CSotD: Monday Mop-Up
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First, a word about reporting on perspectives. Editors often assign a reporter to go out there and find out what people are thinking. Some even assign reporters to go out there and confirm what the editor has already decided people are thinking.
Either way, it’s a fool’s errand, because to do it right would require an actual survey. In the ’70s, there arose criticism of reporters who went to bars to find people hanging out in the afternoon, so now they go to diners in the morning and swapping beer for coffee has hardly improved things.
The issue is that readers take the resulting stories seriously and they shouldn’t.
Heller recalls the pushback against fluorocarbons in the 80s and wishes we could summon the same popular uprising over climate change today. But the difference is not that people have become stupid, but, rather, that villains have become better organized.
When smoking became an issue, the Tobacco Institute did a masterful job of refuting science with bogus reports that popularized illogic, and lies that served the needs of the cigarette companies paying for the service, which delayed action for quite a while until the fraud was uncovered.
As it happens, 60 Minutes played a major role in revealing that fraud. Today, Bari Weiss would order reporters to properly present the opposing viewpoint, no matter how many rocks they had to turn over in order to find it.
But in the days before Fox News, rightwing talk radio and other pro-corporate media sources, those who wanted to drag their heels were limited in how effective they could be. Things like opposition to the war in Vietnam and boycotts of grapes and lettuce in support of farmworkers allowed people to voice dissent without organized, massive opposition.
Opposition to believing in climate change is hardly spontaneous. Not only does rightwing media mock and deny it, but our current president promised the petroleum industry that, if they donated a billion dollars to his campaign, he would crusade on their behalf, and he has, indeed, put the brakes on alternative energy development and green-lighted oil drilling in sensitive areas, including working to cut back national parks and monuments in order to advance drilling and mining.
Or did you think the opposition just consisted of cartoonists who draw anti-global-warming cartoons every time it snows?
If so, maybe you’re one of the pigeons.
Rall explains Trump’s erratic conduct of his war on Iran as an example of Nixon’s Madman Theory, which operated on the premise that, if other governments thought your leadership was insane, they would be more apt to yield to your demands.
The problem arises when you try to use the Madman Theory on a nation that is not bounded by anything approaching consent of the governed or global reputation. One principle of barroom brawls is that it’s harder to fight a drunk than a sober person because you can predict what the sober person will do. When two irrational people square off, there’s no telling what the outcome will be.
At the moment, it seems we’re not entirely operating by consent of the governed — most Americans oppose Trump’s self-declared war — and our global reputation is in the toilet.
It’s illuminating, but strange, that an Australian cartoon about public discontent lists so many American issues. If you’ve been following Australian politics, you know they have no shortage of controversies themselves, but between crossovers that impact everybody and issues that are specifically American, our footprint is wide and hardly flattering.
It would, for instance, be hard to identify this cartoon as Australian rather than American, except that the Australian government is talking about, if not effectively addressing, the housing crisis, while it’s still mostly a campaign issue in this country. But Herbert’s accusation of stalling in one case and accelerating in the other applies in either country.
And that’s only “affordable” housing, which is beyond the grasp of many people, while getting Section 8 vouchers for the poor has a wait list in most American locales that means the kids will be two to eight years older before there is a place for them to sleep at night.
Assuming they can sleep when they’re hungry.
Juxtaposition of Himself
“Not my grilled sausages!”
Chappatte first commented on a Swiss ban on fireworks and open fires, but followed with a less geographically defined ban, as wildfires rage through France and Spain. Fires in Europe are not entirely a European issue, since many of their governments are attempting to limit their nations’ impact on climate change but have little control over what happens in the United States and how that impacts the global situation.
Meanwhile, Trump is placing punitive tariffs on Canada because he says they are to blame for their current rash of wildfires, but he has not only cut funding for wildfire research in this country, but is refusing help to Oregon to fight massive fires there.
As Chappatte’s second cartoon suggests, local ordinances seem futile in the face of a global disaster.
It’s not just science that is under strict governmental control in this country, but also our past. Signs have gone up in front of Smithsonian museums declaring that the history and facts noted therein may not reflect “reality” as determined by the Trump administration. This includes the histories of women and minorities that are not in line with administration views.
It seems ironic that the insulting term “politically correct,” originally coined in mockery of progressive, tolerant viewpoints, has now become applicable to conservative views, and legally enforceable.
As has been noted here before, it can be a challenge for a cartoonist to fill every panel of a multi-panel format with relevant satire, but Tom Tomorrow faces the opposite dilemma, in narrowing down the things going on so that they squeeze into only six panels. As it is, he’s forced to be more wordy than might be desirable in order to make all of his relevant points.
And yet he couldn’t fit in everything.
Sorry, Rat, but in lieu of a musical selection, I offer the Meidas wrap-up of this weekend’s news.
Laugh or weep. Or, yes, collapse.
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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