CSotD: Preparing for Next Week
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Non Sequitur offers an editorial comment in the main comics section, which upsets a lot of people on general principles: They want to keep politics on the editorial page and reserve the funny pages for funny stuff.
Which, granted, the current situation isn't.
But, as Bernie and Phil point out, Trump didn't stay over in the silly over-exposed media star sector, either, so it seems like the comics should be permitted to follow him, right?
And, as Kal suggests, Trump makes a delightful Santa Claus: A mythical character who promises you all sorts of things, none of which you will ever come close to actually getting.
Maybe "delightful" is the wrong word. There is this thing going around that, at some point, Trump supporters will realize he isn't keeping any of his promises, and the things he actually is following through on are hurting them.
At which point they will reject him.
I think this is slated to happen the week after they do the math, figure out the odds, get honest with themselves about their own win/loss experience, and stop purchasing lottery tickets.
As has been noted even back when Trump was just a media clown, there is a certain type of person who doesn't object to all the privileges going to the fabulously wealthy because he expects to be fabulously wealthy one day.
I would suggest that waiting for people to wise up is probably not a practical tactic.
On a related note, Pearls Before Swine looks at the game of "what if?" through its typically cynical lens, popping the bubble around Frank Capra's immortal paean to the holiday, without which no Christmas is complete.
The other day, I wrote about Ebenezer Scrooge and how everyone watches "A Christmas Carol," heaves a sentimental sigh and then goes right back to business as usual, and I don't see "It's a Wonderful Life" having any greater impact. Decent, thoughtful people will always be decent and thoughtful, and selfish knuckleheads will always be selfish knuckleheads.
And while I don't believe anyone has, as Rat does, a conscious mission to disrupt a sweet and peaceful world, I'm convinced there are plenty who don't let the consequences of their actions inhibit them.
Which, in turn, brings us to Darrin Bell's commentary on the Russian hacking and Barack Obama's response to it.
I like Obama a lot, but he shares something with Jimmy Carter, in that he is a profoundly decent, extremely intelligent person who feels that, if he can only explain the situation clearly, people will come around to decent, intelligent ways of seeing things.
And I have no doubt that, in years to come, we will see Barack and Michelle in photos much like the photos of Jimmy and Rosalynn building Homes for Humanity, and people will say what honorable people they were and how much we admire them.
But I've walked down dark alleys with people who were not nearly as nice, and that's why I didn't particularly worry about what might be in that alley.
In fact, a biker friend had a poster on his wall back in 1970, when the wisecrack was fresh, that said, "Lo, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley."
Unfortunately, it's damned hard to find a decent, honorable, truly mean son-of-a-bitch to walk our nation through that valley.
LBJ may have been the last, and he inherited the whole Southeast Asia debacle to distract history from his work in civil rights and poverty.
Once upon a time, you'd have to do your holiday Sunday strips today if Christmas were going to fall on a Sunday because there wouldn't be a paper on the day itself, but that was a long time ago, so I'm expecting some dy-no-MITE holiday comics next week, because there were some pretty good ones this week.
Pickles, however, is not about the day itself so much as the season.
I've had a couple of Christmas cards arrive in the mail, but, no, I don't get so many these days, either.
It's not that they aren't appreciated; in fact, I like them. But I accept the trade-off that, if you don't send, you don't receive, and I don't remember how many years it's been since I got any cards into the mail and I suppose it's part of a world in which most of my friends are on-line, but it's also part of a world in which I don't get my act together.
So fair is fair.
Though I will always treasure Sid and Alma, who sent me Christmas cards for more than a decade despite having apparently obtained my mailing address by error, and I wish I could remember where I came across this H.T. Webster cartoon, which would have run in the 19-teens sometime but is universal in any case.
Speaking of Non-Specified Teens
A looming mystery in King Features Vintage is the current series of Sunday "The Heart of Juliet Jones" strips, which ran in May, 1960, and features young bobby-soxer Eve having her virtue tested in a bet that was made in the local soda shop where all the kids hang out.
And here is Eve in the current set of dailies, from August, 1959, clearly a 20-something who has been on a cruise with her older sister, Juliet, and was being wooed by a fellow who turned out to be a diamond thief.
And it's not simply a change in how the youngster is presented — in 1957, though described as "a teenager," she had left her hometown and was working for a literary agency in the Big City.
Somewhere between August, 1959 and May, 1960, she got herself a really ghastly haircut and went back to high school.
Maybe Stan Drake decided she just needed to be ginchier.
'Cause, otherwise, he musta had smog in the noggin, baby!
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