CSotD: The Way We Live Now
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In case you thought only America was trapped in the Looking Glass world, here's French cartoonist Anne Derenne on the appointment of Saudi Arabia to the UN Women's Rights Commission, a development so astonishingly absurd that everyone from TownHall to Teen Vogue is gob-smacked.
UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer's tweet is being quoted widely, and the UN Watch website has the most complete takedown of this jaw-dropper, or at least the most entertaining, though the basic conclusion — as echoed by the cufflink in Derenne's cartoon – is that Saudi Arabia can buy its way into any place it wants to be.
Which isn't funny, but, then again, isn't surprising.
On a related irrelevancy:
I've just finished reading Anthony Trollope's "The Way We Live Now," which sounds like a title that, published in 1873, would be instantly dated, but, alas, only becomes more relevant. While not as side-splittingly funny as "Catch-22," its satire is more precisely targeted to the moment.
The novel is about a basically useless set of mid-level British nobles and those who wish they were, drawn into the orbit of Augustus Melmotte, a fantastically wealthy — at least by his own undocumented claims — businessman who is selling stock in a railroad that will connect Salt Lake City and Mexico, but which has not yet driven a spike at either end, with the whole crowd meanwhile attempting to arrange marriages based on financial security and to find ways to bilk each other out of what little cash they actually possess.
The author explained his intentions:
(A) certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel.
Which brings us seamlessly to:
There are any number of 100 Days editorial cartoons, but I like Ann Telnaes' take because she doesn't pin it to any particular broken promise or failed policy effort, but simply depicts Melmotte Trump as he is: Reckless, feckless and totally self-absorbed.
Though I also like Nate Beeler's take, one of several cartoons in which the Wall obstructs Trump or Congress or progress, but which stands out because, while people keep accusing Trump of "lying," Beeler suggests a sort of stubborn befuddlement that seems more accurate to me.
Maybe, in order to understand Trump, you have to have sat in department head meetings where the guy at the head of the table proposes something and there is a moment of everyone looking at each other until finally somebody gets up the courage to explain why it can't possibly work and then you all pray to god that he shrugs and gives it up.
Much of the humor in "The Way We Live Now" is that Melmotte assembles a Board of Directors made up of socially well-placed nincompoops who have no idea how anything works and are happy simply to go to meetings and feel important and approve anything he brings up.
Oops. Sorry. We were talking about Trump, not Trollope. Never mind.
Does ICE fly black helicopters?
Jeff Danziger has some fun with the administration's battle to federalize local authorities.
I haven't been able to track it down again, but some years ago, when I was compiling a "This Week In History" feature for the local paper, I came across a story from the early 70s about the placing of US flags on the uniforms and vehicles of local police and fire departments, and it reminded me of the controversy at the time.
It seems many locals were proud of being local. Some served their towns, some served their counties, some served their states, but none of them were under federal authority nor did they wish to be, or to appear to be.
Moreover, several of them were just back from Vietnam and had indeed served the federal government but did not want that service confused with their current local duties.
Well, the flags went up and I guess over time we forgot who was supposed to be in charge of what.
However it came about, it seems damned strange to me today that the people who scream loudest about states' rights and the 10th Amendment and the importance of local decisionmaking about women and minorities and the sexually divergent all of a sudden become fans of a strong, central government on this one issue.
It's almost like they're hypocrites. Or stupid. Or something.
Speaking of highly-placed people making bad decisions
The tribulations of Marvel Comics is a little off my beat, but this snippet of a John McNamee cartoon – the rest of which you can see at the Nib – discusses the company's frantic efforts to regain readership by re-booting heroes into villains and men into women and white folks into people of color and everything else into anything else.
There is a more complete and serious discussion at Comicsbeat by Brian Hibbs, an experienced retailer of comic books, with a title that deserves an award for truth in packaging: "What the hell is wrong with Marvel Comics anyway?!?!"
The bottom line, he says, is that Marvel screwed themselves — and their retailers — by simultaneously releasing multiple variations of their popular titles at exorbitant prices, such that the fan who used to show up once a month to buy one of everything has become confused and priced-out and doesn't bother anymore.
Someone sitting around that big table should have spoken up.
Let's close with a happy ending:
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