CSotD: Comings, goings and a list of my demands
Skip to comments
The "where to start?" question was answered this morning by Keith Knight, who nimbly addresses something I'd been pondering.
I, too, had noticed that political diatribes have at least somewhat supplanted dumbass food postings on Facebook.
And that the political diatribes are similarly dumbass, in that they have about as much relation to political reality as the recipes for Oreos, butter, fat, lard, bacon and sugar have to nutrition, not to mention fine dining.
And I suspect that challenging one of those recipes with "You realize this shit will clog your arteries and skyrocket your blood sugar?" would have as much impact as challenging some third-party snowflake purist with "What about the Supreme Court?"
The best you'll get is confident assurance that there is no difference between Trump and Clinton, which I guess means that there's no difference between Plessy v Ferguson and Brown v Board of Education. Because shut up you're hurting my feelings is why.
The good thing being that nobody is voting to make Bacon Oreo Fatbutt Delites the only thing sold in grocery stores.
In any case, I don't expect a lot of expertise from random Facebook posters but goddammittal, if you are a chef, paid to understand food and write about it, I do expect your postings on food to reflect knowledge of the topic.
Ditto with political commentary.
If you are paid to comment on politics, you can have any interpretation you like, but you need to act as if you understand the topic and have put at least a little thought into it.
Hence my list of demands for political cartoonists:
Stop drawing sad elephants. They nominated the sonofabitch.
Stop acting as if Bernie has changed direction. More than five months ago, the night of the NH Primary, he said the ultimate goal, regardless of who won, was to support the Democratic candidate. He didn't change, there is no "new direction."
If you honestly were shocked by the "revelations" of the email leaks, pack up your shit and go home. You should be ashamed to accept money for your work if you can't look out the window and see that it's raining before the National Weather Service announces it.
And let me just add that, if David Rowe can see what the hell is going on all the way from Australia, you should be able to pick it out from this end of the globe. (Nice back-of-the-TV detail, by the way.)
I am seeing some (refreshingly bipartisan) pushback on Tovarich Trump, but still way too many delicately horrified shock-and-awe responses to those stupid "revelations."
That awkward age
I'm old enough that, yeah, I get asked the question Earl gets asked in Pickles.
But I'm young enough to remember that a "yes!" gives the bagger an excuse to go take a stroll in the parking lot.
I'm not quite young enough to say, "I need help with that bag, thanks, and I could also stand a little assistance in smoking some reefer behind the cart corral."
Still, I'm with yez. Sorry I didn't park a little further away.
This ought to keep him out of trouble
Francesco Marciuliano's approach to life is meta enough that it's sometimes hard to know when he's reporting and when he's riffing, but I'm taking his word at Medium Large that he will soon assume writing duties for Judge Parker.
It's not unreasonable to accept that Woody Wilson, who gave up the writing gig for Rex Morgan a few months ago, might be retiring from his work writing this one, too. Still, I've said before that I consider it one of the best-done continuity strips, so I'm hardly clamoring for change, and I hope this is planned and not imposed.
But Ces would bring some interesting perspective. Over the past couple of years, he's started to channel his endearingly cock-eyed perspective in ways that have added heft to both his creative work and his wallet.
And yet he's still just random enough that, if it weren't five in the morning, I might reach out for confirmation before passing on this bit of news.
I kinda like that about him.
Best Artist You've Never Heard Of
In this corner, the death of Richard Thompson yesterday caught more attention because he worked in my favored medium and because we had a personal friendship, but another giant, Jack Davis, also left us the same day.
For the artists who come by here, there's nothing in the least "unknown" about Davis, who has inspired at least two generations of cartoonists and illustrators since his days in Mad Magazine and similar places.
But for those of us who don't track individual artists quite so closely, I'll throw up the defense that Mad Magazine seems to have had a policy of barely crediting its creators in those early days.
Nor did the various bubble gum card series Davis worked on, nor, for that matter, did TV Guide, where his work is so familiar that the response from anyone who lived in those days has to be "Oh! That guy!"
And speaking of people you need to know and follow, Drew Friedman has an appreciation of Davis's work here, and specifically on his TV Guide work here, and you should play around in his files anyway because they are awesome.
Meanwhile Comics Beat has a collection of Davis's work here and his Lambiek entry is here.
The more you look into his body of work, the more you'll wish you'd known who was doing all that good stuff sooner.
But you did, in fact, see it all along, both itself and in the foundation it laid for everything else.
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.
Comments 3
Comments are closed.