CSotD: The OJ Campaign
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I'm not really in the mood for politics today, but they seem inescapable, so I'm going to break format and start with this Dogs of C Kennel from yesterday, which made me smile because it shows what Mark Trail could be like if Mark Trail were a humor strip.
Yes, turkey buzzards and vultures and some other carrion-eaters locate their meals by sense of smell, which perhaps explains the see-through nostrils on this handsome fellow.
I know this because one of the kids at the magazine did a review of a bird book in which she mentioned that, in desert areas, the gas companies watch for gatherings of vultures on bare ground as an indicator of a leak in a gas line.
Which, as said, seemed like something Mark Trail would point out, only, instead, they simply built a gag (no pun intended) around it which might well be too smart for the room, except that they did manage to make the point clear, even if readers didn't realize it's based on real science.
If you are a faithful reader, this is not news, because I mentioned it last November, in a posting that discussed the unlikely scenario that Trump would get the nomination.
Makes one helluva good segue into the current political morass, don't it?
Matt Davies scores with a stark statement about Trump's tax returns: He's not going to release them and he doesn't give a damn if you want to see them.
There's no element of humor here, just a depiction of the arrogance that has allowed Trump to bully, bluster and bullshit his way through life.
He didn't exactly refuse to release them. He just made up a phony excuse about why he couldn't, and said it's none of our business anyway.
And it might not be any of our business if so much of his campaign were not based on his purported success in business and his frequent boasts about how rich he is, not to mention how he promises to fix the economy and restore trade but brushes aside the repeated bankruptcies he's been involved in.
And much as I like Stuart Carlson's take, the cartoon assumes that people are holding Trump accountable.
That is not a fact in evidence, and I draw on a courtroom phrase because what we've got here is the OJ defense: We all know what happened, but I'm not going to admit it and you can't prove it because my jury won't buy it.
Starring Reince Priebus as Johnny Cochran.
Think back: Watching the famous Bronco chase, I was horrified by what had happened but assumed that eventually they'd pull him over and arrest him, he'd explain what happened and he'd go off to jail for a good long time.
And then, as the trial went on, I assumed … well, you know how it came out.
It's not necessarily that people make mistakes or have regrets or seek forgiveness; it's whether or not the person launching the charge is authentic in their own life and can actually be pure enough to make such a charge. That's what I think most people can look at when they evaluate people's character. — Reince Priebus
Someone asked me yesterday how Trump's defenders can be so indifferent to his treatment of women when they actually impeached the President of the United States over oral sex with a consenting adult.
Yeah, I know: He was impeached for not admitting to oral sex with a consenting adult. And for parsing "sex" to mean "sexual intercourse."
There are still cartoonists and commentators capitalizing on this to explain why Hillary should not be president, by the way, but it's really not that complex.
Rience explained that, too:
Look, I mean, these are things that he is going to have to answer for. But I also think there are things from many years ago and I think that, you know, as Christians, judging each other I think is — is problematic. I think it's when people live in glass houses and throw stones is when people get in trouble.
And he has a point, though I'm not sure "Christians probably shouldn't vote" is what he meant: That meme running around Facebook about how every one of Bill Clinton's accusers has since been found to have a sexual issue of his own isn't true.
Not all of them. Just most of them.
Trump even gets a pass on transparently ridiculous things like calling reporters and pretending to be his own public relations man, as Mike Peters notes.
But Peters assumes that people would be horrified and, again, that's a fact not in evidence.
There's a kind of feeding-frenzy mentality that should have catapulted this absurd foolishness into a major story, whether in the justifiable "What? What?" sense of Ben Carson's nonsensical theory of grain-storage pyramids that calls judgment into question, or at least in form of the manufactured outrage we saw over the otherwise innocent, perhaps even appealing, fact that John Kerry went windsurfing.
Instead, crickets.
If the sock puppet doesn't fit, you must acquit.
In any case, Trump isn't the only candidate who is taking the "none of your damn business" approach to campaigning, as Matt Wuerker notes.
Don't worry: The press will sniff it out
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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