CSotD: I Skipped the News Today, Oh Boy
Skip to comments
It’s hard to write about current events when you’re scared to check your news sources in the morning because you recorded last night’s US/Paraguay game and fear coming across spoilers.
Fortunately, there’s enough that hasn’t likely changed overnight, and the real issue here is admitting that, despite the combined character flaws of FIFA and one of the three host countries, I’m watching anyway.
And I’ll let John Oliver explain it later in today’s video, a flashback to 2014 when he got it right and only FIFA’s chairman and the parts about stadium construction have changed.
Meanwhile, it offers us this
Juxtaposition of the Day
There’s a fresh round of brutality unfolding in Northern Ireland, or, as it is also called, the North of Ireland. The choice you make tells who you are, and people who say “The North of Ireland” will also tell you that it’s not Ulster because Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan counties are part of Ulster but are in the Republic.
And if that confuses you, no worries because it confuses everybody. It’s not clear what’s behind these riots except hatred of immigrants, which, as Turner suggests, is ridiculous in a nation that has had immigration throughout all of its history, starting with the arrival of the Celts and then the Normans and then the Plantation of Ulster which brought in the Scots who became the Orangies and, given all that, to see anti-immigrant riots is just too silly and sad.
But Americans can hardly criticize it, considering we’re a nation of immigrants except for our own indigenous people, and here we are stoking hatred of those who arrived after our personal forebears, in a charming display of drawing up the ladder once we’re here.
The least charming part of all is that at least the Irish can blame the mob in the streets, but we elected the government that is officially stoking hatred in our nation.
As Mellor noted, our hostility to others has seeped into the World Cup, not just theoretically, but officially, with a Somali referee banned, restrictions on the Iranian team and a general fear of ICE and the Border Patrol by fans from other nations.
What struck me about Chappatte’s cartoon is that it may seem funny to suggest that Customs could ask tourists what event they were coming for and bar entry to anyone who called it “football,” but, as it happens, there was a time during the Troubles in the Six Counties when roving gangs would stop people in the street and demand they recite the alphabet.
And you’d better know who stopped you, because Protestants say “aitch” and Catholics say “haitch,” and if you say it wrong, you might never get to i-j-k and the rest of the letters.
As long as we’re on the topic of illogical hostility, here’s
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
When you run out of logical arguments, you have the choice of conceding the battle or hitting below the belt, and while neither of these cartoons are as toxic as the administration’s lies about Somalis eating pets, they don’t contribute much to a fair, free election.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I added this cartoon to my high-school presentation when Pope John Paull II visited Cuba in 1998, and the kids identified both men and got the idea that they were being friendly but hiding something from each other.
But they didn’t recognized the hammer and sickle, because they had grown up at a time when most adults had quit looking for commies under their beds.
Well, here we go again, and I suspect that most of the people yelling “Commie!” today don’t know the difference between a communist and a socialist or how to define either, or they’d be up in arms over a president who has the central government owning parts of steel companies and chipmakers.
Benson posits a generic radical leftist commie Democrat standing up to brave muscular Uncle Sam, while Varvel dips into the endless arguments about whether Nazis and Communists can be the same people.
Neither advances a constructive, thoughtful political position.
Contrast that with Anderson, who gives Platner a little piggy tail and isn’t whitewashing the flaws that have surfaced, but notes the source of the condemnation, suggesting that somebody should remove the beam from their own eye before remarking on the mote in someone else’s.
He’s no more gentle than Benson or Varvel, but he provides a starting point for conversation and debate, which is a good deal more constructive.
Ramirez lands somewhere in the middle with this one. It’s not an exercise in name-calling, but there’s an unraised topic of discussion there.
The count in California has gone slowly, and the “jungle primary” is more complicated than a straight winner-take-all system, but there’s an inconsistency in that it sure feels the same people complaining about California’s slow count are also calling for the entire nation to scrap voting machines in favor of hand-counted paper ballots.
Then again, if you’re going to question the results of any election that doesn’t provide the result you were looking for, what difference does it make how long it takes to count and recount the ballots?
This summary of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s probe of election fraud hasn’t stopped those who claim voter fraud. You might as well prove that Elvis is dead, that the Moon Landing was real and that the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria is built on a slab and has no basement in which liberals can eat babies.
Nor can you convince people of climate change by pointing out all the ways the climate is changing, given Swift’s point that “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired,” particularly when there are people in suits and lab coats proving Upton Sinclair’s insistence that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”
All I know is that I barely slept in last night’s heat, and El Nino isn’t set to strike until this fall, and whether you believe it or not, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Now here’s John Oliver:
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
Comments