CSotD: The Red Menace(s)
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First, here’s the Red Card Menace:
Just when you think Dear Leader has run out of ways to make everyone in the world hate us, he pulls this. They all laughed at him when he got that stupid pretend Peace Prize, but everybody assumed that was going to be the end of it.
As I’ve said before, the world is well aware of FIFA’s corruption and tends to watch the World Cup while holding their collective nose. It’s a reversal of St. Paul’s admonition to hate the sin but love the sinner: The host country most likely bribed someone, and FIFA does things like forcing Muslim nations to change their laws and serve Budweiser in order to host, but, golly, it’s still futbol.
I went to bed last night and didn’t watch the game. I couldn’t root against America but how could I root for them? It may be childish to say “Cheaters never win,” but still …
Anyway, Telnaes captured it well: Trump’s little orange hands were all over the decision and Infantino allowed a corrupt change to smear The Beautiful Game.
Bagley explains things in plain terms, and raises the question of whether, when a crybaby throws a tantrum, it is better to let him cry it out and perhaps learn some discipline or to give in to him for the sake of peace and quiet.
Perhaps we should have asked that question 10 years ago.
There’s something odd about it, however, because de Adder isn’t wrong that Infantino proved himself gutlessly willing to do a monstrously unpopular and unsporting favor for Dear Leader, but it leaves the question of why?
I suppose the gate receipts have yet to be collected, but those likely go to the organization itself. The bribes presumably were delivered before the hosting was even announced. It is a puzzlement.
Jordanian cartoonist Osama Hajjaj explores the willingness of FIFA to abandon any defense of the game.
This would be a good time to go check out Cartoon Movement, because he’s hardly the only international cartoonist with a comment, and some of them are, unsurprisingly, a bit rude about it.
Which I mention perhaps as a warning and perhaps as an incentive.
Venables goes for the laugh while defending the integrity of the sport, though it’s hard to get a bigger laugh than Dear Leader got from his explanation:
I’m a person that loves sports and was a good athlete. I understand sports really well, and that wasn’t a foul. I related just that view. I didn’t tell him what to do. I can’t tell him what to do.
First of all, you were a good athlete the same as you were a great student. Second, you don’t know the rule, because stomping an ankle is a red card. It’s a new rule, but it’s a real one, and if you’re staging a major international sporting event, it behooves you to learn something about the game. Or at least to check and see if you’re right.
I used to work with a guy whose favorite expression was “You can bullsh*t the fans and you can even bullsh*t the refs, but you can’t bullsh*t the players.”
Dear Leader only accomplished the one in the middle.
And he didn’t pull this one off, either, did he?
Now here comes the Classic Red Menace!
Huck reaches back into history to make an important connection. It’s long been known that Trump hired Roy Cohn to be his attorney and generally accepted that he liked the man’s pitbull attitude. For some of us (i.e., me) it was a surprise that Cohn was still around when Trump was coming into his own, but if you look at who he has surrounded himself with since, only the timing was the surprise.
Which translates as saying that it’s probably not likely that Cohn transformed an innocent young tyro and led him into any dark corners he wasn’t already headed. After all, we’ve just seen a few hundred white supremacist thugs march through Washington without any pushback from the administration, and we’ve already seen similar extremists pardoned for their part in an attempted coup, including members of terrorist groups who were convicted of assaulting police.
Yelling “Commie!” had become a joke.
However, the ghost of Tailgunner Joe has indeed resurfaced, and the hunt for commies is once more part of our politics.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Ramirez at least gets his terminology correct. Varvel goes into full McCarthy panic mode, complete with an outdated symbol from a nation that hasn’t existed in 35 years and had very little in common with the Democratic Socialism that frightens Ramirez but is a relatively common system in Northern Europe.
Which is not to ignore any excesses of the movement here, but focusing on the outlandish statements of one newly-elected socialist takes a lot of nerve if you don’t also insist that Mike Rice, Tommy Tuberville and Nancy Mace represent all Republicans.
It’s also kinda funny that those nations Dear Leader wants to see send us immigrants, instead of the sh*thole nations that do, are often lead by socialist governments. Which might be why we don’t get a lot of immigrants from them.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
In sports (Remember sports? We were just talking about sports), one of the standard responses to taunting by losers is to point up at the scoreboard. We’re hearing complaints about the socialist mayor of New York City from a lot of publicly patriotic commentators, but the folks who live there, and who, BTW, voted him into office, seem to feel pretty good about how things are going so far.
And if Dear Leader can get into office by giving the MAGA crowd what they want, why shouldn’t other politicians be able to be elected by giving their followers what they want?
And will screaming “Commies!” change the balance of who wants what in time for the midterms?
How about just screaming “Conspiracy!” Will that help?
I guess we’re going to find out.
However, if you want a conspiracy you can sink your teeth into, check this out:
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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