Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Plus ça change

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Mike Peterson Published: February 2, 2017 1 minute 0 comments

Here's a collection of cartoons that, if the artists need some time off, they could simply update and re-issue.

Which is a nicer intro than pointing out that we thought it was kinda bad then, but we didn't listen, and here we are now.

In July of 2003, Ann Telnaes, for instance, made a point particularly emphasized by the lapel flags on the media guy. Everyone went hyper-patriotic after 9/11, and some Cassandras asked, once you've put on the lapel flag, how and when can you take it off again and go back to reporting neutrally?

I guess we got the answer to that one. Telnaes was still one of the Six Chix in Sept 2004 when she offered this comment.

And, speaking of uninformed voters, Foxtrot dropped this June, 2002 piece.

Of course, as Tom Toles (still at the Buffalo News then) noted that same year, it's not like the gummint was struggling to keep anyone informed, the biggest issue being that Rumsfeld actually said they were planning to lie, which was kind of silly.

We're a lot more practical about such things today.

We're all about re-branding, and what appeared in Candorville as a joke in 2005 doesn't seem so far-fetched today.

And you can't just blame the government and the MSM, as this 2002 Boondocks noted, even before Facebook and such things made the underground press either irrelevant or astonishingly powerful, depending on who you think is the MSM and who you think is the underground press.

And I'm already seeing Keith Knight's July, 2002, piece echoed, the difference being that Bush had been in the White House a good deal longer before we felt the need to apologize.

Not that the world, by then, wasn't well aware of what American voters had done, as this Feb 2003 Madam & Eve indicated.

If nothing else, we've certainly lost the element of surprise suggested in this 2002 Pearls Before Swine.

It's getting hard to come up with gags that are more insanely ridiculous than the truth.

Then again, sometimes they just come into sharper focus. (Nemi, 2005)

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.