CSotD: Variety Pack
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John Cole on the digital divide, which has been a factor in education for a good 25 or 30 years but is now in sharper focus as schools shift to distance learning.
For those who came in late, the “digital divide” refers to kids who are at a disadvantage because their classmates have computers and Internet access at home and they don’t.
When I was a kid, research happened at a physical library, which meant you needed to compile your notes during business hours.
With the coming of the Web, kids with computers could research projects at home, at night, faster and better than kids who had to trudge to the library and deal with whatever collection of books was there.
In the morning, the “poor kids” would pile into the school library during study halls to type their papers into the computers there so that they, too, could have nicely formatted work to turn in, just like the kids who had word processors and ink jet printers at home.
Now that divide is a chasm, as classrooms are meeting on-line and assignments assume — demand — Internet access.
Cole attacks North East Pennsylvania schools for failure to respond, but response to the issue has been chaotic and individual: Some places have addressed it well (mostly having addressed it partially, before the crisis) but his cartoon could run in any number of other, less responsive school districts around the country.
But here’s a wrinkle that I hadn’t thought of until I was talking to my younger son, a teacher at a reasonably middleclass school: It’s no longer simply a financial issue.
He told me many of his kids’ families had to get Internet now because, while they may have had cable TV, the parents only accessed the Internet through their phones, not only leaving the kids out of the picture but making it clumsy if not impossible to get a laptop online for a Zoom classroom conference.
Which I offer mostly as a curiosity, because it left me scratching my head. It simply hadn’t occurred to me, but made sense once it was pointed out.
Note that I am giving Cole the grace of allowing a slack-line tin-can telephone because, in his cartoon, it’s not supposed to work.
I hate slack lines in cartoons with tin-can telephones.
I also hate this:
I liked today’s Strange Brew, and it isn’t John Deering’s fault that it brings me to a boil.
But speaking of graphic design experts, I wish one of them would tell Creators Syndicate that simply sloshing a light wash over a cartoon does not count as “coloring it.”
It’s cheap, it’s lazy and it makes their comics look worse than if you had simply left them black-and-white.
I know times are tough, but some really good strips have started looking lousy because of this half-assed attempt to save money.
And, speaking of half-assed ideas, here’s our first
Juxtaposition of the Day
You may notice Wilkinson appearing here a lot lately — she’s on a helluva hot streak and she’s nailed this one with a very simple piece that I like a lot.
However, I’m giving Bramhall’s grim depiction the nod for this reason: I really like Wilkinson’s depiction of an arrogant, uncaring head waiter, compared to Bramhall’s more thoughtless production line operator.
But, much as we try to keep meat fresh, I suspect the virus won’t make it from packing house to distribution center to grocery shelf to home and through the cooking process.
There may be a public revulsion to it, based on the fear, but I think there’s little reason to worry about health risks in the meat, which will be packed by people who are being murdered at the instigation of the president.
Bramhall shows the real butchery that’s going on.
On an equally stupid but lighter note:
In this Juxtaposition, Wuerker gets the bigger laugh, but Darkow cuts to the chase.
His dialogue is less elegantly timed and trim than it might be, but, then again, the point is hardly elegant and is best made shaken, not stirred.
Sometimes lack of elegance is a cool hand.
While, at the other end of that scale, Tom Tomorrow demonstrates that a solid dramatist can write a good one-act play in which every line hits home.
Multi-panel cartoons have the ability to expound in detail, but way too often a weak panel derails the whole thing. One clumsy line, one inapt metaphor and you’ve distracted the reader and broken the spell.
I’m not saying he’s Alan Ayckbourn or Edward Albee, but this is some good, tight, on-target dialogue, delivered in a style of cartooning that way too often suffers from drift.
If you can’t be Darkow, be Tom Tomorrow. And vice versa.
Juxtaposition #3
Some day, we’ll get back to some semblance of normalcy, and I like Rico’s re-entry concept. I hope we follow South Africa’s cautious lead.
Meanwhile, Brewster Rockit gets the chance for a final toilet paper joke, particularly when crowned with the alternative of Christmas wrapping paper, because (A) I’ve got a bunch of that in a closet and (B) I can’t imagine anything less functional.
That second punchline sells the gag. Well played!
Especially this
Pat Bagley speaks for me.
As noted before, I have a son in the frontline of all this, but before he was in the ER treating covid patients, he was doing boarding parties in the Gulf and he’s been a firefighter and in high school, he was keeper on the soccer team.
I have long had the comfort of knowing that, when all hell breaks loose, if he’s not there, he’ll get there as soon as he possibly can.
It’s who he is, and he’s not looking for a medal.
He’s sure as hell not looking for a goddam flyover.
But, if you’d like to spend the money on something that matters, some more masks, gloves and gowns would be nice.
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