CSotD: Places to go, people to be
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Today's posting is mostly a collection of other places you should go instead, but I'll start with this Nick Anderson cartoon which, if you've been keeping up with the news, stands alone.
And if you haven't been keeping up with the news, go here and ensmarten yourself.
And let me add here that the Daily 202 is a perfect example of why I wish newspapers would offer small, affordable subscriptions to specific features. I don't want to know what bridges are being repaired or what someone said at city council, and it's not worth it to me to have a full subscription. But I'd pop a couple of bucks for access to this, or to Michael Cavna or Ann Telnaes.
And I'm sure there are sports fans who feel the same way about one of the District's teams. It's as if McDonald's refused to sell fries unless you bought a whole meal: Why are you turning away the money?
In any case, the NYTimes article goes well beyond the faux-scandals and half-scandals being touted elsewhere.
For instance, if some reporter brought to me the emails showing that Clinton Foundation fundraisers were asking that donors get this or that access, I'd do my best Jason-Robards-as-Ben-Bradlee imitation and point out that my desk is piled with similar requests from the ad department and that the story is not whether they asked but what response they got.
Which is not to say there isn't a story, but, if there is, you haven't got it.
The tie between Trump's campaign manager and Russia's shenanigans in Ukraine, however, is the point at which we discover Ken Clawson signing checks over to the Committee to Re-Elect, and Anderson makes precisely the right point — it's not a direct link, it's not the smoking gun, it's not the tapes in which the Head Guy admits his knowledge.
But it's a helluva story, and, as he suggests, now you just have to follow the strings to see the connections.
Historic Note: The Watergate story was, for months, shrugged off famously as "a third-rate burglary" by the Nixon team, by a lot of sophisticated above-it-all wisenheimers who said, "They all do that," and by random loyalists who insisted that the Post and Times were conspiring against the administration.
If the damn fool hadn't taped his own crime, the whole thing might have faded into the mists of on-the-one-hand-on-the-other.
This connection ought not to fade away.
He's Got You, Babe
Here's something that doesn't require additional reading: I've said I have no patience with "Sad Elephant" cartoons, that the GOP nominated him and deserves no sympathy.
But Joe Heller's cartoon made me laff, and I'm not so rigid as to pretend it didn't.
You don't need to read Serbian
This Serbian satire magazine, Rhinocerus, popped up in my Facebook feed and I couldn't find an English version of the magazine itself, but there's enough English on the site to make it clear that they periodically collect themed caricatures, and the current one is of famous authors.
This one is Alexandre Dumas père, whom I feature in part because he was the magazine's top choice, but also because I was thinking the other day, not of the Musketeers seen here but of "The Count of Monte Cristo," in the context of stories in which someone is wronged and seeks revenge in clever, horrifying ways, while we root for this backdoor justice.
I think I was probably put on that track by the trailer for "Ben Hur," which appears to have gone from Lew Wallace's "Tale of the Christ" to a more modern, vengeance-obsessed version.
Anyway, if you prefer Hollywood or Great Philosophers to authors, you can go here and play for awhile. And if you read Serbian, you may find all sorts of additional stuff there.
While, here in this country …
Friend of the Blog Terri Libenson has just finished a project in which cartoonists provided pictures that she framed and posted at a local children's hospital to brighten things up. She explains it here.
Having spent some time in the (literally, at least theoretically) sterile confines of the health system, I'm particularly grateful for anything that adds interest to the experience.
And, though I actually met Terri at a gathering at the Billy Ireland earlier, I got to know her and her husband, Mike, at the Kenosha Cartooning Festival, and am grateful for the excuse to add a plug.
I have made reservations for this year's event, albeit having paid the cancellation fee in case I don't continue to rehab as quickly as I project.
And, if that doesn't shame you into shedding your excuses for not coming, let me point out that this will be the last festival until 2019.
And here's what you'll need to do once you get there:
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