CSotD: All I want for Christmas is a watershed
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Poor Fox News.
First, they lost the election, to the chagrin of their staff and in particular, to the raging, delusional disbelief of Karl Rove, which moment, by the way, was funnier than anything you're going to see here.
And which resulted in the brass sending down instructions to tell Karl, as well as swami Dick Morris, that their gigs as live-in guests were over.
You could interpret this as an indication that Fox is attempting to re-position itself as a legitimate news source rather than a vast right-wing journalistic conspiracy, or you could simply see it as a begrudging acknowledgment that, despite the loud cheers of the troll community, the majority of Americans do not, in fact, cover their heads with tinfoil, and that catering to crazies is not likely to remain a good business practice much longer.
I noted recently that some conservative cartoonists appear also to be accepting that the majority of people voted in favor of the administration's stated policies. Of course, several continue on the same-old-same-old kneejerk path.
But they are starting to look kind of silly, and not the on-purpose kind of silly. More this kind:
But, bless their tiny Grinch-sized hearts, Fox still has Billo and the War on Christmas.
Somehow, however, the loonies suddenly seem to be losing that one, too.
Perhaps this "speaking up" business is becoming a fad, this idea of not sitting back and assuming that everyone out there can tell paranoid, delusional nonsense from reality. Maybe it's being replaced with a realization that, as Edmund Burke noted, "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
Which brings us to Mike Luckovich's cartoon.
I looked at it and my first reaction was "It's well done, but he's not plowing much new ground."
To start with, commenting on the season's wretched excess is nothing new. In fact, one of my very favorite RWOs is on this topic and turns 12 years old this Monday:
And Jon Stewart recently used the theme of wretched excess in a brilliant takedown of Fox's fanciful notion of a "War of Christmas:"
But then I thought, well, what if this turns into an "Alice's Restaurant" moment, a moment when one cartoonist after another just walks into Rupert Murdoch's office and hands him a cartoon that says "There is no war on Christmas!" and walks out? Friends, he might just think it's a movement, and that's what it is …
Of course, doing that might mean having to skip all those wonderful, creative jokes about how much everyone hates fruitcake, about Santa being too fat for the reindeer, about kids putting bear traps in the fireplace … not to mention those great political cartoons in which a politician sits on Santa's lap and asks for policy changes.
And what a loss that would be!
But we can't just leave it up to the cartoonists and comedians.
So I want you to get up right now. Get up. Go to your windows, open your windows, and stick your head out, and yell, “I’m as smart as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Things have got to change my friends. You’ve got to get smart. You’ve got to say, “I’m as smart as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour. – Edmund Burke
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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