CSotD: You’d better shop around
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Darrin Bell has just branched out into editorial cartoons and I strongly suggest you follow him because he's swattin'em out of the park faster than I can steal them.
I'm really conflicted about this one, because there are an awful lot of cheap and unfair anti-ACA cartoons, as well as cheap and unfair anti-Obama cartoons in general, and so to see them coming from his supporters has a kind of crabs-in-the-bucket feeling.
But while Reagan's Law — Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican — is good strategy, it's bad morality and not to be copied.
Besides, unlike the "But … but … I expected you to be perfect!" whining from the left, this is a perfectly valid criticism. Why only one day? Why not at least until the end of the week?
I know the insurance companies are going nuts trying to keep their offers and prices and policies straight through all the last-minute changes.
But they've made a lot of contributions to this mess, so they need to just shut up, cooperate and be glad they're still in the game, because while their employees in Congress want all reform shut down, there are plenty on the left who are mad because the ACA isn't a simple single-payer plan.
I seem to be the only person in America who supported the president but did not expect him to change everything. Okay, me and Wanda Sykes, whom I once more quote as saying, "He went to Harvard, not Hogwarts."
So we criticize him in hopes of nudging him closer to where he needs to be, while also hoping we don't spook the voters into electing some button-down brownshirt in the next election.
For the record, I got word from Healthcare.gov a month ago that my application was complete.
But I never heard from Blue Cross/Blue Shield, so yesterday I spent 25 minutes on hold with the gummint making sure we really were copacetic, and then 58 minutes on hold with Anthem to finish the process before the door closed.
In both cases, I was only on the phone with a person for maybe three to five minutes, because the answer at Healthcare.gov was "Yeah, you're cool" and at Anthem, "Yeah, we've got it. Here's your code. Go to this website and enter it."
So, while the website was dodgy, the ACA itself actually worked.
But I'm glad the guy is my president and not my sys admin.
And, yeah, a couple more days grace period would have been better.
Meanwhile, back in the Stone Age
Not sure what to make of today's Zits. These guys are supposed to be clueless, of course: That's the fun of the strip, and this is funny in a kind of dark way.
Part of the joke — I think — is that Sara is so fundamentally sensible that Jeremy is once more missing the point. Or I am. I hope he is.
Some day some pop psychologist will write a book like "The Peter Pan Syndrome" or "The Cinderella Complex" and call it "The Blondie Paradox." It will be about smart, sensible, attractive women who marry complete doofuses.
The problem is, while these smart, hot, patient, put-upon women are a staple of comic strips and sit coms, in real life, most people generally end up with someone they deserve.
The trick is to avoid being what somebody "deserves" in quite that sense.
And today's strip fits in very nicely with something I came across Sunday during football.
One of those obnoxious "He went to Jared" commercials came on, setting up the false dichotomy of a guy having to choose between giving his girlfriend a really ugly, sequined football jersey or following his beer-drinking buddies' advice to go to Jared.
So, when I say the strip "fits in very nicely," I mean "mirrors exactly."
In the commercial, the voiceover recommended that, instead of an ugly jersey, he give her a Tag Heuer Aquaracer watch. (The commercials are modular: In this variation of the jersey spot, the voiceover recommends diamonds.)
Out of curiosity, I turned to the computer and looked up the watch.
My response is complex, but can be boiled down to two variations on the theme of "Are you *****ing me?"
1. Who the hell would spend $1800 for a freaking watch?
2. Who the hell would want a girlfriend who would accept an $1800 gift?
Okay, I know who would. The kind of pathetic sad sack who will, after they are married, feel that it is not only appropriate but "romantic" to buy a $40,000 car without consulting his wife, as long as he puts a big bow on it and springs it on her as a Christmas morning surprise.
That's not romantic.
"Manipulative" and "controlling," yes. "Infantilizing," perhaps.
"Whipped"?
Well, yeah, it really is. Manipulation and control are often a two-way street.
Not that anyone's going to say that.
I'm nearly 30 years divorced and, in all that time, I have yet to meet the insane half of a divorced couple. I just keep meeting the perfectly reasonable person who was married to the totally insane one.
Well, trust me, it takes two to tangle, and they don't put those commercials on the air to lose money.
“A Diamond Is Forever.” — Frances Gerety, advertising copywriter
"Stupid is forever." — Ron White, standup comedian
Is he simply being more concise?
Friends don't let friends go to Jared
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