CSotD: Knight explains Prince; other princes defy explanation
Skip to comments
Amid the flood of Prince obituary cartoons, Keith Knight instead brings back a substantial tribute he created when the musician was alive, the rest of which you should go read.
It's worth your time, whether you are a grieving fan or someone wondering what all the fuss is about.
Keef did a couple of these pieces, including one about Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life," and they're worth reading beyond the fact that they aren't just teary-eyed obit pieces.
Though it's nice they aren't. Particularly for Stevie.
Obituary cartoons are part of how we mourn, and, to that extent, they have a place, metaphorically ranging from the tearful delivery of a hug and a casserole to the back door of a dear friend to a prefunctory call to the florist for the usual display at the usual price: You can do it well or you can do it badly, but you can't not do it.
And whether it is Volpone or Lear, we recognize that tributes delivered at deathbedside, or in anticipation of such, are fraught with, at best, cliches and, often enough, insincerity.
By contrast, Keefe created this piece as part of his overall artistic mission to explain his own life and, within that, to lead mainstream America to a better understanding of a sub-segment of the black community. It was a personal thank you, not prompted by death or public expectations but simply by sincere appreciation of a gift well-given and gratefully received.
I hope Prince saw it.
And as someone who is outside Prince's prime demographic, I'm glad I saw it, because rote repetitions of "we're so sad" do little to help me understand why this particular death has more meaning than another.
Keef's work does what none of them can.
In other news
Chan Lowe nails it with a cartoon that got a chuckle and a nod from me.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
He captures the sense of resignation, the lack of passion, that seem to me far more accurate than all the semi-apocryphal "Bernie Bro" nonsense or the Bernie-crushed-by-reality cartoons others are putting out there.
It's not even a matter of "holding your nose while you vote."
I held my nose when I voted for Dukakis. His failure to respond to the appalling question Bernard Shaw posed over the hypothetical rape and murder of Kitty Dukakis drained any respect I had for him. He neither called out Shaw for his incredibly bad taste, nor did he give a very interesting political response.
It was like voting for a turnip.
But I didn't have to hold my nose when I voted for McGovern, though I cast the ballot only in an attempt to stem the obvious, impending landslide.
I thought he was a nice guy, but I wasn't fired up about him, nor was I fired up over Walter Mondale.
You don't have to hold your nose if you're voting for someone who has no discernible scent of any kind.
So now we're here, or nearly so.
I don't like Hillary, I don't particularly dislike her, but I hate and fear Trump and so this bumpersticker works for me, as I hope it will for many other people.
At least it's better than the alternative: "Vote for Hillary: She probably won't screw things up that much more than they already are."
Gotta admit, though, her hubby's famous 1992 campaign promise, "I always say that my slogan might well be, 'Buy one, get one free.'" takes on enough new meaning in 2016 that I laft at Steve Kelley's cartoon this morning.
Ah, wotthehell. Everybody comes with some baggage and better Bill Clinton than Billy Carter, I suppose.
You should, however, take a stronger stance if you want to get your face on the money: Two years after she escaped to freedom, Harriet Tubman went back to try to bring her husband out of bondage, only to find out that he had remarried in her absence and wanted to stay put.
So she rescued some slaves who wanted to be rescued and let him stay where he wanted to stay.
And speaking of marital baggage …
There's some resentment of Obama's trip to the UK, which is in the middle of a referendum campaign ("Brexit") over possibly exiting the European Union.
People don't feel they need advice from the American president on the matter, but I like Matt's take because he calls in the familiar foot-in-mouth spousal unit (and, trust me, if you click on nothing else today …) who makes Britons glad they allow reigning Queens to call their husbands "princes" and keep them as much out of sight as possible.
Of course, the ostensible purpose of the visit was to congratulate the Queen on her 90th birthday, though it wasn't really her 90th birthday, because, since 1952, she's been getting two every year, so that, while she is now 90 years old, she has actually had … well, a lot of birthdays.
It will mean more to you if you do the math yourself.
But in any case, she turned 90 this week, to the delight of all Britons, or perhaps, as Banx suggests, nearly all.
Charlie still has a shot, of course: He's only 67, which wouldn't be "only" except that both his parents are still around and his grandmum made 101, after all, which means he could still look forward to a couple of decades on the throne regardless of the wait.
What's interesting to me is that, despite all that potential longevity, the media seem to have given up on poor old Charlie and now devote their speculation to his son, Prince William, with the potential to shift to Prince George if necessary.
I suppose this makes sense when you're talking about a particularly long-lived family on a planet where women don't die anyway.
Comments
Comments are closed.