CSotD: What’s happening?
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Nick Anderson contrasts the UK's Chilcot Report with the American flood of partisan witch hunts.
The facial expressions alone are worth the price of admission, because, while the captions suggest the exhaustive effort involved in one and the partisan slapdash work in the other, the look of gravitas on the left suggests an inquiry done not simply with dignity but with a modicum of regret.
It reminds me of an interview I did with a highly successful woman who told me the turnaround in her life came after her sophomore year in college, which she had spent being a cute ditzy blonde rather than the serious honor student she'd been from earliest days.
She came home having earned passing but mediocre grades and found her dad working in the garden.
He simply looked up at her and asked, "What happened?"
It stung much more, she suggested, than if he had chewed her out or imposed some punishment or threatened to cut off her tuition, and, as for the latter, she dropped out of the private college she'd been enrolled at, moved home, got a job and went to the local State U while she got her head screwed back on and her work up where it ought to be.
My point in bringing it up now being that you have to have established a healthy relationship before you can simply ask, "What happened?" and get results you could never achieve by screaming.
Jim Morin suggests that, in this country, we have not achieved a relationship where we can address things with a simple "What happened?"
Not to suggest, of course, that the work of the British Parliament is invariably done in solemn dignity. Americans often gaze in slack-jawed wonder at the sniping and cat-calls that go on during Question Period, but perhaps it's just a healthy way of blowing off steam.
It may also be that, in a nation with a population one-fifth the size of ours, there is more intimacy, so that the public tuning in feels they know the people shouting and being shouted at.
I know that, in the even smaller nations of Canada and Ireland, there is that sense of intimacy, such that the antics of their politicians are often sloughed off the way you might shake your head over Uncle Bob's drunken rant last Thanksgiving: You wish he'd control himself, but you don't expect him to, and it's not so much that you "forgive" him so much as you don't bother being offended in the first place because that's Bob and we all know it.
We seem less like their politicians and more like their soccer hooligans and their ghastly tabloid press, and, if we can't win, we can at least trash the opposition.
To repeat my Job Theory from yesterday, however, it's not clear to me why, given the way the Democratic Party stacked the deck to give their chosen candidate as much support as possible, they chose to fix the game on behalf of their most divisive, vulnerable politician.
Though, as Walt Handelsman points out, perhaps not so vulnerable after all. She does have an enviable record of escaping these things. There is a sort of Energizer Bunny element at work that suggests she can go farther, faster.
Perhaps after watching Gore and Kerry fall apart in the face of phony partisan attacks, they decided to put someone up who won't blunder into the knives like a gormless lamb.
Still, perception is reality and I honestly don't know what to make of this Chip Bok cartoon, and whether he is pointing out how she has risen despite those bogus "scandals" or that her support could collapse at any moment.
I would assume, from the weakness of "unindicted" as opposed to "innocent," that Bok finds validity in each of the dry wells drilled by what was, despite all the snickering, a vast right-wing conspiracy.
If we're going to damn with faint praise, I prefer Joel Pett's take, which seems more neutral. Sometimes the towels stay clean because there wasn't any dirt.
And, after all, if you are tired of hearing about other cabinet members under other administrations who were also careless with their email systems but never investigated, let's make a list of politicians, instead, who have lied about their sex lives without touching off major Congressional action.
None of which, to repeat it again, means I like Hillary, and none of which, to repeat it again, means I would have fixed the nomination process to make sure the most divisive figure in the party got the nod.
None of which, to repeat it again, means I'm happy over a choice between someone who probably won't screw things up too much more than they are already versus someone who almost certainly will.
None of which, to repeat it again, means I'm going to cop out and take a principled stand against making a meaningful decision, and I'll apologize for my lack of faith the day either President Jill Stein or President Gary Johnson or, for that matter, President Vermin Supreme, is sworn in.
Meanwhile, I'll also apologize the day Congress initiates an inquiry into Donald Trump's solicitation of campaign funds from foreign nationals, and I'll do it barefoot in the snow the day they mount a committee to investigate his ties to, and apparent support from, Vladimir Putin.
Sorry, his "alleged" ties.
Haven't had the investigation yet.
On a more amusing note, Garry Trudeau has collected several years of "Trump as candidate" strips into a book, and Michael Cavna sat down with him for an interview about this fantasy-turned-nightmare.
Well, only marginally more amusing.
Let's see how it turns out.
Now here's your moment of eternal zen:
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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