CSotD: Timing is everything
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I went into my various stashes of political cartoons this morning knowing that, with the budget crisis having hit an armistice overnight, a lot of the commentary would be out-of-date even if it was filed yesterday. That may have put me into a mindset whereby timing, fortunate or otherwise, was forefront.
Take today's Tank McNamara, for example. Bill Hinds lives in the Houston area, so he may have been more aware than the rest of us that the Texans had added a set of new, high-tech Jumbotron-like monitors.
Everything is bigger in Texas, of course, and the Dallas Cowboys added such stuff a couple of years ago, including a monitor so huge that there was concern it would interfere with the punters.
(For those reading from overseas, I mean people who kick the ball back to the other team, not people who bet on the results, who, as far as I know, like the replays because they can then verify that bad officiating cost them money.)
Anyway, assuming the normal lag-time of cartooning deadlines, Bill drew this back when Texans fans were shopping for Super Bowl hotel rooms. The strip is still funny a few weeks into the season, but, if any Texans players are looking up at the replays, they're probably trying to get the number of the truck that ran'em over.
As a Texans fan myself, the only good thing I can think of is that we'll get much better mileage as the bandwagon empties out. Still, the urge to watch anything over again this season has been pretty limited so far.
Beyond the power to satirize
But sometimes timing works the other way and becomes sharper over time. As comic fans know, Richard Thompson has retired from cartooning due to Parkinson's, but his "Richard's Poor Almanac" continues in reruns at GoComics. A lot of these gags are new to readers, having run only in the Washington Post, and I don't know what year this one appeared.
However, it does show how quickly satire can become prophecy, except that it's hard to see any of these shows being cancelled today. In fact, it's easy not only to see someone pitching them in a meeting room, but getting the go-ahead.
Satirists have to work pretty hard in this venue to come up with any idea so exaggerated, dumb and tasteless that it wouldn't get a shot in the current market.
Which is not the depressing part. The depressing part is how hard it is to come up with an idea for a show so dumb and tasteless that it wouldn't attract an audience.
Meanwhile, the righteous, morally-conservative people who get up in arms over the idea that a school might teach responsible sexual behavior, or that there are gay people in the world, don't seem to have a problem with plopping their kids down in front of … ah, don't get me started.
Instead, here's a tip from Michael Cavna: The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at THE Ohio State University will be mounting an exhibit of Richard's original art along with work by some guy named Watterson next March. That's uplifting news and the exhibit will be worth the trip.
But I often wonder if any newspaper publishers ever look at the exploitive, dishonest, depressing swill in the ads and third-party clickbait on their websites, or if any TV execs ever sit down with their kids and watch the degrading crap they broadcast to the nation.
I suppose it's yet another case of "We've established what you are. Now we're just haggling over the price."
However, not everyone missed the moment
Scott Stantis gets it right, and right on time.
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