CSotD: Tuesday Short Takes
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I'm going to start with the heavy lifting and work my way to more fun stuff, and I'm grateful for Jeff Stahler for this one because it helps illustrate something that struck me yesterday.
Some panelists and guests on "OMIGOD! THIS JUST IN! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" — or whatever Wolf Blitzer calls his regular daily news roundup — were suggesting that Al Franken and John Conyers resign, and I thought, first of all, that I needed to throttle back and try to look past the whole Democrat/Republican aspect.
And then I thought, yeah, but if the Democrats are the only ones pushing that solution, what's Congress going to end up looking like? 'Cause the GOP sure isn't insisting that their creepy guys resign.
And I agree with Rob Rogers that people who would vote for a pederast are despicable, particularly when they come from the party that continually touts "family values" and religious beliefs and so forth.
But they also were saying how sad it was that private industry is so much more decisive, that the Harvey Weinsteins and Charlie Roses get fired, gone, while Congress natters on about apologies and losing committee positions.
And this insight hit me: Harvey Weinstein and Charlie Rose were fired by their employers, not their colleagues.
Article I, section 5 says "Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member."
But, boy, that needs to be a rare and very transparent process. And I would suggest that it should be reserved for current and potentially relevant faults.
Beyond that, if the people of a particular district want to be represented by a racist or a sexist or a nudist or a homophobe or a guy who burned his draft card 50 years ago or a guy who has a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald over the fireplace in his den, well, that's how democracy works.
We're allowed to vote for assholes and we're allowed to define "asshole" based on our own criteria.
And if the people of Minnesota feel strongly enough about it, they ought to be able to vote to recall Al Franken right now instead of waiting to vote against him in 2020.
But it's their deal: They are his employers.
Meanwhile, what I particularly like about Stahler's piece is that we've seen several cartoons about men searching their memories for things they shouldn't have done, but when the Ghost of Christmas Past came to visit Scrooge, it was not to punish him but to awaken him.
Scrooge was still behaving badly, and the ghosts came to make him search himself not in order to cast blame and guilt but to illuminate his behavior and to help him reform.
And note that he didn't close down the house of Scrooge and Marley, but, rather, turned it into a good place to work.
Which brings us to Tom Toles' take on the classic psychological test, as posed by the GOP Congress, and don't miss the fine print at the bottom.
While his immediate target is the GOP tax plan, there's a wider significance that can hark back to the aforementioned power of the people to make wise and responsible choices.
It echoes Jefferson's position that, while the people's opinions will generally keep government headed in the right direction, it's important that those opinions be well-informed.
We've never found a way to limit voting to intelligent, responsible people, and most purported attempts to do so have actually been attempts to make sure only those who agree with us get to vote, "us" being the folks already in power.
Still, if Congress is going to start casting members out because of stupid, sophomoric jokes they made a decade ago, how about also holding them accountable for calling something "the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" when they know damn well that trickle-down has not only never worked to create jobs but has on occasion been responsible for cratering the economy.
Maybe we should refer people to the Ethics Committee or urge them to resign for trying to peddle toxic codswallop to voters.
Arts Section and required Canadian Content:
Bado passes along a small collection of "artists painting dogs" by Swedish cartoonist Riber Hansson, who has been doing this unbeknownest to me for 25 years.
Which is why it is good to check in with Bado regularly. He knows about stuff you didn't.
And as long as we're looking at art gags in Quebec, let's catch up with Doc and Raider, who are riffing on the recent sale of the da Vinci painting.
When the actual auction happened, I heard a piece on NPR in which someone said that authenticating art is dodgy stuff because the expert is often offered a percentage of the sale, which poses an obvious conflict of interest.
Which immediately made me think of this jaw-droppingly bizarre episode from a generation or two ago.
If you click on nothing else this month, click on that article, which ends with this quote:
We should all realise that we can only talk about the bad forgeries, the ones that have been detected; the good ones are still hanging on the walls. — Theodore Rousseau
As it happens, I first learned about it on the CBC, from Peter Gzowski.
Now there was a master!
Hep Happenings
Over at Comics Kingdom's Vintage section, Johnny Hazard is starting up a new adventure, this one from April, 1948.
During the war, Johnny used his skills as a pilot to fight the obvious bad guys, but peace put him into a bind where he had to find villains whose evil required he at least get there by air, even if he ended up doing most of his battling on terra firma.
I like the strip because the action is well-staged, the art is painless and the Runyonesque 40s slang is totally ridic.
Plus I've always had a crush on Ann Sheridan and I think maybe Frank Robbins did, too.
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