CSotD: Tragedy Tomorrow, Hump Day Today!
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I often have to pause and decide whether to put a Paul Noth piece in the political folder or the humor folder. Even his cartoons that don’t seem to reference a particular politician have significant bite.
Obviously, this one hints at a specific person, but it contains an element of plausible deniability, not that cartoonists need plausible deniability these days.
LBJ and Nixon read newspapers and yelped when a cartoonist stuck in a needle, but you can get away with just about anything now as long as they don’t discuss it on Fox and Friends.
Juxtaposition of the Day
This pair is more general and they risk falling into the category of Will Rogers humor, which is more like Johnny Carson than Stephen Colbert. In both cases, however, timing makes their satire more pointed than it might be at another moment.
I’ve heard for decades the complaint that most people can identify pop culture figures more than politicians, most often that they could name the Seven Dwarfs or the Simpsons but not the members of the Supreme Court. But now that Citizens United has turned elections into bidding wars, Wiley’s point of accountability has far more bite, because our Congress Critters report to donors, not voters.
I’m not being political: Overwhelming majorities of people want the Epstein files released, for instance, and that’s just one example of why so many legislators are more comfortable lunching on Wall Street than they are in holding town meetings back home.
The fact that, in elections, candidates are sold like toothpaste with endless dark money ads also lends some specificity to the comparison between soap operas and politics in Betty. I’m not making the claim that campaigns used to be held to facts and to intelligent exchanges of policy proposals, because JFK’s charisma provided his tiebreaker over Nixon in 1960.
Still, as long as there’s no restriction on money, there’s no restriction on glitz and BS. A new ad for Modelo beer indicates that you can drink it at home and still feel like you’re on the beach, and candidates are similarly promoted with more imagery than analysis.
Though at least they no longer have to run out and buy flannel shirts and Labrador retrievers like they did a few years ago.
I don’t think this Willy ‘n Ethel was intended to be political, but it has pinged my outrage that a guy who actively dodged the draft to avoid going to Vietnam had the gall to release an AI image of himself as a hero of that war.
People keep wishing Joseph Welch would come back and ask “Have you no sense of decency?” but why ask the question when the answer is so obvious?
Okay, enough politics. It’s Hump Day.
How about sexual politics instead? One thing I’ve found appealing about the Travis and Taylor romance is that they’re both incredibly famous and I suspect that each having dwelt in a constant spotlight makes it easier for them to be comfortable together. They’re also both genuinely smart, decent people, and positive role models for kids.
As for Kelce being famous for who he’s marrying, that’s nonsense. Look at Wikipedia and you’ll see a list of superlatives that is too extensive to list here, and much of which is statistical rather than subjective.
Anyway, I’ve been to Cooperstown and there’s nothing about Marilyn Monroe on Joe DiMaggio’s Hall of Fame plaque. I assume the NFL’s hall will handle things similarly.
Anonymity is the opposite of fame. I’m at a stage of life where I spend a fair amount of time getting blood drawn for one doctor or another. HIPAA requires privacy to the extent that techs only call your first name when it’s your turn to bleed, and there’s frequently a time when two people get up and it takes a last-name initial to sort things out.
Maybe we should include our favorite coffee orders when we register at the desk. Surely calling that out wouldn’t violate HIPAA. Or make it like security questions: They could call out the name of your first pet.
Here’s another modern touch: When I was a kid, being pregnant meant a teacher had to take the year off, and, IIRC, before she began to show. We lost a fantastic Latin teacher to childbirth when I was a freshman, though she made her exit at the Christmas break.
I didn’t understand it even then. Lord knows, it’s not as if having her there was going to give us ideas. We were able to get each other pregnant without additional inspiration.
Baby Blues continued the story arc this morning, so it should be interesting to follow.
Another oddity from the past, one hopes. When I arrived at one newspaper, they had a weekly feature where a reporter would visit a classroom and ask little kids questions they couldn’t possibly answer. I eventually persuaded them to drop it.
It was likely an outgrowth of Art Linkletter’s House Party, where he would line up some kids, ask them questions and then smirk at their stupid — sorry, “darndest” — answers.
And then he put them into books illustrated by someone who generally treated children with a great deal more dignity and respect.
Like the kid in Andertoons, it was all something of a mystery, but my conclusion was that being a little wiseass was admirable.
I did my best.
Caulfield has been praising Moby Dick this week, and apparently both Frazz and Mrs. Olson have also read it, which is the largest collection of people who have actually read that book outside of a Great Books seminar.
I do know people — and not only from my seminar class — who have read and loved the book, but it’s one that I really tried to like and just couldn’t.
Fortunately for my tender ego, Dave Kellett put it all into perspective back in 2008:
That’s pretty much how I got through it for seminar, but I had no lack of other things to read that year, and, looking back, am generally more amazed at what I got through than by what I didn’t.
Here’s my idea of a good whaler’s tale:
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