Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Accepting the challenges

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Mike Peterson Published: November 7, 2013 1 minute 0 comments

Brian McFadden is often too talky for my taste, but this time, his art-to-chat ratio works out well. 

I heard a little coverage of these hearings and some posturing Senator was demanding that Sebelius resign over the rollout, and I thought if I were in her place that I'd remind him that I served at the pleasure of the president, not him.

No, that wouldn't work. I'd get pilloried in the press for that response. (There's also something called "contempt of Congress" that you can be charged with, but I think the term exists mostly as a straight line.)

I testified in front of the Federal Trade Commission once. It was a traveling circus, and, by the time they got to Denver, it was so clear that my former employer was scum that the defense team had long since gone from attacking the testimony to attacking the witnesses. The guys from the FTC tried to protect me with whatever objections they could raise, but the game was so out of hand that the refs weren't even bothering to throw flags anymore.

It kind of reminded me of Abbie Hoffman's analysis of the Chicago Eight Seven Trial, that their defense was based on giving the judge a heart attack, only the guns of futility were being trained on me.

It was excruciating, and I was on the stand for less than two hours. 

One more example of why you have to be insane to want these jobs. And for the ones at the very top, you not only have to be driven, but driven by demons, which explains some examples of people who crash and burn.

Sebelius seemed to weather the hot air with a grace not everyone possesses. Case in point:

A good catch by the rookie

I can see that I'm going to have some conflicts with this new editorial cartoonist, which is predictable, considering I already have to hold back from featuring Candorville three or four times a week.

For those of you just joining us, Darrin is referring to this memorable exchange between Zell Miller and Chris Matthews during coverage of the 2004 Republican Convention, which, by the way, brings us back to whether there was anything Kathleen Sebelius could say that wouldn't blow up in her face anyway, because, while Matthews was at the height of his pompous-jerkocity, Miller ended up being the laughingstock:

For Rand Paul to parrot the remark is indeed pretty funny. Damn, boy, don't you got nothin' to say that you ain't stole from somewheres?

Though I suppose, if you really want to harken back to the Founding Fathers, there y'go. Men were men, by golly.

Alexander Hamilton famously dueled to his detriment and, two years later, Charles Dickinson very nearly deprived us of a president and perhaps the port of New Orleans and the entire Louisiana Territory.

I will leave it to students of speculative economic history to sort out what our current economy would look like, had the result of both duels been reversed.

Meanwhile, here's an example from 200 years ago of how the practice can not only shorten personal careers but lead to breakdowns in military intelligence.

The American papers reported that they had gone to the island for the purpose of hunting waterfowl, by the way. Personally, I would not mess with anyone who could bring down a duck with a smooth-bore pistol, but how they stood up to being questioned by British intelligence is not recorded in the annals. 

(I would note that FitzGibbon, in case it is not clear here, was a total badass.)

And at this point, it would be easy to segue to the Richie Icognito/Jonathan Martin harassment story, which has sparked a couple of cartoons, except that the story appears to still be in play and none of the cartoons has been particularly noteworthy.

I would observe, however, some apparent confusion in the discussion I've seen so far between a "badass" and a "candyass."

In my experience, one of the hardest things is to walk away from a fight you could have won. I sure haven't mastered it verbally, but I began to get a grip on it physically about halfway through high school.

And I observed in my young-dumb adult years that, while cowards can be pushed into a fight by the jeering of "candyass" from the "let's you and him fight" crowd, there are other young men who outgrow trying to be an ass at all, "bad" or "candy," and learn to value, instead, a momentary nod from the quiet man at the end of the bar.

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.