Let’s lead off with some non-political short takes. Monty is particularly well-timed for me, because I was streaming the Sopranos yesterday while I did dishes, and I have to say, people in that show sure got a lot of phone calls.About the fourth time I wiped my hands and reached for my pocket, it occurred […]
I certainly didn’t go to bed last night wondering what today’s topic would turn out to be. Rather, the question was, which cartoon would be the lead?Clay Jones gets the nod, for having combined the central theme of weariness in his cartoon with an essay that tipped the balance in an otherwise dead heat.Not only am […]
O Jenny, dinna toss your head, An’ set your beauties a’ abread! You little ken what cursed speed The blastie’s makin! Thae winks an’ finger-ends, I dread, Are notice takin’!O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An’ foolish notion: What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us, An’ […]
The other day, I started my reflections on the Santa Barbara shootings with a cartoon drawn in the wake of the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Here, Steve Breen makes a more pointed comment on a massacre that happened just a few years later.And so here we sit, three decades later, still asking the […]
(Chan Lowe) (Tom Toles)I’m ready to give up. What does it take to make people finally say they’ve had enough?There’s a cynical temptation to wish that a few hundred people in West Virginia (disclosure to forestall accusations of heartlessness: I have family in WV) had died from the chemical spill, because then maybe something […]
My day begins around 4:30 with a dive into the day’s cartoons, during which I pull out, on average, a half dozen nominees. Then I go back and sort through them to come up with some sort of coherent overall theme or, at least, a sensible order in which to discuss them.So today I had […]
I have always had a visceral dislike for prolonged, outward mourning. In recent years, it has come from seeing how often a “commemorative issue” is no more than a cynical mask for piling up some single copy sales, but even as a 13-year-old nearing 14, I went outside and ran around the yard during JFK’s […]
So the cartoons are coming in, the weepers and the “Congress does nothings” and the “What will it takes?”Yes, what will it take?What will it take before we quit lying to ourselves and pretending we care?Jimmy Margulies got it right. In fact, as newspapers seek ways to cut costs, I think they could benefit […]
Daryl Cagle on the wall-to-wall coverage of the Newtown shootings. I agree, and I disagree.That is, the tragedy was certainly news, and, while I don’t much like vultures, I’m not a big fan of ostriches, either.In the old Soviet Union, they didn’t report on airplane crashes and other tragedies because they didn’t consider one-time odd […]
When Scott Stantis posted a link to his latest ChiTrib cartoon on Facebook yesterday, I commented that he needs to save this one for his portfolio. It is a keeper.Yes, I know, I just went all fanboy on him the other day, and here he is again already. But the blog is called “Comic Strip of […]