CSotD: I see clusters of seals everywhere
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Let's start today with the upcoming storm. Of all the predications I've been monitoring, Clay Bennett's seems the most accurate.
I don't know why summer heat doesn't bring countervailing cartoons about "Well, I guess there is such a thing after all," except that I know exactly why.
There is a whole category of political cartoons that are only political in the sense of staking out social positions, and this goes back even beyond the cartoons at the turn of the last century about mannish-looking, mannish-dressing "new women" who — never mind voting — wanted to ride bicycles or smoke in public or otherwise upset the system God had put on this Earth.
This is at the heart of what the milleniables call "white privilege," not because it is consciously arrogant but, worse, it is unthinkingly so. It's based on not wanting to have to think about things, much less to rethink them.
Which is to say, it has that Will Rogers appeal of "I don't know what they're talking about, so they must be idiots."
It's the little kid who won't try any food he hasn't had before, which itself sometimes persists into adulthood, but certainly does so metaphorically.
It's not stupidity.
It's the result of never having been challenged as a kid to try that new food, or to go to a museum instead of the video arcade — besides the video arcade, dammit, because they're not mutually exclusive — and, as a result, being raised to stay within your comfortable, familiar cocoon.
The little boy at the dinner table wrinkles his nose and says, "I don't like it!" because "I don't know what it tastes like" might lead to further conversation.
And then he might have to try it.
Which is how you end up here
There have been a kabillion Sarah Palin cartoons, but Jim Morin captures the bizarre, fact-free, thought-free toxic appeal of Trump.
His appeal is not based on building a wall that Mexico will pay for, because, if you think about it, there's no way it's possible, either politically or economically or even structurally.
But, if you don't think about it, it's a great idea.
It's not that anyone sits down, thinks about his proposals and agrees with them. It's that he gives them the opportunity not to sit down and think, not to try that food they've never tried before, to simply say "I don't like it!" and push the plate away.
And who better to enable this avoidance than Mama Grizzly, who simply repeats code words in seemingly random order.
Second metaphor, less distant than the first: When Trump's people watch a sitcom, they don't laugh at the jokes. They laugh along with the laugh track.
Not making that up. I've seen it: They can be totally distracted, but, when the laugh track explodes, they'll look up and chuckle, too.
So, is Trump inconsistent?
Well, if you think about it, yes.
But so what?
First prize, by default
Jack Ohman hits a triple, not a home run. It's more complex than this, but, to the extent he takes it, he's right.
And he wins applause for blaming it on economics, not on race.
As I noted the other day, there's certainly an element of race in the issue of who lives in the old neighborhoods with the old water mains. Given the way race and economics break down in Flint (and elsewhere, of course), it's reasonable to assume that black people are disproportionately impacted by the water crisis, that more lead leaches into their tap water.
But to peg this, as others have, as a conscious decision to harm black people, or at least a conscious decision to ignore their well-being, distracts from the greater issue of putting selfish sociopaths into positions of power because they promise to put lower taxes ahead of the public good.
There may have been a conscious decision to ignore complaints from certain neighborhoods, but what I've seen so far has a lot more to do with anti-science cheapskates than deliberate racists.
Yes, I know how the Venn diagram breaks it down.
But the issue is voter registration, not water quality. Solve the voter registration/participation issue and the water quality issues will solve themselves.
Meanwhile back at the seal cluster
(Editor's Note: My French is a bit rudimentary, but there's a bilingual pun in that subhed somewhere. I once shared a plane ride from San Diego to Montreal with a woman from the Madeleines who confessed with a giggle the faux pas she had made in asking about the beach where the seals came ashore. "I was not sure the English for 'seal' and I said the French word, and so I ask them, 'Where is the beach for phoque?'")
Well, messieurdames, it appears that there is — comment vous dire? — a major cluster of seals in Angoulême right now, because their clever plan to fix everything has run into a snag.
In our last exciting episode, the comics festival had nominated 30 cartoonists for their Grand Prix, but somehow none of the 30 happened to have more than one X-chromosome. The initial explanation was that the prize is for lifetime achievement and so naturally there were no women nominated because none of them had that kind of track record.
Nominees began to withdraw their names from consideration. And the numbers grew, as did the public outrage over the slight.
So the powers that be backtracked and came up with a slate of three semifinalists, that did, almost as if by magic, contain a woman: Claire Wendling, who has an impressive body of work dating back several decades.
Problem solved.
Except that, in addition to an impressive body of work, M. Wendling appears also to have an impressive sense of self-respect and, according to this excellent breakdown by Heidi MacDonald, has chosen not to be used as a token lady artist and, on her Facebook page, is asking people not to vote for her.
Attention Hollywood: Having black actors not show up for an awards show honoring only white artists is less impressive than having male artists ask not to be recognized for an award offered only to them.
We can debate whether a "make good" nomination is something anyone should want to accept.
Meanwhile, I'll repeat what I said before:
I don't give a French seal for awards anyway.
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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