CSotD: State of Disunion
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Start with the personal one: Carmen is bailing out on her newspaper job over at Prickly City, and it's clear that Scott Stantis knows the current state of the industry.
When I told my boss I was quitting my job at a chain-owned daily, back in 2006, he congratulated me on my escape to a personally-owned community biweekly. He, unfortunately, had a mortgage and a wife with a job in that town and two kids still in high school, so the notion of bailing out and heading for the Maine woods was, for him, only a dream.
However, within a few months of my departure, he was awarded the cardboard box and, when I called him to commiserate, was no more surprised by the event than I was to have heard about it.
Ours, as I've said before, is one of the few industries where you can run into an old colleague and say "So, are you still working?" without seeming rude.
I do remember the days when it was a shock. A few years earlier, a productive, award-winning, nationally-recognized colleague at the Daily News had been called into the boss's office and while she was in there being told she was being fired, they cut off her phone and deleted her email account, then frog-marched her out of the building without even handing her the cardboard box.
I'm not sure how she retrieved her personal belongings but suspect she had a suddenly-former colleague fetch them for her.
However, by the time I abandoned the creeping meatball, there was a whole routine worked out, and all they needed was an old crone sitting in the HR office knitting and cackling as she watched.
These days, I don't know a lot of people who have been through the exercise who didn't emerge at the other end relieved to be out and happier in their new positions, which is sad because, until the stock-swappers and beancounters took over, newspaper work was a total blast.
Meanwhile, this plot device frees up Scott Stantis for strips in which his true conservative instincts — as opposed to the all-too-common knee-jerk partisan loyalties of others — will, I'm sure, lead to some mordant commentary on the bizarre campaign season that lies ahead.
And speaking of profiteers, what more fitting place for this gag than Free Range?
Everything has a price and must be monotized, and there's an element of "no good deed goes unpunished" or something similar at work. Somebody creates a strange little game or a fun website or a useful application and the next thing you know, they've sold out to one of the giants for a kabillion dollars.
You can't blame them for taking the money, I suppose. I mean, the places that get acquired have, for the most part, found a way to make some money already, and enough that they're not only not starving but doing well. But if you're offered a chance to have all the money you'll ever need without ever having to work again, you'd be a damn fool not to take it.
Though Bill Watterson realized he already had enough money and kept his integrity. But he's a rare type.
"Calvin & Hobbes" was most certainly built through its being hosted and promoted and sold by a corporation, but Watterson managed to maintain creative control and ownership. That's even more rare.
Outside money is the camel's nose under the tent flap. Any outside money. You take the money, you get the camel.
I was for a time a stockholder in Ben & Jerry's. They used to have an outdoor stockholders' meeting each year that, after a half-hour or so of actual meeting, turned into free ice cream and craft booths and family fun and a day-long concert on a hillside.
One year, the topic of dividends came up in that brief meeting. They explained that the company didn't pay stockholders dividends because they plowed profits back into the company, which was consistent with the fact that they also kept executive and worker salaries in an ethical balance, but the explanation got some grumbling.
And then the assembled stockholders, in their Birkenstocks and flannel, voted down a poison-pill proposal that would have sheltered BJICA from a corporate takeover.
Because, for all the groovy goodness they projected, that parking lot was full of Volvos and Audis and Beemers, and weren't none of them old ones held together with baling wire.
Today, Ben & Jerry's is owned by Unilever and there hasn't been a concert in the field for many years.
Historic side note: The Free Range wasn't all that free anyway. To get from the Texas cattle ranges to the railhead in Kansas required crossing the Cherokee Strip, which was a toll road.
Back to Brexit:
More Brexit cartoons are beginning to hit, my favorite being this mournful strip by Piers Baker, which matches up with a viral message from a young Brit about the opportunities, financial and spiritual, from which a younger generation has been cut off by a vote very much dominated by their parents and grandparents.
I've seen a few, mostly from Yanks, that suggest that the EU is the loser, but that seems unlikely. More in tune with the general dismay is this Barry Britt cover which Francoise Mouly posted and presumably green-lighted …
… and which fits nicely with Nick Anderson's depiction of another English icon.
Stepping off into the void is more realistic than the farcical notion being floated that somehow Britain won't actually leave, or will negotiate trade deals that will make its membership irrelevant.
The response from the EU has been compared a few times to a spouse served with divorce papers by someone who expects to still live there and is shocked to find their belongings on the curb, and Darrin Bell neatly illustrates it in more earthy and hilarious terms. Her "eeewww" expression is much better than simple anger.
And we'll let Matt wrap it up, at least for now.
Now here's your moment of 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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