaries strip from the other day, but then I remembered it was Denver where the points of the compass are pretty obvious, "west" in particular.
As Horace Greeley said, "Go towards the mountains, young man, and grow up with the country."
And then there's this Bliss, which made me fear that Gail was taking them out of their polythene envelopes first, but which was also the second "throwing his stuff out on the sidewalk" gag I'd seen in recent days, plus there's currently a "throwing his stuff out on the sidewalk" TV commercial for something or other.
Does this really happen? I'd like to think it only happens in cartoons and sitcoms, but I know that men hit people and women throw things and sometimes the opposite, and maybe this is yet another example of unhinged loss of self-control.
Any of which would be your cue to get the hell out, because you are living with a crazy person, but, for some reason, this particular act of abuse is portrayed as "empowerment."
Same thing with throwing a drink in a man's face, which began, I think, in "Tootsie," where Dustin Hoffman goes up to Jessica Lange in his Michael personna and delivers a line she had told "Dorothy" she wished men would use, whereupon she throws her drink in his face.
Which was a very funny moment illustrating the difference between our fantasies and what we expect in real life, but it was picked up as a "thing" and now is regularly featured as a sign of empowerment.
There was a time when assaulting people with food was a sign of being a boorish punk.
Anyway, whatever is true or mythic in our personal lives, management incompetence is indeed very real and Cooper's latest adventures in closing a Grumbel's location had me on the floor all week. Start here and go forward.
Finally, one more thought about yesterday: The 1963 March on Washington was in August, and the signing of the Civil Rights Act was the following July, but the Civil Rights Movement itself had gone on far longer and I hope nobody expects yesterday's actions to produce results that quickly.
However, when I would show Mauldin's response to the Civil Right Act to students, I would note that the key words are "I've decided," and that Jim Crow couldn't have stayed there without the Eagle's permission.
So that part's the same.
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