CSotD: Interesting Times
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There’s not really a Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” but we sure do seem cursed with them.
I feel particularly sorry for satirists like Tom Tomorrow and Andy Borowitz, who have built their careers on exaggerating things so you can see the toxic absurdities in them, and this episode of This Modern World is a good example.
There’s nothing to exaggerate, because reality is already deep into toxic absurdity. There is a benefit in gathering it together like this so that people can see the overall insanity, but it would be better if it had built up over a year or two, because if you pay any attention to the news, it’s already gathered together.
Borowitz has a similar problem, in that his established brand is to make an outrageous satirical statement about something real, and it’s getting hard to come up with anything more ridiculous than what is really happening. He doesn’t help himself by also doing some real reporting, because the net effect is that people look to see if he’s joking or not, and there often isn’t much difference.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Case in point: Dear Leader wanted his name on the Kennedy Center. Dear Leader wants his name on everything, but the courts told him that it would take an act of Congress to change the name of the center, and Trump reacted like the sort of six-year-old who might have requested it in the first place.
So, having packed the center’s governing body with loyalists, he has now had them announce the closure of the center, which is to say he’s going to take his ball and go home like the sort of temperamental crybaby who would do that. The board has announced that the center will close, supposedly for renovations, but Trump insists that the renovations must include adding his name.
Davies and Telnaes are two of the sharpest pens in the drawer, but they’re limited to showing the destruction as actual, physical destruction, and while they capture the presidential temper tantrum, there is an actual possibility of the building being abandoned and ultimately torn down. What they offer is less a satire than a prediction.
There is benefit in drawing attention to such situations, but in our siloed world, the only people who will see these cartoons are probably aware of what’s going on and already agree. The remaining benefit — and it matters a great deal — is that emphasizing the situation may motivate people to vote in November, if they weren’t already champing at the bit to do so.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
The puzzler of the week was Bridezilla Anderson Trump explaining that a Russian oligarch who is close to Vladimir Putin and has been linked to kidnapping Ukrainian children did not pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor her wedding to Don Jr. He only sponsored the two-day festival that followed.
It’s entirely possible that the reason her prospective father-in-law wasn’t there is that someone took him aside and suggested he keep clear of the impending disaster, though it would be about the first time he’d ever listened to good advice.
As for Buss’s cartoon, it seems that, while Bettina described the oligarch as a close personal friend, Eric said he’d never heard of the guy, which seems unlikely if he is close to Don Jr or Vladimir, considering Eric’s extensive exposure to both of them. Perhaps whoever warned his dad away from the thing also whispered in his ear and suggested he play dumb.
Yes, I know: Type-casting.
Ohman wraps up this Juxtaposition by pulling back the curtain to reveal what everybody already knew. The Trumps have become way too close to Russia in general, and too comfortable with a level of personal corruption that once toppled dynastys.
Example: In 1952, as vice-presidential candidate, Richard Nixon had to make a nationally televised speech explaining a fund to pay his political expenses and denying personal gifts, except for a cocker spaniel given to his daughters.
He did eventually get over his distaste for personal gifts, but the financial presents he mingled with public funds to fix up his eventual retirement home became part of the scandals surrounding the Watergate incident.
The list of people forced to resign over gifts in past days would make a good, long magazine article, if not a book.
But while Tricia and Julie got a cute puppy from an admirer, their wedding receptions were not paid for by one of Nikita Khruschev’s tovarishchi, and Ohman’s cartoon shows how far we’ve since come, in several ways, and none of them good.
Juxtaposition of the Day #3
The whole world is watching, and the response seems to be that they are appalled over Trump’s reluctance to do anything about the potential AI crisis experts say is looming.
Bertuciolli makes him seem like a cyborg himself, loyal to the profitable trade and indifferent to what people who understand the technology say about it.
Sack lays out the dilemma, which is that AI does have some very good applications, but the dangers of unregulated development would outweigh whatever good it might do, and Le Lievre offers a chilling vision of how we have let a harmless seeming little fellow into our lives, perhaps to end them.
If you think it’s funny, you don’t get it.
Juxtaposition of the Day #4
For those of you hoping for a career in the FBI, you may be happy to know that Kash Patel has changed the requirements and that having sex with animals is no longer a cause for rejection. He explained — and I am not making this up — that people who participate in bestiality are frequently the victims, which I suspect would come as a surprise to the goats.
Seems a shame that the FBI and Justice Department aren’t a little more concerned about young girls who have most definitely been victims of He Who Must Not Be Investigated, and that they are pushing to extradite people who have committed no crimes but have been falsely accused of eating pets.
But I guess we’ve all got priorities.
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.
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