CSotD: Wednesday Short Takes
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Yesterday, I asked for a quiet day when we could just enjoy cartoons and now here we are, mostly because the editorial cartoonists who didn't have Gaza commentary ready to roll then are posting it today.
Their timing was perhaps constrained but it still could have been better.
However, the barrier they now face is not the calendar but the fact that Steve Breen has just killed the category.
This came in later than the cartoons featured here yesterday, but it was worth the wait.
It's not that Israel's blaming of Hamas for conflict is new or necessarily inaccurate.
But explanations for why they were shooting people who hurl rocks — and people standing near them and people trying to scale the wall — seemed terribly strained.
Which makes Breen's depiction of two young men slinging rocks at a giant one of those ideas so brilliant that, after you see it, you're surprised everyone didn't think of it.
After all, it's easy enough to point out that George Washington was considered a terrorist by the Crown, or that there are parallels between American Indians and Palestinians or any number of connections you can work into the mix.
But when a country that makes an icon of a kid who used only a sling and a rock to oppose a giant starts shooting kids using slings to hurl rocks at a giant … well, yes, perhaps everyone should have thought of it.
Breen did.
The topic is now closed.
Next subject
Tom Wolfe's death has sparked some interesting responses. Michael Cavna avoids all the Pearly Gates cliches by simply doing a tribute piece.
He's not the only cartoonist to regularly take this approach, but he generally avoids the smarmy emotional glurge others add. This is a good example, in which he draws the man and adds a brief quote that sums up why Wolfe mattered.
I guess that, if you want cloth-eared editors to pull your cartoon out of the syndicate pile, you should lard it with sentimental glop, but it seems, if you really cared about the subject and not just the sales, you'd employ a little respect.
Besides, those cloth-eared editors are looking for gloppy, sentimental tributes to Margot Kidder. Wolfe's not gonna win that one.
Guy Badeaux — whose blog should be in your bookmarks if you like mine – posted a Tom Wolfe cartoon which not only mirrors his general attitude but shows that he wasn't simply a stunning stylist in words but a damn good artist as well.
Making this a far better tribute than having him stand in front of St. Peter finding out if he had the Right Stuff.
And Steve Brodner marked the death by posting this caricature he'd done of Wolfe, or, rather, he posted a cropped version of the book cover. I went and got the rest and that book looks like a fun read.
It's a good piece of art and, while I'm sure Brodner got paid for it, there is a sense of affection behind it which I'm sure is why he posted it now.
The fact that you get paid for something doesn't require that you do it without an element of joy and, while this wasn't a "tribute" at the time, it's done with an élan that makes it a good one now.
Plus it's nice to think that, when you die, there could be people who recognized your worth when you were still alive.
That's kind of a weird segue to the current story arc in The Buckets, which began back here and is based on Greg Cravens having had a bit of a scare which I gather is putting it mildly.
The connection being that people already liked him, so that didn't change much when he got through this.
And it's a particularly good thing when a cartoonist can work experiences like this into a strip in a way that doesn't disrupt the normal flow. Greg's done a nice job of that. This has managed to be a very funny and interesting story arc rather than A Very Special Story ArcTM, which takes a deft touch.
It also cracked me up personally because, after my 12-hour stint on the operating table two years ago, I kept waking up to find myself surrounded by interns and medical students, and, while I realize that Dartmouth-Hitchcock is a teaching hospital, I suspect there was also a curiosity factor involved.
I think it's a general rule that being medically interesting is not a goal one should reach for, except in the sense of having survived something you shouldn't have.
That's worthwhile.
Especially if you can get a few good strips out of it.
#ThemToo
Tank McNamara has been riffing on the Washington Redskins cheerleaders, about whom there was an expose about their general mistreatment — the low pay and stupid rules NFL clubs impose on all their cheering squads — plus a trip to Costa Rica for a calendar shoot that involved a topless session and providing big spenders with (non-coital) companionship.
The team says it's ridiculous. Of course, the team also says Indians like the name "Redskins," so BYO salt grains.
I don't get the point of cheerleaders in the NFL anyway.
That is, I get the point, but it depresses me: Calendar sales are a moneymaker and the girls essentially work for free. What's not to get?
In college, the cheerleaders led cheers right in front of the student section and, besides, we knew most of them personally anyway.
But I've been to NFL games and, if you didn't bring binoculars, you wouldn't be able to spot the cheerleaders way down there.
And, with the advent of instant replay and sideline reporters, the TV cameras don't dwell on them nearly as much as they once did.
NFL cheerleaders might as well just pose for the calendar. They have nothing more to do with football than the women on auto parts calendars have with actual car repair.
This, on the other hand …
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