CSotD: Short takes of varying relevance
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We'll start today with a David Horsey "Throwback Thursday" panel from 1994, mostly to spare me from trying to pick from among the flood of Indian/immigrant gags that come along this time of year.
Not that they aren't relevant under the current circumstance, but given the gap between what we say we believe in and what we actually believe in, they're never out of style.
I'd add that, 22 years later, this holds up as presenting the case better than the average iteration. Horsey's detailed style allows more nuance, blending the hateful Indian's sneer, the woman's dismissive side glance and the pleasant, happy faces of everyone else.
Good writing can redeem bad art, but good art won't redeem bad writing, yes, but good art can add a lot to good writing, too.
This was one of the cartoons I used in a presentation I used to give at high schools, and I'd explain that, besides the surface gag, there is an irony in that the legend of the First Thanksgiving is just that: A legend, concocted as part of a national PR move to encourage immigration in order to beef up the urban workforce and to populate the farmlands alongside our new railroads.
So the strength in these cartoons is not that we aren't passing on the generosity, but that we aren't living up to our own self-praising national mythology.
Which, by the way, applies equally well to the current flood of Statue of Liberty cartoons, as well as the current flood of turning-away-the-Holy-Family cartoonts.
Incidentally, I quoted the Iroquois Consolation Ceremony the other day, and it wasn't random. I've been working on a history of New York in the 17th century, which is to say, when Europeans first arrived, and it's been a gestalt for me, because it has turned into being almost entirely about the Iroquois.
And like every good gestalt, it contains a strong element of "Well, sure. Why did you think it would be otherwise?"
Every other history of immigrants is about what happened to US when THEY arrived.
Why should this be different?
Though if things had gone slightly differently, this 2014 headline might not be simply a puckish ambiguity.
Speaking of which
My collaborator on that 17th Century New York project is Christopher Baldwin, with whom I've done a dozen or so of these serialized educational newspaper features, the first of which was "The Legend of Perseus" back in 2001.
Chris has got a "Little Dee" graphic novel coming out in 2016 with Dial, which is available for pre-order, and, to celebrate or promote or perhaps just for the hell of it, is doing new Little Dee strips here.
We've been working together so long that I even posted his Amazon-bonusing link there instead of my own.
You should use one or the other, or your local bookstore, of course.
Meaningful Juxtaposition of the Day
No good deed goes unpunished, and no sooner did people express sorrow over the Paris attacks than they were pummeled by other people jealous that their own source of vicarious sorrow had not attracted equal notice.
#AllDeathsMatterButSomeDeathsMatterMoreThanOthersAndIGetToSay.
Bors has been on fire lately, and, while I linked to his GoComics page for that one, he's been popping up all over the place.
In a Waldo sense, not a Whak-A-Mole sense. Well, assuming you're a progressive.
Anyway, here's his website and I'll leave you to figure out what all he's up to.
As for Tsanakas, I came across him at Cartoon Movement and then, when I went to find out who he was and to get his link, I came across this cartoon somewhat on the same theme.
He seems like a really cynical son of a bitch.
I certainly don't mean that in a bad sense, if there is one.
Meaningless Juxtaposition of the Day
Susan has been having problems this week getting her coffee order right, and today's pinged one of those aggravating things that is twice as aggravating because I know I shouldn't still be thinking about it.
So I'm going to dress it up as commentary on what's this world coming to, but I'm not sure either Sandra Bell Lundy or I are going to be in line for any MacArthur grants or Nobels for our insights, but dammitall anyway.
Last weekend, the granddaughter and I went down to Northampton for the annual open studio at Hilary Price's building, but we stopped first at a chowder house we'd discovered on last year's trip.
It's a little chrome cafe that offers a choice of totally kickass seafood chowder or totally kickass lobster bisque, which is much better than a Quarter Pounder, but you still order at the counter, they give it to you, you stop at a station for silverware and napkins, then go to your table, eat your food, then bus your table and leave.
If you order a popover (aka, Yorkshire pudding), they heat that up and bring it to you, but that's the entire extent of any "table service."
Which I mention because, after I ordered and handed the guy my card, he swept it and spun the screen around. At first I thought I was going to have to enter my PIN and hit accept, but instead what I saw was a small chart of tip levels from which I could choose.
In other words, it was the digital version of him picking up the tip jar and shaking it in my face until I put something in. Except that that would be his own incredibly rude behavior, not a corporate innovation.
But I did ask about it before I figured all that out, to which I got a laconic hipsteresque "It's just a tip screen, man."
And damned if, rather than walking the hell out of the place, rather than summoning the manager and demanding to know why he pays counter-help sub-minimum when even McDonalds wouldn't have that kind of stones, damn me if I didn't pick one.
So I'm not pissed at them. I'm pissed at me.
Don't let them mess with your food or your head, Susan. They sell coffee at nice places, too.
And then we went over to see Hilary, from whom I learned something today that, yeah, everyone but us probably knew.
Being a truly small-town boy, I first encountered double-doors on a regular basis at college, which made it easy to come up with a mnemonic:
You come in on the right, but you go out on the left.
Now here's your moment of Cockney zen:
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