CSotD: Watching for the Good News
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I thought this morning's Candorville was unusually prescient until I thought about it a little more and realized how many times this could have run in the past few months and seemed unusually prescient.
Then I pulled down my copy of The Quote Verifier and confirmed what I suspected, which is that there is no evidence the "May you live in interesting times" is a Chinese curse.
But that doesn't make it a barrel of laughs, either.
And, whether that particular Ancient Chinese Secret is genuine, there's a lot of pointless, and a lot of stupid, flowing in the wake of yesterday's shooting.
On the amateur side, we had people immediately declaring the weapon an AR-15 when it turned out the gunman had a shotgun and a .35 caliber pistol.
I wish he'd had an AR-15, because what he did have was two extremely common guns with extremely legitimate uses. I've got plenty of friends with both, and a family member with a couple of shotguns but different calibre handguns.
Which, unfortunately shifts the conversation from a fairly simple one about people with pitiable needs for penis-extenders and into the much more tangled issue of responsible gun ownership.
That is, even if you think your guns are locked securely in the gun safe, let's not forget that you also think your kids can't get into the liquor cabinet.
And then there was some numbskull who said he knew the school shooter was white because he was taken alive. I knew the school shooter was white because school shooters are white, so that was easy, and this is a case of trying to co-opt the deaths of these children to talk about what I wanna talk about instead.
As usual, the stupid, inaccurate remarks themselves are less upsetting than the number of shares and retweets they get, and Quote Verifier couldn't find a solid source for "A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on," but did trace the concept back to Swift's 1710 quote that "Falsehood flies and truth comes limping after it."
I'd point out that there was no Internet in 1710.
In any case, the editorial cartoonists are running out of new things to say about the regular slaughter of our children, though I thought Kevin Necessary won the "Thoughts and Prayers" competition with this piece.
It's an interesting mash-up of offensive cliches and I think it works. Most of the rest just seem as familiar as the news itself.
Pat Bagley came up with something fresh, and, while his drawing is not of the actual weapons used, I don't think it matters so much. There are a lot of different kinds of hammers, too.
Several cartoonists re-posted previous cartoons on Facebook and Twitter, but didn't submit them to their papers or syndicates, which is appropriate in that professional commentary should be fresh and specific to the case.
Well, maybe.
It does make me think of how La Prensa used to run a photo of Rita Hayworth in place of whatever article the Nicaraguan government had censored, giving readers a message, even if they couldn't provide the forbidden information.
Maybe cartoonists should craft an "It Happened Again" cartoon to run in the wake of each school shooting. Ann Telnaes reposted this one, which she had done in the wake of the Parkland shootings, when it ran with an analysis that has also unfortunately failed to go out of date.
The evergreen "It Happened Again" cartoon should run again in the paper, Page One, without commentary, each time, a bit of Rita Hayworth to underscore the repeated injustice of it all.
And run it the next morning. Not three days later.
We'll see "thoughts and prayers" cartoons dribbling out over the next week, and a slavish keeping to your established schedule undercuts the journalistic integrity of editorial cartooning.
If there's no real sense of urgency, perhaps there's no real need.
Doubletalk
Ingram Pinn illustrates a truly bizarre fender-bender involving our chickenhawk National Security Advisor and our Head Nitwit In Charge.
As noted here the other day, it was weird for Bolton to even mention the word "Libya" in terms of North Korea, given that the point of Kim's nuclear program is to provide insurance against contracting a fatal case of bayonettis in toches.
Not only did Bolton bring up a case of someone abandoning their nuclear program and being subsequently overthrown, but then Trump somehow twisted this into a threat that, indeed, if you do what Gaddafi did … well, it was incoherent nonsense and mostly showed that Trump has no idea what happened in Libya, much less why or how.
And that Kim Jong Un would have to be an absolute idiot to make any deal with these screwballs.
Way to go, boys.
On a considerably lighter note
Please believe me when I tell you that you need to go see the rest of this Stephen Collins cartoon.
Yes, it's about the Royal Bloody Wedding, which, by the way, is second or third generation non-heir-to-the-throne remote from actually being terribly Royal.
If their first child is a girl, they should name her "Lady Jane Grey" in honor of her likelihood of reaching the throne and the legacy and influence of her reign if ever she did.
I came across an interview with a woman who flew from Canada to Britain and sat out all night to insure a spot on the curb kerb, on the chance of seeing their carriage roll by. I hope she set her DVR at home so she can see what she missed.
It reminds me of when Princess Anne came to visit Colorado in the early 80s and everyone went bonkers and they issued a list of requirements and protocols and of the proper manners one should observe if one found oneself in the Semi-royal Semi-relevant Presence.
Which inspired me to write this for the Colorado Springs Sun:
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