CSotD: Regrets and Regrettables
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This is sad and disturbing and I wish it were more surprising. The Herald-Sun is in Melbourne, so it’s not some small backwater paper that can’t afford to pay a cartoonist, and I say that as someone who, as editor of a small backwater paper, occasionally commissioned a political cartoon for a fee that embarrassed me but was at least something, after all.
The Herald-Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch and I think they could probably come up with more bucks than my little journal could.
No, the problem is that, as I’ve said before, editors rise through the ranks by knowing the rules of grammar and so forth, and it’s rare to find one who truly understands nuance and indirection, which are primary tools of cartooning.
In fact, I once got into a nearly-physical confrontation with an editorial page editor who was furious because I showed him this cartoon thinking he would laugh and he didn’t get it, which made me laugh. He later won a Pulitzer, but it wasn’t for his sense of humor.
So I’m not surprised that someone at the Herald-Sun thought artificial intelligence was as good as their own award-winning cartoonist, Mark Knight, and I wish their site were a little more penetrable, because I’d like to see what they came up with. But good for Wilcox for standing up, because this sort of thing is apt to happen again.
Not that every actual, human cartoonist is a font of insight and creativity. Consider this
Juxtaposition of, well, Yesterday
Yesterday was Left-Handers Day, and Guy Parsons used it to tell his own story. I’m always a little more aware of left-handed artists because of the danger of dragging their hand through wet ink as they work, but it’s not the only adjustments lefties have to make. I don’t know Parsons’ exact age, but if he was in first grade in 1967, that’s a clue and I hope that means the experience he had in first grade has faded into history.
However, Steve Kelley took advantage of the day to express a level of homophobic bigotry that suggests he believes that at some point LGBTQ+ people made a conscious decision to be different. And that they should be mocked for the choice they made.
Where is Guy Parsons’ mom when we need her?
I’m not featuring any more Trump’s Escape cartoons, but as I predicted Wednesday, they are plentiful. I got a chuckle out of Banx’s take, which I will allow to stand for all the latecomers, particularly because he dwells on the decoy factor.
As noted before, other presidents have dodged airborne assassination threats, but they didn’t leave staff and press as unwitting decoys to possibly die in their place. This seems more important than the accusations of cowardice, because Trump’s self-centered lack of empathy for other people is central to his personality, and has been ever since he lied to get out of the draft and let some more honest person take the risk. Or since his mother reportedly caught him throwing rocks at a baby.
There’s nothing new to be said about the airplane incident, but there is an element of “the more the merrier,” because it seems to have struck a chord other incidents haven’t, and, in our siloed society, you need volume to reach across the aisle and make a point.
Keep ’em coming.
Karoline Leavitt has announced her decision to step down as White House Press Secretary this month, and it may in part be because she was one of the staffers left on the decoy plane as expendable.
But Meidas reports that she really may be quitting to spend time with her kids, since Trump kept calling her during her maternity leave and pestering her to come back to work.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Apparently we’re running out of missiles, which Sack notes has limited Hegseth’s ability to wage war. That not only handcuffs our plan to defeat Iran in five days or possibly a year or who knows how long, but may also spare Cuba from becoming the next menu item on the plan to make every nation part of the USA.
However, we did have a spare Avenger system that could be placed on standby at a Bedminster golf tournament earlier this month, and just be grateful we didn’t have to spend tax money to haul the thing down to Mar-a-Lago.
Part of Dear Leader’s plans for the ballroom is not just the hidey-hole underneath, but a drone port on the roof, which is yet another part of the ballroom that is not being paid for with bribes but will come out of your taxes. But it will have the advantage of converting our executive mansion into a target in the event of war.
For the most part, heads of state are spared because you want someone around who can surrender, but we started the Iran war by targeting their head of state and turnabout is fair play.
Meanwhile, between armament shortages and general screwing around, Dear Leader seems to have convinced the Iranians to just sit back and wait him out. Chappatte suggests that they’re hoping for changes with the midterms, and I’m sure they are, but I suspect that they’d also be willing to wait until the next presidential elections if that’s what it takes.
Or Hell freezing over. They’re in no hurry. The Strait of Hormuz used to see 100 tankers a day flow through, but the other day the total was 14. How about none? Is none good for you?
Never mind Hormuz. We’ve got plenty of coal, though it’s getting harder to dig out of the earth and in addition to rising black lung rates, we’re also seeing more lung issues from rock dust, and we’ve cut funding for black lung screening.
Pressure has reversed some of the deregulation plans, but coal mining is still a dangerous occupation, and Appalachia isn’t seeing the new coal jobs they were promised anyway.
But they still love Dear Leader in coal country, despite losing jobs, health care and food support.
It’s in their blood. Or on the sides of their heads.
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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