CSotD: Drawing for your friends
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This is probably partisan rancour on my part, but I think Walt Handelsman has pretty much boiled it down here.
I've said this before, but Clinton reminds me of the honor student who is president of everything, who gets the top grades, who becomes valedictorian and who, a minute before the bell rings, raises her hand to remind the teacher to give a homework assignment.
Which is why I don't fear her as president and will be okay with voting for her in the fall: She won't break anything. She'll do pretty much what a Democratic president is supposed to do, because that's what a Democratic president is supposed to do and her goal is to be a Democratic president.
Four years of formulaic policy is better than four years of misguided passion, and, if it takes longer to sit through, it's no more harmful than a formulaic valedictory speech in which that which is supposed to be said gets said.
That won't fit on a bumpersticker, but the reasoning behind it may well give her the boost she needs in November.
And it's not impossible to boil it down. How about this?
I can live with that.
As for a runningmate, I've seen people suggesting Elizabeth Warren and a few other people of passionate intensity, but that's not the role of the VP. The consummate VP was Lyndon Johnson, who knew how to stride the halls of Congress grabbing Senators and Representatives by the only sensitive parts of their bodies and helping them understand the importance of supporting the administration.
Gore and Biden were perhaps more button-down in their roles, but they were still well-connected Congressional insiders, and I'm not sure who's left in that club. I'm still flummoxed by the fact that, from among the party faithful, only Clinton stepped up to run for the nomination.
Well, I guess we'll see. I did come across an interesting if not persuasive article in favor of Al Franken, but that only gets us past Election Day.
Though I guess that's enough if you're just looking for four years of a caretaker presidency.
Meanwhile, out on the prairie
I don't often agree with Gary Varvel, but I often enjoy his work, and this is the best Carly-and-Cruz cartoon I've seen, possibly because it's from someone who isn't necessarily opposed to either of them on partisan principle.
They're both — each — readily mockable and share the element of being despised, which does open them up to the sorts of sledge-hammer treatment their team has received, but I like the woebegone futility here, as well as the implication of "What did you expect?"
It's nicely understated and lays out the situation without the personal attacks that seem superfluous, if perhaps irresistable.
In fact, pairing this with Handelsman's Clinton piece may constitute a Juxtaposition of sorts in that they are both actual critiques coming from within their respective friendly camps rather than attacks from the opposition.
I suspect that screams of "Benghazi! Benghazi!" may do as much to energize the left as to inspire the right, while the violent anti-Trump demonstrations in California seem likely to do far more to boost his support among those who fear chaos in the streets than to inspire opposition at the voting booth.
As the saying goes, "I can handle my enemies. Protect me from my friends."
In these cartoons, your friends are trying to tell you something you need to hear, but, in both cases, it's probably too late anyway.
Love Story
This may be more of a curiosity than an important cartoon, but the story is very appealing: The courtship of a pair of Dutch Jews was interrupted by the coming of the Nazis and, though they found stash places that allowed them to survive the Holocaust, they were separated for two-and-a-half years.
Real communication — that is, notes that might contain names or specific information — would have been extremely dangerous, but Emmanuel Joels, who was not a cartoonist or even an artist when their confinement began, was able to keep Hetty Van Son's spirits up by sending her comics featuring the adventures of a crime-fighting stick figure, Dompie Stompie, via a seven-year-old girl who, I might add, did a good job of keeping their secret for someone so young.
(Here's a Dutch-language report and a badly translated Google version, with more details about how it all came about.)
The collected cartoons have recently come to light and have been published, though apparently only in Dutch, at least so far.
Then again, I'm not sure we need to read them: The quality of the work isn't really part of the story.
The above links and this shorter piece from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund are interesting if only as a reminder that art matters a lot more than fame.
All you really need is one reader you really want to reach, and who really wants to read your stuff.
Perhaps more than once.
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