I wasn’t going to do more than give Groundhog Day a nod, since it’s a holiday more beloved by cartoonists than by anyone in the real world. And the Barn (Creators) pleasantly placed it in perspective: An outdated tradition imported from a different climate that is more a bit of folklore than any sort of meaningful holiday.
But then I got to Lola (AMS) and thought, “Well, this puts a little more zing on the gag!”
Granted, this could be because I took a road trip Monday and, among other podcasts, listened to On the Media’s discussion of a looming civil war.
Or maybe I’m just more worried about nutjobs with bombs than I am about a few more weeks of snow.
These screwballs were bluffing and I saw a report (unconfirmed) that the FBI has a lead on them, but there will be smarter people with better skills.
In case you thought Oklahoma City was a one-off.
Which I guess means that, while political cartoons don’t have to be funny, neither do the funny ones.
Then Brewster Rockit (Tribune) maintained the despairing mood while shifting from the silly holiday to the classic movie, and the best part of this is that Pam only tosses off the mask reference as one element of the neverending horror.
Then Maria Scrivan, one of the sunniest presences on the comics page, goes in for the kill with this Half-Full (AMS) assessment of where we’re at and where we’re (not) headed.
I think we’ve got a societal case of cabin fever, and I mean that in the original sense. I knew a woman who spent several years as housewife out on the Eastern Plains of Colorado, and she said the isolation and the constant wind about drove her crazy.
And here we are.
So Happy Groundhog Day, with the consolation that Bill Murray’s character was only forced to go through it over and over again until he finally stepped up and got it right.
Juxtaposition of the Day
But be aware that “stepping up” requires a great deal more effort than simply announcing that you’re tired of it all.
As stated here yesterday, we could have had the pandemic, if not entirely behind us, certainly within a great degree of control if it hadn’t been turned into a political loyalty test.
And as long as we are divided between science and non-science, vaxxing and anti-vaxxing, sense and nonsense, we’ll still wake up every morning to “I’ve Got You, Babe.”
One encouraging event is that, as Mike Luckovich (AMS) points out, Dear Ex-Leader said the quiet part out loud the other day, announcing that he felt it would have been perfectly legal and fine for Mike Pence to overturn the election.
He later walked it back and said it would have been perfectly legal for Pence to send the results back to the states for further review, but we heard him the first time and I hope Merrick Garland did, too.
Having given Ed Wexler grief yesterday, I’ll give him flowers today for this mashup of Trump’s accidental confession with news reports that the National Archives have given the Jan 6 Committee documents that Trump had torn up after reading them and which his staff had to tape back together in keeping with the Presidential Records Act and a few other laws about maintaining a paper trail.
I’ve seen other cartoons that suggest he tore up the Constitution, which is fair commentary but not as specific and pointed as Wexler’s combo.
There’s a major “no-shit-Sherlock” element in this, mind you, because his habit of tearing up papers after he read them was documented long ago. There should be no shock.
At least Bill Murray’s character knew he was trapped in a loop. We keep being shocked by things we’ve already been told about.
We were shocked when the Church Committee revealed the FBI’s domestic spying, except for those of us whose mail had been read and phones tapped, just as we were shocked by the murder of George Floyd, except for those of us who had been subject to police discrimination and violence for generations.
So now we’re supposed to be shocked that Trump tore up things after he read them, and this time I truly am shocked!
I didn’t think he ever read anything.
Next up, let’s all be shocked to learn how his staff used to sneak harebrained screwball documents off his desk so he wouldn’t sign them.
And by his finally showing up in the office at 11 am, and his habit of wandering out of meetings when he got bored.
All of which we were told about, none of which we heard.
They say we’re young and we don’t know — won’t find out until we’re old!
Can’t we talk about something more pleasant?
Jeff Stahler (AMS) notes that the popular on-line game Wordle has been purchased by the New York Times, which doesn’t mean they will place it behind their paywall, smother it in ads or otherwise “improve” and screw it up.
Maybe they just liked it so much that they wanted to reward the developer with some money.
But I’m betting they’ll turn it into something wonderful, just so long as people don’t discover that
If you right-click and “save as,” you can download
the whole game to your desktop and never
have to go on-line to play it again.
Or, as some have reported, for seven years, which is how many one-a-day puzzles are apparently loaded up.
Of course, that would probably be wrong or something and you shouldn’t do it, though this is a self-solving moral dilemma, since, if you ponder the ethical issues long enough, the new owners will have discovered that vulnerability and patched it.
Finally today, The Buckets (AMS) appears to be testing my Old Manness.
I’ve finally gotten used to people older than 12 who sport unnatural hair colors, but if people start walking around looking like one of Jim Kirk’s one-night stands, I’m gonna have to go back and start getting hip all over again.
And, dammit, I’m hip for an old guy. I caught the obscure musical reference in Adam@Home, didn’t I?
Sigh. Never mind.
Finnegan Beginnegan.