CSotD: Before, After and Juxtaposed
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An example of why they call it “Breaking News” as this Prickly City (AMS) gag gets smashed to bits by its lead time being overtaken by developments. Ah, well. At least Oprah hasn’t endorsed Harris (yet).
But even political cartoonists, working on 24-hour lead times, have to consider timing.
There’s nothing wrong with Glen LeLievre’s current piece, and it’s a good thing, as the campaign unfolds, to remind people what is at stake. But I think the bandaged-head fad faded with the RNC Convention, though he’s not the only cartoonist I’ve seen still using it.
The red caps will do.
Juxtaposition of the Day
It happens: Both these coconut tree jokes hit on the same day, and the differences are fun to ponder but of little overall consequence. It’s the same gag, making the same point, and, while it’s not breakthrough commentary, it’s not so obvious that we’ve seen a dozen of them. Two good cartoonists just had the same idea the same day.
Incidentally, the coconut tree remark is interesting in that Harris brought it up in talking to a Hispanic group about how ethnic identities make us who we are: It was something her Indian mother used to say.
As such, it might have been protected as something only Asians could repeat, but, as she said at the time, we don’t live in silos, and so the once-ethnic maternal wisecrack has become mainstream.
There are still terms that keep us confined in those silos, and, as Darrin Bell (KFS) points out, people either need to educate themselves or admit who they are. No excuses.
BTW, Mike Johnson just pleaded with his Republican colleagues to knock it off with racist and sexist attacks on Harris, but he may be a little late to that battle.
Juxtaposition of More Than a Day
Michael Ramirez — Counterpoint
Here’s a different issue: Varvel’s piece landed last week, Rameriz’s showed up on GoComics today, which is not a good look for Ramirez.
But hold on: A little sleuthing shows that Ramirez’s cartoon ran in his home paper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, on the 22nd, the same day Varvel’s broke on GoComics.
Some cartoonists post directly to GoComics, others have a syndicate do it for them. And you’ll see some cartoonists not updated there for weeks, even months, at a time. I’m going to ask around about this at the AAEC confab in Montreal this October, but cartoonists need to monitor things.
This automobile collision was likely unavoidable, but the current market requires keeping up. To twist a phrase, keep your competition close and your apparent allies closer.
Now, here’s a different element of timing:
Last week, Cathy Wilcox offered this criticism of Netanyahu’s trip to the United States, where, she charged, Trump, Biden and Harris were rolling out the red carpet to greet him.
Nor was Wilcox alone: David Rowe also picked up on the red-carpet motif, adding Chuck Schumer and Mike Johnson, plus a Mogen David to indicate pro-Israeli prejudice.
Matt Wuerker (Politico) was less harsh about the impending visit than his Australian or British counterparts, but suggested that Netanyahu was leaving some “baggage” behind.
However, now that the speech has been delivered, we’re seeing some other viewpoints. Bob Englehart charges that Netanyahu’s remarks were a combination of truths and half-truths, which he attributes to saying what those Senators and Representatives who didn’t boycott the address wanted to hear.
It needs to be noted that the invitation was not from the White House but from Republican legislators, and it should also be pointed out that, while several sources reported a standing ovation, about half the Democrats in the Senate and House were not present, and several who attended did so under a sense of obligation.
It’s also worth noting that there’s nothing remarkable about a head of state — or a third grade Thanksgiving pageant — getting a standing ovation.
Meanwhile, the accusation of half-truths, as a trip to Google News reveals, is well justified by factcheckers at ABC, at CNN and at the Guardian, among many others. And having the family of a hostage among the protesters didn’t make Bibi’s visit seem any more credible.
Dave Brown, with a gratuitous slam at the departing president, offered Harris a bit of understanding, showing her greeting the bloody-handed guest with both disdain and a rubber glove.
As she told a reporter from Al Jazeera, in a story worth reading, “Too often, the conversation is binary, when the reality is anything but.” That report goes on to say that, while she didn’t break with Biden’s overall policy, she was much more forceful in pushing back against Israel’s infliction of civilian casualties.
The encounter did indicate a problem area that Harris will have to navigate carefully if she wants to maintain her overall credibility as a potential president without deflating the excitement of a youthful demographic with serious objections to Israel’s actions in Gaza.
That Al Jazeera story encapsulated her balance, if you can read between the lines:
In an interview with the Israeli news site Ynet published on Tuesday, Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Herzog, said Harris’s overall record was “positive”, but she had made “quite a few problematic statements” about the war in Gaza.
Much as she pushed Netanyahu towards accepting a ceasefire and chided him for civilian suffering, she also stood up to the minority of protesters who made common cause with Hamas terrorism, raising the temperatures at a Union Station demonstration and vandalizing nearby monuments.
Having more than once been one of the peaceful protesters at a gathering hijacked by radicals and performative extremists, I can see her point, but others may not understand the distinction she’s making.
Dr. MacLeod frames it as a choice between vandalism and genocide, which, as noted above, Harris might describe as making a conversation binary that demands to be treated as anything but.
We shall see how she manages to handle this particular issue, and how much this particular issue muddies the distinction between Kamala Harris and Project 2025.
Meanwhile, Bill Bramhall borrows the torch-passing cliche to remind us who is passing what to whom.
And for those whose only pushback is a dirty joke about a couch, here’s how you weave together his actual, documented vulnerabilities:
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