CSotD: Wednesday Short Takes
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Yes. Exactly, Lee Judge.
I guess Michael Sam is taking one for the cause, publicly announcing his sexual orientation before the NFL Draft almost certainly knowing he would be forced through a media circus. The sense I get is that he was no more or less likely to be drafted because of his announcement, because the knuckle-under-to-knuckle-heads pressure would eliminate as many teams as the potential positive PR attracted.
Not necessarily because of his sexual orientation but because of the media circus, which may be the reason Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel fell so far in the draft: Who needs the hoopla?
Anyway, the media focus on it tells us how far we are from acceptance, and reminds me of the time my sister gave her toddler-daughter a lecture on not pointing out rude, personal things about people in public.
Shortly thereafter, they were in the supermarket and her daughter was announcing, in that loud, unfiltered voice of a three-year-old, "Mommy? Mommy? I'm not gonna say that lady is fat! Mommy? I'm not gonna say that lady is fat!"
What? You expect the media to have more discernment than a three-year-old?
And the response from a few cretins to the fact that, like every other player in the draft, he kissed his sweetheart amid the excitement (spoofed here) reminds me that a few cretins had the same response to the Star Trek episode in which Kirk and Uhuru kissed.
That was before the 24-hour news cycle, of course, so it didn't get the Instant OMG coverage of this group of imbecilic reactions, but it made a ripple.
It was not until some years later that we learned actress Nichelle Nichols had wanted to quit the show but was persuaded by Dr. King to stay with it because her unremarked-upon presence was such a powerful statement.
Somebody has to take the hit, if for no other reason than the hope that, someday, the cretins will at least be ashamed to admit what their real objection is, and we can move beyond smooching issues and on to more important matters.
Sam is headed to a team with a coach who, analysts agree, will keep him if he can play and cut him if he cannot, and that's the most you can reasonably ask for.
In fact, it's the most you should want, which is kind of the point of Judge's cartoon. Everybody shut up and let's play some football.
Speaking of plain-spoken little kids
Today's Big Nate reminds me of a fifth-grade class I once observed presenting their combined technology/social studies presentations.
The challenge was to create a Power Point presentation on a historical topic and then present it to the class. (I was there learning about Smart Boards, which is what they were using.)
The format was that the student would make the presentation and then answer five questions from classmates. Most of it was predictable, but two presentations stood out.
One little girl got up and very shyly stammered her way through a quite rudimentary slide show with very rudimentary facts, and the kids gently tossed her five very easy questions, underhand and slow so she could hit them.
Then a confident guy got up with a very whiz-bang Power Point show with all kinds of animations and fancy cascading fonts, illustrating a shamefully off-the-cuff collection of basic facts about the Roman Empire.
The kids descended on him like seagulls on a submarine sandwich. I could hardly keep a straight face as they pasted him with five really tough questions as payback for his transparent fakery, all in good fun, but not in the least letting him off the hook.
Watch yourself, Nate. To continue the sports metaphors, you can bullshit the fans, and you can bullshit the refs, but you can't bullshit the players.
Incidentally, Big Nate creator Lincoln Peirce will be at the Maine Comics Arts Festival in Portland this Sunday. You'll know his table, I'm sure, by the line of 10 year olds snaking around the venue. He'll also be at the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning in September. He's a very festive guy.
I don't know why you say Good-bye I say Hello.
Cory Thomas is wringing down the curtain on Watch Your Head, one of the most interesting and therefore doomed strips to hit pages in a decade or two. All it really had to offer was good writing, good art and a chance to pull in college-aged readers and minorities, as well as people who like good writing and good art.
It never had a chance.
However, he's not giving up on the overall concept and offers this sample of a total reboot which will debut on-line here August 4. I've set a bookmark and will note when it goes live.
The strip ends with this month, but you can relive the glory until the new one starts up.
Quoth Cory: It's a better fit for the daring PG-13, larger-than-stamps action I'd rather be creating. So this will be WYH starting over from Day One. Mostly the same characters, but different and heading in new directions.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Literary Allusion of the Day
(James Joyce, by way of Uysses Seen)
Proof that I'm Never Wrong of the Day
(Murphy's Law strikes at the Anchorage Daily News. As I said it inevitably does. But maybe it's not always "inevitable" — in the old days of full-staffing, someone in the back shop would have caught this before it hit the street.)
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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