CSotD: Deja vu
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I don't often like Pearly Gates cartoons, but Andy Marlette employs the overused imagery to comment, not necessarily on the Texas church shooting, but on the phenomenon in general, and it's both apt and chillingly funny.
In a way, it kind of turns the Pearly Gates meme on its head, because we often see it in terms of God or St. Peter or whoever having this very personal interaction with the deceased celebrity, whereas here it is simply a matter of drearily processing a crowd of gray, sad, dead people.
Marlette also did a nice job of distinguishing them from, for instance, the line of souls waiting to board the plane to the Beyond in "Heaven Can Wait," (which, if you haven't seen it, or seen it lately, is worth streaming — one of the few remakes of a great film that worked).
Marlette draws them of all ages, both sexes and keeps them anonymous and interchangeable to make his point about the routine shipment of dead from American shootings, yet still conveys a sadness in each. I'm not trotting out the Pulitzer over this one, just pointing out good work.
We've had plenty of "oh, no, not another one" cartoons, but there's almost something circular in that, because we always have "oh, no, not another one" cartoons after a mass shooting.
John Cole put this one back up on his Facebook page; it's from a couple of years ago, but, as he suggested, it never goes out of style, and, again, we're seeing a flood of cartoons on the same topic — it's too soon, don't politicize it, wait until we can talk about it in general rather than pinned to a particular event, but the events keep coming.
Maybe he should submit it to his paper and syndicate each time, perhaps adding a string of dates across the bottom to indicate how often it has run.
I'm thinking of La Prensa, the Central American paper that used to run a picture of Rita Hayworth in place of a story the government censors had refused to allow.
Readers didn't know what they were being deprived of, but, when they saw Rita, either small in place of a brief story, or large in place of a major story, they knew the censors had stepped in yet again.
And I'm thinking that trying to come up with a fresh cartoon for every mass murder is not only nearly impossible but may act against the message.
Jeff Stahler caught some flak for this one, prompted by a TV host who invited his audience to comment because "some people" thought it was tasteless.
I guess he didn't find a coworker to agree with him at the coffee machine, or he'd had said that "many" found it tasteless.
"Some people" means "me," while "many" means me and another guy.
Anyway, prompted to object, his viewers did. I'm pretty sure if he had gone on the air and said "Some people agree that Stahler has a valid point," he'd have gotten the same degree of agreement.
I liked the cartoon because, years ago, I proposed a website perhaps called "Grief.com" that would operate like FTD or Flowers.com, but would specialize in teddy bears and floral displays that you could order on-line to be delivered to, and piled up at, the sites of tragedies.
Tasteless, yes. But a tasteless joke about both the repetitive nature of this public mourning and the futility of flowers, teddy bears and, as others have noted, "thoughts and prayers."
I mean, rather than piss away twenty bucks to dump flowers on the sidewalk, why not make a $20 donation to a group or a cause that might either help the victims or even help prevent there being more victims?
So, yeah, Stahler made a tasteless joke. Sometimes tasteless is a cool hand.
And here's the thing: I don't know that there is much to say about this particular shooting, because it's not a good example of how we need laws to keep the violent and the mentally unbalanced from buying guns.
The existing law would have worked if not for a bureaucratic snafu on the part of the Air Force who didn't report his record.
Most of the people cartooning about mental health and guns are not in the camp of "We don't need new gun laws. We need to enforce the ones we have," but that's where this one falls.
And of course there are the nimrods crowing over the fact that, after it was over and the shooter was leaving the church, he was confronted by a Good Man With A Gun who did what the cops would have done a few minutes later anyway.
Again, not a good example of their preferred position.
But then isn't it nice to have so many mass shootings that we can discard this one as not doing much to advance either side?
Maybe the next one will be better.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Universe
So apparently out there in the world beyond Trump and Kardashians and whatever, they have these "Paradise Papers" that show what various prominent people do with the money they have and we don't.
One of the galling revelations, as noted here by Serbian cartoonist Predrag Srbljanin, is that the Royal Family has been stowing its millions away in off-shore tax havens. It's not illegal but it's hardly patriotic, and, if you're going to be a paid, pampered symbol of the country, you ought to project something fitting.
The Paradise Papers are not making much of a splash over here, despite the presence of, for instance, our Secretary of Commerce in the role of shame, but it is being reported, as a Google News search reveals. For that matter, so were the Panama Papers and we never read much about them over here, either.
You see people on Facebook complaining that "the media" doesn't cover this or that pet issue, but the fact is, it generally does.
However, your newsfeed reflects what your friends care about.
So, if all you're seeing is Kardashians …
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