CSotD: Classical Gases
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Glenn McCoy wins the day with a cartoon that captures Trump's Facebook Twitter fetish and Jeff Sessions' situation with a classic film reference.
I'm so tired of little blue bird commentaries that McCoy surprised me with a fresh use and got a laff, though I'm not sure how many readers would get the Hitchcock reference. I tried to get my kids to watch "The Birds" some 30 years ago and the special effects that were so scary when the film came out were already pretty lame and they weren't having any. Still, it's an issue of cultural literacy, and, when you've got a good reference, you shouldn't be forced to dumb it down.
I was also struck by the way he captures that chilling quiet from the movie. Not only is Sessions' unaware expression comical in itself, but it's quite a change up from McCoy's usual style, in which everyone is in an exaggerated fit with sweat plews flying.
In real life, Sessions is surely aware of the gathering threat. I've had a boss who wanted me to quit so he could avoid paying unemployment, and the stress of forcing the dismissal without giving cause is exhausting.
I suppose the factor keeping Trump from simply firing Sessions is that Sessions was the first well-connected person to offer him support and it's pretty clear that, in a showdown, most Senate Republicans would favor their pal over their purported party leader.
Or maybe Trump simply … oh, who knows? Attempting to find rational explanations for his behavior is a mug's game.
Meanwhile, I'll break a rule and bring in yesterday's Sally Forth, which is part of a new story arc in which Sally comes back from vacation and questions her job.
I'm more tolerant of Sally's hanging on than I am of Jeff Sessions doing the same. Sal's got a kid at home and I remember being miserable and stressed in a bad job and waiting for the nest to empty so I could bolt.
Even before that situation, back when I was married, we spoke of what we would do once the boys were grown and gone, most of which had to do with urban life and more demanding hours.
But life is short and hanging in on a failing career, or, for that matter, a failing marriage, is often harder on your family than pulling the rip cord and letting yourself become more pleasant company.
I suppose, having given up a solid Senate seat in order to serve the President, Sessions is ambitious enough and dedicated to service enough that he wants to hang in there and continue to influence things, but Jack Ohman approaches the situation with a gag that you don't have to be a film buff to get.
Sessions should wise up and get out of an impossible situation with an impossible boss, though I'll admit that, as long as he's in place, so is Robert Mueller, and that's a good thing.
Meanwhile, back at the campfire
I'm glad I went ahead and vented on the Boy Scout speech yesterday, because even though it was a stretch to use Lee Judge's camping gag as the base, only a few commentators on the event got past imaginary merit badges. Way too many imaginary merit badges.
Pat Bagley wins for not only avoiding the obvious but for using the idea of a "bad Boy Scout" to comment on something beyond the event itself.
However, in general, the Boy Scout debacle shows the folly of the notion that Trump gives cartoonists a lot of ammunition. As previously noted, Dan "Tom Tomorrow" Perkins expressed the Trump problem in an interview in which he said
[It’s] like waking up and saying ‘I’d like a glass of water’ and then having someone spray you in the face with a fire hose. One of the biggest challenges of the Trump presidency has been coming up with something satirical that’s crazier than the things that are actually going on.
It was such an utterly ghastly moment that it doesn't leave room for mockery, and, while the alarm and anger of people over it has been, well, yuge, there isn't much to be said about it.
I'd hate to see it forgotten, but I have no suggestions beyond letting the "bad Boy Scout" thing follow him around from time to time as needed.
And speaking of avoiding the obvious, Jack Ohman – scoring a rare double-mention here — will probably get detention for commenting on Anthony Scaramucci without referencing Bohemian Rhapsody, but I like this take, mocking his game show host approach.
Be honest: Did Jim Lange really give a rat's ass if the couples on the Dating Game found true love?
Well, I don't think Scaramucci much cares about Trump getting his agenda into law, either. It's just a gig and one that required him to purge his Twitter feed to cover up the contempt he had previously expressed for his new boss.
As for the name, I reach back farther than Queen's 1975 hit to Stewart Granger's 1952 portrayal of Scaramouche.
Scaramucci's threat to start firing leakers from the White House reminded me of how, in the movie, Andre "Scaramouche" Moreau began to neatly dispatch corrupt members of the French assembly in pre-dawn duels, then coldly announcing to the assembled delegates that such-and-such a representative would be absent from the assembly, sometimes for a few months, sometimes permanently.
The difference being, of course, that Scaramouche was using his blade to deliver justice, not to stifle it.
Speaking of cultural literacy …
Mad Magazine's August issue features a collection of Trump-flavored parodies of great paintings, and Vanity Fair offers a selection in this preview. Yeah, Spicer's gone. I once wrote humor for a monthly, and timing can be a bitch.
But it's still Mad, doing for classic paintings what Warner Brothers cartoons once did for classical music.
Now here's your moment of Scaramouche:
(See? This Scaramouche is the good guy, not the villain. We could use a Scaramouche like that.)
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