CSotD: We Need Some Pre-Holy Day Shriving
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We’ll warm up this morning with this NYTimes gem that’s been going around social media for the past 24 hours. It’s a reminder once again that reporters don’t write headlines but eejits sometimes do.
Much of my work as a reporter was large Sunday business features, and I took to dropping by the paper Saturday to see that section, which had been pre-printed Friday night. This spared my kids from me flinging the paper across the kitchen and cursing Sunday morning when I saw what they’d done to it this time.
Like referring to Inez Milholland as a “suffragette” in a headline, when the story specifically said Americans were “suffragists” and British were “suffragettes.” Or headlining a story about the paper’s 50th year as its “silver anniversary.”
Judging from the text of this story, Steven Erlanger, the reporter on this story, appears to know what NATO stands for. I hope his family wasn’t too upset by his cursing and hurling the paper across the kitchen.
Next up is the firing of Pam Bondi. There were approximately umpty-million cartoons featuring redaction bars, but I like de Adder’s because of its simplicity. When you have a good graphic point, adding dialogue or additional action simply waters it down.
It’s a tough story to illustrate, because it’s hard to know why she was there in the first place and why Dear Leader suddenly decided she shouldn’t be.
Wuerker is right that the Department of Justice is in ruins, but I wouldn’t blame Bondi. She may have been the subcontractor, but she wasn’t calling the shots and she was hired to destroy the department. If anything, she didn’t do a good enough job to please Dear Leader.
I’d also quibble — though not quarrel — with Milbrath, because I’m not convinced Bondi had any values to turn her back on. Let’s not forget that she accepted a $25,000 campaign contribution from Trump and then dropped Florida’s investigation of his fraudulent university. Other cheated students got refunds, but not in the Sunshine State, and that’s likely how she came to his attention in the first place.
As for there being “honor among thieves,” Trump’s failing approval ratings seem to be making this like the baptism scene in The Godfather as he settles all scores. Bondi and Noem are gone and rumors have Gabbard and perhaps Leavitt on the bubble, and I appreciate Whamond depicting the ship about to go over the falls.
On the other hand, Dear Leader may be playing a game of “Ladies first,” and if I were Kennedy or Patel, I wouldn’t get too comfortable. The trick now is not to draw too much attention to yourself, and neither one of them is very good at remaining invisible.
Probably best not to ask him about his business.
Juxtaposition of the Day
So this guy Ramirez condemns the Artemis mission as a pointless, imitative waste of money, but then, a day or two later, this other guy, Ramirez, salutes it as inspiring America’s future scientists and adventurers.
I’ll admit that I kinda sorta agree with both Ramirezes, or at least, I did back a half a century ago. I found the space program incredibly inspiring when I was a kid, even, as I noted here a few days ago, faking sick so I could stay home and watch John Glenn’s first mission on TV.
But a year after Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, I bought a copy of this poster.
It wasn’t that I didn’t still admire the mission or the man, but I felt it was a reflection of our science, not our overall national character. That is, I thought it make NASA look awfully good, but it didn’t make me any taller or more handsome, and all the misdirected national pride was embarrassing.
I’ve pondered this for the past couple of days and suddenly realized the difference was Walter Cronkite. He genuinely was respected, and his fan-boy affection for the space program was infectious. Nor was it isolated: Cronkite did educational projects, and he made knowing stuff seem important.
So if Nixon exploited the astronauts for his own self-promotion, and even delayed the Moon walk so it would happen in Prime Time, he was well out-weighed by Cronkite’s devotion to digging into the techie aspects and sincerely celebrating scientific achievements.
It looked like we were going to continue in that direction by sending a school teacher up on a shuttle mission. Oh well.
And then we blew up another crew, and that may not be why we drew in our horns for a few decades, but we lost momentum and, meanwhile, America changed.
As Bagley suggests, we’re just looking for reasons to argue with each other these days, and it doesn’t take much to set us off.
While the RP-1 kerosene used in boosters does indeed come from crude oil, launching Artemis isn’t the biggest drain on our petroleum resources, and Herbert adds bumperstickers and a license to the complaining motorist’s utility vehicle to make clear that he’s not interested in saving fuel — except for himself.
I recently filled my gas tank for about $30, because my Honda’s tank only holds 9 gallons and I usually top out at 8. At roughly 30 mpg, I’ll do better than that fellow in Herbert’s cartoon though not as well as my friends with EVs. We do what we can.
But while I don’t begrudge Artemis her fuel, I agree with Brookes that we’re — alas — showing what we’re capable of, and it brings up more serious questions than whether we should be popping space capsules off into orbit.
If you took all the fuel from Artemis, magically converted it into petrol and shared it with drivers throughout America, Australia and the UK, they’d each get a portion of a drop and it wouldn’t be enough to start their engines.
On the other hand, if you took all the fuel for rockets flying one way or t’other in the Middle East right now, and just parked them, it would make a big difference to a whole lot of people.
We wouldn’t have Artemis to watch, but we’d find some other distraction.
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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