CSotD: While You Were Out
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Venables posted this yesterday, so I don’t suppose it got to as many people as it usually would, given how many sites in Britain and Europe went dark. I did see that the Guardian stayed up, but I read their US edition, so that tells me little. Anyway, I got a vacation from obsessively checking for comments, instead obsessively checking to see if we were back yet.
On the other side of the Irish Sea, Turner took on the alphabet. I agree with his line-up, and even learned something, since I’d seen that Meta got fined in headlines but hadn’t realized it happened in our country. That was a disappointment, since it makes me suspect they’ll never have to cough it up, even after they get it reduced to a buck-fifty, which is how those magnificent awards seem to end up over here.
My major takeaway, however, is that at my age I’ve got too many acronyms floating around in my brain, such that when I see PHP, my first reaction is that it’s a story about angel dust, which is a completely different type of toxic bummer.
Then I realize angel dust is PCP, which also stands for Primary Care Physician, who I still call my GP, which means “geometric progression” which I think is what all these initials are in.
Reichsmarschall Hegseth decided he deserved to have General Eisenhower’s globe in his office suite, perhaps because he’s a better commander than Ike ever was.
But instead of treating it like a very large, heavy, precious object, he treated it like a Barcalounger and called for a couple of guys to move it into his office, whereupon they dropped it and it broke. As Bagley suggests, it’s a great metaphor for what the goofballs currently running the place have done to the actual globe, but it also opens up wider commentary.
One rule of good management is that before you order something done, confer with the people whose job it is to do it so your orders are practical. Unfortunately, the people at the Pentagon who know how to do things have all been fired or forced into retirement.
The fact that he bollixed the moving of a globe that didn’t belong in his office anyway is another metaphor, except that we know about the globe and we’re still collecting evidence of how thoroughly the team of Trump and Hegseth have screwed up what used to be our bases in the Middle East.
Alas, Sheneman points out, it’s not as if the Pentagon is the only place where there is no longer room for people who know how to do things. He’s absolutely right and he’s not the first to point out that the rule in the current administration is that it doesn’t matter how well you do your job as long as you don’t embarrass Himself, specifically in the sense of embarrassing him in ways the press notices.
Less public incompetence is quite all right — we’ll just wipe the ketchup off the walls and pretend it never happened.
At the moment, Dear Leader is flying around the country visiting all the places where he probably won’t make a difference in the midterms, and enjoying making 90-minute speeches in auditoriums that aren’t filling up the way they used to. However, he has explained that the places are chock full, only people come from the upper seats to the lower seats so it looks like the place is half empty.
One of the candidates he wants to help is Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor in Ohio and has stirred up controversy with an ad in which his opponent’s mother claims that her daughter, the police and the courts were all lying about the sexual assaults her husband (allegedly) committed when her daughter was between 9 and 12.
The president has praised the ads, while his vice-president has praised the audacity of the ad despite the number of Republicans who have joined Democrats in denouncing it.
It has inspired today’s
Juxtaposition of the Day
I agree that it is unlikely mothers would come out publicly against their successful children, and it’s valid mocking the concept.
But I’ve been around enough abuse victims that I don’t think this particular exploitation of a mother’s negative statements much lend itself to humor. One of the horrors in sexual abuse is that it happens, but a parallel horror is that the victim’s own mother knew it was happening and did not step in to save her.
Socks on the floor is the child’s fault. Being raped is not.
Keith Knight offers satire that touches on a similar subject. Several cartoonists have had fun with Trump’s urging of voters to pretend he’s on the ballot, because it is, for many and perhaps most people, a motivation to vote Democrats into office.
But putting the words into Jeffrey Epstein’s mouth is a reminder of the many young victims of his horrific sexual crimes, and that Donald Trump was a good friend who denies any involvement, but whose Justice Department continues to keep the documentation under seal while extending special favors to Epstein’s already-convicted accomplice.
Knight employs satire, offering a parody of Trump’s statement, but attempts no humor, depicting Epstein in the fires of Hell. Nor does he openly express contempt or anger, though it’s hardly a flattering setting.
Satire and parody can be hilarious, but the most memorable and effective examples are delivered with a straight face, and a rapier.
Blower offers a parody of David Low’s classic cartoon, Rendezvous, penned after the dual invasion of Poland by Germany and Russia.
When Low’s cartoon was published in 1939, its strength lay in the horrors over the recently revealed Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the war that followed only added to the impact, which is a major reason the cartoon was not a one-and-done newspaper piece forgotten with the next edition.
Blower does not attempt to improve on it, not only presenting the same scene with a third partner, but imitates the black-and-white of Low’s original.
It speaks eloquently even to those who have never seen its inspiration and are too young to know the history it cites.
Keep the faith.
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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