CSotD: Weekend Wrap

First, “He Who Must Be Dealt With,” and Ben Jennings bursts through the crowd of Musk-Freeing-Trump and Musk-Weaponizing-Twitter cartoons with this reminder that having a lot of money and getting a lot of attention doesn’t necessary translate into having a lot of judgment.

As noted here yesterday, one doesn’t just walk in and fire everyone who knows how the thing works before you’ve assembled a new group of people who do, especially if you’re one of the people who doesn’t. Well, one doesn’t, but obviously Elon Musk does, and the flood of racism and Anti-Semitism unleashed there is an obvious consequence.

The people standing around in front of Twitter headquarters pretending to have been fired was a less predictable result, and less an issue of his incompetence than of his having made his monstrous ego the main player. You wear a top hat, urchins will throw snowballs at it.

As for his freeing Trump, Trump apparently doesn’t want to be freed, or, at least, he doesn’t want to get into an ego-measuring contest.

Speaking of whom, Trump being banned from Twitter never kept me from seeing him, because people keep re-posting his nonsensical screeds there anyway, and, similarly, I wouldn’t have seen the racist garbage if people hadn’t reposted that.

So there’s some wisdom in curating your feed, but, obviously, there’s also an element of “Lord, protect me from my friends; My enemies I can handle.”

Anyway, all that isn’t the real source of schadenfreude here, because so far it’s just been pratfalls and soda down his pants.

For those seeking a little more substance, Jon Schwartz has a blistering take on the foolishness of Musk’s investment at the Intercept, while Elizabeth Lopatto has a more measured analysis of the long-term pitfalls and dubious up-side at the Verge.

Highly recommended reading if you prefer long, rolling laughter to fits of giggles, because their examinations of Musk’s investment strategy make Kanye West look like Warren Buffett.

 

And this housekeeping note: Lemont may be frustrated over at Candorville (WPWG), but you’ve got to stay in there pitching.

Specific to this site, my default for cartoonists at GoComics and Comics Kingdom is to link to them there, but I’ve been linking to several others at their Twitter sites rather than to paywalls at their home newspapers or to websites they haven’t updated since 1997. If you’re bailing out on Twitter, make sure you let your followers know where to find you. And drop me a line, too.

A terrible thing happens when you don’t promote: Nothing.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Cathy Wilcox)

(Christian Adams)

One aspect of this pairing is that Wilcox is from Australia and Adams is British, and apparently nobody has told them that high prices for gas and oil are Joe Biden’s fault. They seem to think it has something to do with record profits by petroleum companies around the world.

Wilcox offers a casual lack of concern that echoes Bob Mankoff’s classic “How about never? Is never good for you?” dismissal, and it gives me flashbacks to interviewing big wigs who would casually lie in your face and defy you to prove them wrong.

You’ll note that this oil exec is not saying there’s no connection between profits and pricing, only that he hasn’t found one. He’s not challenging you to prove there is one, but, rather, to prove that he knows about it.

To do that, you’d need to dig into his emails, which is no small operation.

Meanwhile, Adams plays on the anti-oil nitwittery in which people hurl food at paintings and glue themselves to walls in order to prove that oil is bad, which gets attention rather than results. More flashbacks, these to something Peter Yarrow spoke of in 1967, when he said “The problem was that a lot of people thought demonstrations were the movement. They weren’t.”

But, of course, if you suggested that something like lying around pretending to be dead was not effective resistance but merely performative jackassery, they’d scream “Where’s your social consciousness?”

Well, as Adams suggested, we’re all conscious of something or other.

 

For instance, as Matt points out, the royal family is conscious of the fact that they’d like Harry and Meghan to shut up and go away and not, as David Letterman said to Harvey Pekar, “F*** up a great thing.”

 

On to lighter topics: Agnes (Creators) reminds me that once upon a time I watched both Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, and haven’t watched either in a couple of years.

I disagree with her on Jeopardy, which isn’t “hard” so much as increasingly opaque. It was once akin to the GE College Bowl but has descended into pop culture trivia and clever, rather than challenging, clues. But she’s certainly got Wheel pegged.

And Vanna White is no Ava Gardner.

 

 

This week’s story arc in Wallace the Brave (AMS) hasn’t worked out for Mom, but it’s been delightful for me. I’m not a huge Halloween fan, but I know people who are and who celebrate as a family, even if — like the Maclellans — they find it hard to fake being put-together any other day of the year.

And I envy the fact that, as she says, they are together anyway. It’s a lovely thing when such people find one another.

 

I find it hard to believe that Wallace never got past the black-and-white portion of the Wizard of Oz, though it’s a worthy commentary on kids who won’t watch anything that isn’t color.

On the other hand, this Mother Goose and Grimm (KFS) makes me wonder how many people, in a country with a median age of 38, recognize an event that happened 43 years ago, particularly since, unlike Chernobyl (36 years ago), there was no major leak of radiation.

Will jokes about Elon Musk still work in 2065?

 

Big Nate (AMS) cracked me up not for the arc itself, which was good but not outstanding. Chad, however, put me on the floor with his helpful explanation of a joke Nate already got.

Whatever happens to Twitter or Facebook, there will always be Chads, stepping on punchlines to deaden the point.

Maybe he’ll grow up to be a critic.

 

Meanwhile, here’s a bit of ancient wisdom for you, Mrs. Maclellan.