CSotD: Everybody always be’s mean to broflakes
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I was thinking yesterday that perhaps it's too late for editorial cartoons, that there's no point in debate because nobody's listening, here under the snowflake flag in which everyone is constantly offended and nobody is happy and, in the words of my elder sister possibly just before I became her little brother, "Everybody always be's mean to me."
Tearful toddler words which my parents quoted back at her, laughing, for years, not realizing the sentiment would one day replace "In God We Trust" and "E Pluribus Unum" as our national motto.
So now Budweiser has created this commercial for the Fourth of July, in which a young woman is told that, as the daughter of a disabled vet, she's getting a "Folds of Honor" scholarship to finish her nursing degree.
The foundation is well-rated, the scholarship and additional aid for this kid is a good thing and, as the father of a vet who was similarly knocked out of the service by a non-combat injury and who has a daughter in nursing, I'm cool with it.
Good on them all and we can discuss why our kids need scholarships another day.
What's upsetting to me is that it's all over Facebook, not linked, as above, to Budweiser's own site, but to various rightwing crybaby broflake sites that take this thoughtful, positive video and surround it with divisive whining about how it is a message to those liberals in Hollywood — you know, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Mel Gibson — and is a real breakthrough since no other ads ever honor our vets, except for the ones that do.
Though of course, Bud has never done anything to honor vets in the past, so there's that.
Sarcasm aside, it's discouraging that every nice gesture has to be perverted into yet another excuse to divide our country and ratchet up the hostility we've bred.
And so I was sure that, in this time of crisis and division, a standard flags-and-fireworks Fourth of July cartoon would be dereliction of duty.
So as if to show me up, here's Bill Day's piece, which quietly salutes the day and salutes the nation and steadfastly makes a point.
And the best thing about it is that I don't think the haters can find a way to pervert his message.
And the worst thing about it is that, in any other setting, any other year, any other America, it would simply be a bland statement and not a challenge.
Yesterday, Robert Reich posted a link to a 2014 essay he wrote, in which he suggested that nations are outdated, that we have given up that 200 year experiment and reverted to tribes.
I hope not. But it often feels that way.
Both Reich's and Day's pieces dovetail nicely with today's Candorville.
A lot of alternative history is simply off-the-wall, but his starting point is solid, since, when Benedict Arnold attempted to aid the British, he was not wishing to return the colonies to status quo ante.
The dominant loyalist position in those latter years of the war was to accept Britain's offer to concede to most of the demands the patriots had made in the course of pursuing independence.
Had the loyalists brokered a peace, it would not have meant a return to taxes on tea and lack of representation in Parliament.
I'm not sure about the Manifest Destiny part, since Britain's agreements over native rights might not have survived a resumption of colonial growth, but, if nothing else, a collection of colonies would have had weaker leverage in their efforts to seize land, while, if Lemont is correct and France would not have seen Napoleon, the Louisiana Purchase would have been out, that territory remaining Spanish.
As for emancipation, even half a century before Britain outlawed slavery, Samuel Johnson had wondered "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"
That same Samuel Johnson who wrote: "Our supple tribes repress their patriot throats, And ask no questions but the price of votes."
Which returns us to the present.
Juxtaposition of the Day:
There may be no point in trying to argue with people who believe in Bigfoot and in pizza parlor perverts and, at latest report, slave colonies on Mars, but I do think it's worth pointing out that the Nation's Biggest Eight-Year-Old is an embarrassing broflake and needs, in the terms of his followers, to man up.
The deplorables in the unreachable half of that loyal basket are fond of posting things about how good it was back in the days when parents raised their kids right. Stahler and Varvel may be offering an argument here that can get through even to people who believe Obama was born in Kenya and that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
And even Glenn McCoy — hardly a cartoonist noted for liberal bias — is calling for the President to stop embarrassing the office, and the country.
It's enough to make one hope for better days.
Looking Back:
We could also wish for better days for Hong Kong on the 20th anniversary of its return from British colony to Chinese territory, and Ann Telnaes tweeted this cartoon that she did back in those days.
I heard a report on NPR yesterday, saying that, while Hong Kong activists had protested in past years, it was quiet there on the anniversary, and also that a lot of upperclass Chinese from the mainland, enriched by the nation's new semi-capitalism, had moved to Hong Kong and were having an impact on its society and local economy that many long-time residents resented.
It reminded me, and then Ann's cartoon reminded me again, of the late, lamented comic strip "Lily Wong" that had once prospered in British Hong Kong, and which I wrote about at more length on the 15th Anniversary of the repatriation.
And which suggests this earworm:
(Improve America: Share pictures of Lily with your favorite broflake!)
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