CSotD: Everlasting Twinkies and the Evil of Research
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Clay Jones saves me from having to either run a blank panel or violate the Prime Directive and run cartoons only to mock them.
Yes, we talked about this two days ago. But it's growing.
Folks, there is nothing illegal or even particularly sleazy about opposition research. This is one of those situations where "They all do it" isn't excusing anything. It's simply a statement of fact.
When it came out that research which resulted in the Steele dossier was paid for by the Clinton campaign, I expected Trump Loyalists to explode with accusations.
Sure enough, the fact that the original sponsor of the research was a Republican is ignored, the fact that opposition research is legal is ignored and they're apparently confusing the fact that you're not allowed to have foreign governments assist your campaign with their own odd notion that you're not allowed to research anything that happens overseas.
I expect spin and bullshit, but I don't like it, and I'm fair in that: I also dislike left-wing cartoonists who reflexively attack business practices or political stances that are perfectly normal and expected.
Maybe reading history makes you cynical: I used to tell students that, while William Marcy Tweed was a very bad, corrupt man, Thomas Nast would probably not have gone after him with such relish were it not for the fact that Tweed was a Democrat and Harper's Weekly was a Republican journal.
When I first started doing that in the early 90s, I had to explain the "partisan press." By the turn of the century, I just had to say, "like Fox and MSNBC."
Maybe that made me cynical.
But fine: Hillary was colluding with the Russians by investigating Trump's collusion with the Russians. It's a plot between Putin and Clinton to make Dear Leader look bad.
Don't laugh. That's all over Facebook, likely started in the troll farms and spread by the true believers.
Meanwhile, however, I'm seeing something even more depressing: Centrist cartoonists taking the position that having conducted opposition research is coming back to damage the Democrats.
Nobody explains why or how.
I have often said that I am more willing to forgive a partisan hack than a cartoonist who is just plain lazy.
It takes about 10 minutes on Google News to discover that there's no Russian connection to the DNC funding, and it takes maybe an eighth grade civics class to know that opposition research is as old as democracy itself.
And it is incompetent and unprofessional to promote ideas you have not examined, but, rather, are based on what Charles Mackay long ago dubbed "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."
Most foolish-but-popular beliefs are harmless enough:
The Cleaver family was not sheltered in a perfect suburbia. The show frequently tackled tough social problems.
Jack Swigert did not say "Houston, we have a problem" but rather "Houston, we've had a problem." Test pilots report. They don't whine.
And Twinkies indeed will spoil in a relatively short time.
Other popular delusions are more toxic, like the idea that Barack Obama is a Muslim, which, of course, has to be allied with Islamophobia to be a bad thing, but certainly has been.
And that Hillary Clinton is an inherently evil person.
Hillary Clinton has been a convenient rightwing punching bag from the moment she declined to bake cookies, which is a very large reason a lot of progressives were not happy to see her as the Democratic nominee in 2016: Not because of who she was, but because of who "everybody" was pre-programmed to think she was.
So here we are, with lazy cartoonists picking up on the easy, familiar pre-fab target.
Dammit, people, there's nothing illegal or unethical about opposition research.
And it only comes back to hurt the Democrats if the public is repeatedly told that it did.
My first traffic ticket came many years ago, at a pair of very close intersections where I saw that the first one had a green light and failed to notice that the second had a red light.
Which I told the judge.
He responded that he'd rather hear that I had simply decided to run the red light than that I was so inattentive that I hadn't even noticed it.
I was pretty young, but I was old enough to grasp his point.
And even to adopt it myself.
I would rather see an inaccurate, deceptive cartoon drawn from deliberate malice than one that simply reflects inattention and a lack of caring.
Now here's one about the current FLOTUS
Ed Hall isn't the only person to comment on the seeming incongruity of Donald Trump's wife taking on bullying as her social cause.
Nor, reading the comments, am I the only person who apparently likes this cartoon for reasons other than Ed's.
I get a lot of vibe about an informal Melania fan club that isn't based on liking her so much as feeling almost protectively compassionate about her.
It's not so much that she doesn't seem to be embracing her role as First Lady. It's more that she doesn't seem to be embracing her husband.
For all the bitching about the cost of security when she stayed in New York, I've heard cheers for her refusing to jerk little Barron out of school early just because Daddy got a new job.
I've also heard people who say they can't wait until Barron is grown and she walks out and writes a tell-all, but I suspect they haven't considered what sort of pre-nup you sign when you marry a guy whose employees are all required to sign non-disclosure agreements.
Well, I don't need to hear the details.
But here's my speculation on the whole anti-bullying campaign:
When Nancy Reagan came out against drugs, it rang hollow, and "Just Say No" was more of a punchline than a viable slogan.
But when Betty Ford talked about drugs, we listened.
Maybe someday there will be a Melania Trump Center for the victims of bullies.
Meanwhile, I'm cutting her some slack.
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