Harry Allard’s 1974 book “The Stupids Step Out” has been banned in many places because it’s not funny to refer to people as “stupid,” though you might try the transactional explanation, “It’s not that you’re stupid. It’s that you do stupid things.” Which seems worse, but I’m not going to defend the term, having merely borrowed and modified his title.
Still, if you recognize this couple, you’ll realize that they are not necessarily stupid themselves, but, rather, that one of them is a power-hungry fraud and the other not only rhymes with, but is, in fact, an actual witch.
Together, they became famous for doing stupid things, one foolish, the other cruel, with the net result being that whether or not they are actually stupid is immaterial.
And as long as we’re dealing with borrowed and modified titles, Mike Luckovich borrows and modifies the Salem Witch Trials to confront the fact that intolerant, superstitious, judgmental people are convicting people of something or other but we don’t know what and neither do they.
The smart move is to go beyond the actual witch trials themselves — a highly regrettable but relatively minor event in the grand sweep of history — and reference instead Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible,” which was based on the trials but, more to the point, he intended as a condemnation of the McCarthy Hearings.
Yeah, here we are again.
An interesting detail being that, for all his lies and hateful accusations, Tailgunner Joe at least knew what a Communist was. We’ve now got people demanding that the Central Government take control of private industry in order to protect us from Communists. As well as from woke people and woke mice and woke ducks and so forth.
I would simply point out that the castle at Disney World Florida is Cinderella’s castle. Cinderella was not woke. She just had cute shoes.
The castle at Disneyland is Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and she was woke, but that’s California. They’re all woke out there and I don’t think their governor intends to do anything about it.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Marlette and Bagley borrow a well-worn argument, which is that the Bible contains plenty of controversial material but somehow not only avoids being banned but when anyone tries to keep religious teachings out of school, they are attacked by the same people who don’t want male penguins to hatch eggs and care for offspring.
Marlette gets top billing in this Juxtaposition not only for continuing the “woke” nonsense but for bringing in one of his late uncle Doug’s most beloved characters.
And, besides, he’s right that Jesus was woke and, worse than that, his followers were a bunch of socialists, pooling their resources so that everyone had whatever they needed.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, so you can forgive the Apostles for sharing, just as you can forgive Lot’s daughters for getting the old man drunk so he’d make them pregnant.
If he’d been a penguin, he might have cared for the resulting children and then we’d have to ban the book, but he wasn’t and so he didn’t and so we needn’t.
This is not difficult, people!
Scott Stantis notes that the Texas legislature doesn’t act upon the leading cause of death among children and apparently feels that it’s okay for them to suffer from bullet wounds as long as they don’t suffer from gender dysphoria.
You might think that, after Uvalde, the Texas legislature would put some restrictions on guns, but you would be wrong.
What that event proved, rather, was that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is 376 good guys with guns. Unless the bad guy has a really good gun.
To be fair, kids aren’t supposed to bring guns to school which is why they searched that boy in Denver — as they did every day, since he was considered a danger — and why they might have searched that six-year-old in Virginia, if they’d been told about his gun four times instead of only three and it hadn’t been so close to the end of the day.
Thank goodness neither of them were transgender!
Meanwhile, back at the Potomac
Never mind the gun laws in Texas. In Washington, DC, as RJ Matson points out, it isn’t even illegal to send a mob to murder the vice-president. Or, it may be illegal but it’s one of those technical violations that nobody bothers to prosecute.
Mike Pence admitted that Donald Trump had tried to have him killed, but he did it at a dinner from which cameras and microphones had been barred so that we only have the word of a roomful of reporters that he said it at all, and he got better later, explaining that he has learned to forgive.
While, as Ann Telnaes points out, the whole “attempt to overthrow the government by force and violence” thing is over now anyway, Gentleman Gym Jordan having been brought to heel and assigned to attack Trump’s enemies rather than America’s.
While Clay Bennett (CTFP) suggests that Dear Leader’s run for office may be a bit hindered if he actually ends up being charged and convicted, but let’s not ponder that now.
Trump has predicted his own indictment and arrest, but all that’s happened so far is that he’s used his own rumors to soak his faithful pigeons for another million-and-a-half.
It’s a pretty good racket.
And he needs the extra funds because, as Gary Varvel (Counterpoint) says, this is the year the Democrats plan to oppose a Republican candidate. I know: It’s hard to believe!
There ought to be a law against it, but unless Trump wins a second term, there won’t be.
Meanwhile, if you want a more realistic scenario depicting Trump’s run for the presidency, go north and see Bruce MacKinnon’s version of events, showing Dear Leader sprinting to get back to the safety of public office before the gendarmes can catch up with him.
Those are, granted, awfully Canadian looking uniforms, but that’s hardly as fanciful as the notion of Donald Trump in a full sprint.
However, maybe the real inaccuracy is only one person holding open the door for him. Against all odds, and severely testing my reluctance to use the word “stupid,” Real Clear Politics indicates that he’s still got an entire cheering section.
Yikes, indeed.
O.K., I’ll fess up that I *don’t* recognize the couple in the big photo. Maybe a couple more hints. . . ?
I recognize the wicked witch of the west but don’t know the context.
You saw the other guy several times in that same movie. (Which, btw, this is not from.)
It’s a scene from *Saratoga* (1937), with Frank Morgan (the Wizard himself, as well as Professor Marvel) and Margaret Hamilton (the WWotW, obviously).
A pity Disneyland hasn’t been the target, as the woke jokes about Sleepy Beauty just write themselves
Arthur Miller wrote “The Crucible”, not Henry Miller
Oh, right. Henry Miller wrote “Crucible of Cancer.” (Thx, fixed)
It is appropriate to credit Henry Allard for the story, “The Stupids Step Out”, but please – please! – give credit for the hilarious illustrations to the late and beloved James Marshall, the creator of “George and Martha” and other whimsical characters. He left us too soon.
On the subject of witches, this wisdom from Terry Pratchett (in I Shall Wear Midnight), which I am reminded of all too often:
“It’s like a disease …It sort of creeps up. It’s in the wind, as if it goes from person to person. Poison goes where poison’s welcome. And there’s always an excuse, isn’t there, to throw a stone at the old lady who looks funny. It’s always easier to blame somebody. And once you’ve called someone a witch, then you’d be amazed how many things you can blame her for.”